What Doctors Don't Tell YouAs breast cancer rates continue to spiral upward (to 185,000 women in the US and 28,000 women in the UK every year), the pressure is on for women, particularly those over 40, to have regular mammograms.
The MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan is a screening technique that has been in use since the early 1980s. It can provide a detailed picture of your body’s soft tissues, especially the brain and spinal cord.
I recently had a run-in with my local hospital when they insisted that I have a mammogram before they would scan the cysts in my breasts or aspirate them, or do anything else.
WHO PAYS THE PIPER: Web information you can't trust
The latest craze in preventative medicine is a whole-body scan, which subjects you to vast amounts of radiation, with no clear benefit over safer techniques like thermal imaging.
One of the reasons given for the so-called advances in the war against cancer is that doctors are now screening for cancer, and so are able to detect and treat it earlier. This belief has become so entrenched in the medical mind that no amount of...
DEPRESSION: The two key questions to ask
Currently, most screening systems measure bone mineral density (BMD). Susan Ott, associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, has warned of high levels of imprecision in screening systems and multiple measurement techniques
