Protect Your Breasts
How Herbicides and Pesticides Affect Our Breast Tissue
To gain more insight about the environmental impact on your risk of developing breast cancer, I strongly suggest you view this presentation. These slides will help you understand the way these pesticides/herbicides and other estrogen mimickers affect your breast tissue. They will also help to explain the “Before & After” images on our website. This is crucial for an understanding of how cancers respond in a metabolic or physiological way.
Save Your Breasts, View The Slide Show Below
Why did I create PBW and what did I learn from my clinical practice that was so exciting?
When I first started my infrared thermography clinical practice and moved to Oregon in 2005, I discovered some disturbing trends. More than 3/4 of all my patients had borderline (TH3) or strong borderline (TH3+) thermograms. About 1/8 of them were abnormal thermograms (TH4s and TH5s). The other 1/8 of the patient population were normal TH1 and TH2 thermograms. These women with the normal scans were mostly eating a totally organic diet and were vegans with a very clean lifestyle and avoided environmental toxins in their immediate environment.
Again, I encourage you to view the slide presentation in the “Herbicide” section to better understand the ratings and see how infrared technology can be used as a risk assessment tool. To my knowledge, I am the only one in the United States that is utilizing infrared thermography to evaluate herbicide and pesticide affects on breast tissue.
As I started to see more women here in Oregon, I was troubled by the increasing numbers of my patients having these borderline and abnormal scans and I began to explore the reasons for this trend. I started asking the women questions to see if there were dietary/ lifestyle or environmental correlations as to why some had better scans than others and was there a possibility to change the outcomes? That was the really important question for me.
The current American Cancer Society statistics are one in eight women will have a breast cancer diagnosis in her lifetime and it is estimated that in the next ten years it will be 1 in 5 women. This is a national epidemic ! The prostate cancer statistics in our men are also rising. In fact all the cancer rates have risen since the 1950s and 1960s.
My most challenging question to myself was, “ Can I make a difference, can I alter the outcome and help to improve a woman’s health as well as reducing her risk of developing breast cancer through an educational program”? This is how the Proactive Breast Wellness program came into being over the last seven years. I wanted to be able to “See” the difference on the thermography as well as follow their improvement by following their laboratory testing. The women were also sent for structural studies and surgical evaluations as needed.
My allopathic colleagues were critical that infrared technology was too sensitive or not accurate. It is important to listen to one’s critics but I have also been a Family Nurse Practitioner for 35 years when no one knew what NPs were or did back then either. At the time of this writing, there are only a few FDA registered infrared camera systems in the state of Oregon and I happen to have one of them. My camera has over a 90% sensitivity. I have come to realize that you could look into the future at functional, metabolic changes through the lens of a cutting edge infrared camera and to utilize the technology as a risk assessment tool. A lot of what you could see on the images was related to dietary and environmental effects on breast tissue.
To make things worse I discovered that Oregon and Washington state were the testing grounds for Agent Orange (2, 4 D and 2,4 T ) in the early 1970’s at the start of the Vietnam War. At the end of the war these Agent Orange chemicals were sent back to the Pacific Northwest to be used as an herbicide in the timber industry after clear cutting or for agricultural purposes. These chemicals become airborne as well as contaminating soils, wells and other water supplies. They get on your clothes, they absorb through your skin, your beloved pets are exposed from roadside or from yard sprays. 2,4 D is fat soluble so it gets into animals that we may eat and also remains in humans in their own fat tissue. “Atrazine” is also used extensively and is water soluble and has been found to be volatilized easily getting into the air. Atrazine is banned in Europe but continues to be used in the US. “Round Up” is a designer herbicide for home and agricultural use and is the most popular herbicide in the US. Later I discovered that Oregon has the second highest breast cancer rate per capita in the United States ! I began to realize that there was a reason why so many of my patients had borderline or abnormal scans here in Oregon.
Several of my patients had been “Flaggers” as a high school summer job. They stood at the edge of a strawberry field and held up flags to show which way the wind was blowing and a crop duster would fly over them spraying. They would then move a few rows further and the plane would pass over them again. No protective gear was provided. Many of my patients live on farms that raise mint, grass seed, wheat, hazelnuts or Christmas trees. All of these crops are sprayed heavily. Others were minding their own business sitting in their yard when a helicopter would come over the ridge spraying herbicides all over them and the neighbor’s property that was planted in timber. The Atrazine is now in their well water. Others were horse owners and they used pesticide fly wipe on their animals. They then patted and groomed the horse and these chemicals absorbed through the skin. Their children play with the animals as well. Several of my patients work in the same florist shop here in Eugene. There are 7 women in the shop and 6 of them have been diagnosed with breast cancer. They handle a lot of plant material that has been sprayed without wearing gloves. The list goes on.
I noticed that the hormone activity and increased metabolic/ physiological activity could be seen to increase by eating too much non–organic meat and dairy that have bovine growth hormone (estrogen) added to the animal feed or injected into the animals. Other conventional foods that do not boast the “Certified Organic” label also have chemical residue from herbicides and pesticides. These herbicides and pesticides act as estrogens in the body and they increase the metabolic activity which can be seen as heat and by increased vascularity by an infrared camera. As our environment becomes more and more contaminated, we are all walking around in an “Estrogenic Soup” of chemicals that act and bind to estrogen receptor sites in our bodies.
My goal was to help educate women and families as to what they could do to change some of their life style patterns or work with agencies that could start making legislative changes. I was instrumental in stopping the road side herbicide spray here in Lane County Oregon by showing the county commissioners and the health department images of what these chemicals did to breast tissue when women were toxically exposed. I had also invited a breast surgeon to join me and he was also influential in changing the ruling. We have added a “Take Action” section so you may be able to find organizations that may be able to help you make positive change in your community
So out of my quest for answers, the Proactive Breast Wellness program was developed with assistance from experts in the field contributing to the end result. Our medical system does not offer much information on “Prevention”. My women patients prefer “Prevention” to “Waiting for the Cure”. There is a lot you can do to improve your health. For women who have decided to follow the PBW supplement protocol, make life style, dietary and environmental changes for things they can control and work towards balancing their hormones, these women improve their infrared scans and laboratory testing in about 65% of the time in 6 to 12 months. This brings us back to the premise that “Prevention is the Cure”. We hope you enjoy our PBW program.
