My Personal Thermogram Story

Hello bOObs Bloggettes:

I was recently asked about what I did specifically to turn my abnormal thermogram around in a year’s time. Here’s the story from beginning to end. Hope it helps some of you if you’re looking to change your lifestyle to a more healthy one:)

In 2016, I went on the road to start filming my first two films about alternative cancer therapies and breast cancer screening. Our first road trip was over in the EU for 5 weeks. Now, the great thing about the EU is that they have FREE breakfast bars at most hotels. My cinematographer LOVED the FREE food. In fact, he would go back to eat THREE TIMES to get the FREE food. So I (stupidly) followed him. And guess what happened soon after? We both gained a TON of weight from all the FREE food. And because we were busy filming and I was busy setting up details for the next interview, we didn’t get in a lot of walking exercise. It was a very destructive lifestyle. In fact I joked to my cameraman that his physique had turned into a Sponge Bob Square Pants kind of look — and I had turned into The Blob!

Later on that year, I needed to film someone getting a thermogram — but no one else was around, so I jumped (anonymously) in front of the camera. (Little did I know that I would later be part of the storyline and would have to take off my disguise.)

While my ultrasound was fine, my thermogram was not so fine. There was a temperature difference between my breasts, and in fact the one that had been injured some years earlier was beginning to hurt a bit (see blog on trauma-induced cancer). And indeed, the thermogram confirmed there was a problem brewing in that breast (I had two different thermographers do the test with the same results, FYI).

Now what do I do? I went to a naturopathic doctor to find out what was causing the inflammation in my breast. I was on 3 medications at the time and one of them was prescribed to combat the side-effects of one of the other medications (this happens frequently apparently). My doctor hadn’t told me up front that the “problem” medication had only been studied for 5 years before being hurried into the marketplace; it was about that 5 year mark that I developed kidney problems and my blood pressure went crazy — argh! That’s when I started to realize it was time to get off those meds before I was soon on a half dozen of them.

The naturopath put me on a myriad of supplements, including digestive enzymes that really got things moving along, so to speak. I didn’t go into that first appointment thinking that the meds were going to peel away so quickly (if at all), but before I knew it, my BP went back to normal so I went off that one. And I went off the “problem” med too as I didn’t feel it was doing a whole lot anyway. The third one was for acid reflux — but the enzymes and HCL that the doctor had put me on fixed that and soon that 10-year problem went away. So I went off ALL 3 MEDICATIONS — hurray!! (To this day I am still proudly prescription free.)

So that was the first thing I did. Then, remembering that “you are what you eat,” I also stopped going back 3 times to the breakfast bar, which was easy to do as I don’t have a breakfast bar in my kitchen:) But most importantly, I changed not just the quantity of food but also what I ate : I stopped eating McDonald’s once a week and I cut down on the sugar, and I started eating organic, non-GMO foods and a lot of healthy greens, etc.  I quickly — and thankfully — dropped the 15 to 20 pounds that I’d put on in the EU (you can actually see me morph back to health in the film “bOObs”).

I drink filtered water as well and have an air filtering system in my house so that I clean up as much as possible the Big Three problem makers: water, air, and food.

I also got back to regular exercise such as walking, hiking, ballet 3 times a week, etc.

And lastly, I changed my bra from wearing my very expensive $50 a pop Victoria Secret heavily-padded-with-tons-of-barbed-wire bra to a pretty mundane but better-for-my-breasts bra (see my blog on the role of bras and deodorants in helping to create breast cancer).

The one thing that’s difficult to take out of our lives is stress, but this is very important. My naturopathic doctor explained it to me this way: Stress in one’s life can lead to getting your cortisol out of whack, which leads to other hormones getting out of whack, which leads to chronic inflammation, which can lead to chronic diseases such as breast cancer. So do the best you can to de-stress your life (this is a big one — very difficult to do, but very important).

Put those all together, and the next thing I knew (and as a surprise to me) my thermogram a year later had gone back to “normal” for both breasts (see my film “bOObs” for the before and after thermogram findings).

Unfortunately, “normal” for most women is to be in the TH = 3 category on a thermogram (I’ll explain this in a later blog), where we should be a TH = 1 or 2 category. But alas, our air, water and food is so polluted with toxins now that we’re all pretty much TH = 3. Even women in their 20s are getting cancer at a higher rate now. Scary!

BOOBS BOTTOM LINE:  If you want to change your lifestyle to avoid getting a chronic disease like cancer or reverse a problem that you have currently (like a suspicious thermogram):  find a good naturopathic doctor for advice; ditch as many meds as possible (sorry Pharma) and replace them with supplements recommended by your doctor (supplements do the same thing as meds but with little or no side-effects); exercise daily (at least 20 min. of cardio); ditch the barbed-wire bras for healthy-breast bras; switch to non-GMO organic healthy food/diet (sorry McDonald’s); and cut out things like sugary soft drinks and diet drinks (both are really bad for you). And reduce the stress in your life.

There’s tons of stuff written about all this on the internet, so I’m sure you can find out more info. Or if you have any advice for women, please share it below in the comments section!

Blog at you soon, thanks for reading and helping to spread the word!  (Please see the “share” links below.)  And we’d love to hear comments from you! (see below as well)

Stay healthy,

Megan

Megan Smith, M.S.
Director, bOObs: The War on Women’s Breasts

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