Differences Between a Mammogram and Thermography

Differences Between a Mammogram and Thermography

Differences Between a Mammogram and Thermography

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

With breast cancer, early detection is considered the primary factor in good outcomes and reduced mortality. Conventional medicine is focused almost entirely on early detection, as are most of the breast cancer non-profits.

This focus on early detection is an excellent thing, in that survivability statistics for breast cancer are improving.

But, mammography does not PREVENT breast cancer (a common misconception). In one study, 68% of the women surveyed believed that mammography prevents or reduces the risk of contracting breast cancer. Mammography can only find already existing cancer so it can be treated.

Personally, I would Rather be Proactive and Avoid Breast Cancer

Excellent technology exists to prevent breast cancer, even though it’s not a big part of the breast cancer information you are likely to see.

There are two important parts of breast cancer prevention:

  1. Thermography
  2. Hormone health and balancing

Thermography is a very specific and advanced type of infrared photography that maps the surface temperature of the breasts. When analyzed by a trained and certified thermologist, risk factors can be identified, along with the level of risk. Then you can do a program to improve that risk, followed by another thermography to confirm that your risk is reduced.

Hormone levels can add to breast cancer risk in several ways. Estrogen imbalance can show on thermography as well as on a lab test. Getting your hormones in balance can reduce or eliminate many common symptoms and improve your life while reducing your cancer risk.

Thermography Facts
Can I do thermography instead of mammography?

First, ask yourself why you are having a mammogram. If you are having a mammogram to prevent cancer, then that is the wrong test. A mammogram never prevented even one person from getting cancer. It can only detect a dense object in the breast.

On the other hand, thermography detects the physiological, chemical, and temperature changes before pathology develops, 5 to 8 years before detection on a mammogram.

So, thermography is appropriate for preventative screening.

A mammogram is appropriate for detecting and diagnosing cancer, both early and later stage pathology. Thermography and mammography gather different information, and a woman may need both of these to ensure that her breasts are and remain healthy.

A thermography study does not replace a mammogram but is very complementary. Many women choose thermography to give them additional and early information about breast changes.

I hope this helps!

 

Dr. Melodie Billiot

Learn about Thermography!

READ: Breast Health Improvement

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The Physics of Pain

The Physics of Pain

The Physics of Pain

There is a physics of the nervous system that explains long-term or chronic pain.

If you are suffering from this kind of pain, usually you just want it to stop. You aren’t likely to care overly much about physics.

However, you should know that understanding the physics can lead to “just getting it to stop.”

Standing Waves

Remember from physics how a wave looks? It’s a big “S” on its side. As time progresses, the energy goes up, then comes down, then goes up again.

If the wave hits something that reflects it back, you get an echo. But if the return wave exactly matches the original wave as it returns, you get something wonderful and weird called a “standing wave.”

It’s as if the wave isn’t moving. The high energy point stays in the same place, as does the low energy point.

We’ve all experienced this at a stoplight. The guy pulls up next to you with the subwoofers so massive that his suspension is bottoming out. Suddenly, your car is shaking. Your body is shaking. Your teeth are shaking.

You’re experiencing a standing wave.

Your Nervous System and Energy

Standing Wave

“Standing Waves” in the nervous system

Your nervous system is a conductor of energy. This energy, which contains coded information your body needs to operate, moves back and forth across the nerves all over your body, all the time.

An impact or injury anywhere in your body can cause a system overload. If this overload creates a barrier to nervous system energy, it can change the length of the path that energy will travel before it’s “answered back” in the system. This can cause a nervous system standing wave.

Impact and injuries can set up a standing wave of energy in your nervous system.

Like the subwoofers in the next car, this energy overload can get very uncomfortable and can be a cause of pain. Because the overload can prevent normal nerve communication, you can have slow healing and long-term pain.

Wrong Solutions

With its concentration on pharmaceuticals, medicine believes that the answer to pain is using drugs to block nerve conduction. Drugs temporarily stop the pain, but the stress on the nervous system may worsen the standing wave problem. In most cases, if you stop the medication, you continue the pain.

Solving the Problem

Once you have a basic understanding of the physics involved, you can see that the solution would be to bleed off the excess energy from the standing wave so healing can occur.

Success with this involves an entirely different point of view from traditional medicine.

Medicine’s viewpoint is that “the body is doing something wrong (hurting), so we need to stop it from doing that wrong thing (medicate it).”

A better view would be, “the body is intelligent and can heal itself with a bit of assistance, as long as the assistance is what the body wants, not what some “expert” thinks it wants.”

The Army’s Solution

Dr. Aaron Cook performs an acupuncture procedure on Jackenson Pierre Propeta on hospital ship USNS Comfort. (DoD photo by Spc. Nashaunda Tilghman)

Few organizations are faced with as much of a pain problem as the US Army. After tremendous difficulties with addiction, accidents caused by soldiers impaired with painkillers, and death from overdoses, the Army was willing to try anything as long as it worked.

What they settled on was acupuncture.

Acupuncture is a process of communicating with the body and helping it to re-route and balance nervous system energy.

With acupuncture, there are no drugs, no addiction, and no side effects. And in many cases, acupuncture provided more significant pain relief than drugs.

Acupuncture Patching

Homeopathic Acupuncture Patch

Homeopathic Acupuncture Patch

At my clinic, we use homeopathic patches placed on acupuncture points to balance nervous system energy and reduce pain.

The patches absorb the body’s infrared radiation and convert it to a specific light wavelength, stimulating the acupuncture point where the patch is applied. The patches are extremely effective at bleeding off excess nervous system energy. Rebalancing the nervous system this way breaks up the standing waves causing pain.

“Patching” is one example of how we assist the body’s intelligence to heal based on testing rather than on guessing.

Patient Success with Homeopathic Patches

I had a crazy neck pain for about a week that wouldn’t go away with heat, massage, soaking or my infrared blanket. One day with Dr. Billiot’s little patches on two key points of my body and the pain disappeared. –J.S.

 Find Out How to Get Help with your Health:

Would you please take five minutes to fill out a health assessment survey and send it to me? I’ll review your information, then have my assistant call you for any additional information. Then, I’ll let you know if your case might be a good fit for my clinic. This assessment is complimentary, no strings attached. Either I can help you–or point you in the right direction to get help.

Don’t give up! You can recover your health if you persist.

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What Do You Mean By Leaky Gut?

What Do You Mean By Leaky Gut?

Introduction

Below this Introduction is a well-written in-depth article on Leaky Gut with some great examples of how it happens. This Introduction is a short version if you don’t have time for the full story.

There is this thing called “Leaky Gut” that you may have heard of or run across.

You may already know something about it, or it may be an unknown, just vaguely alarming.

You do need to know about it because it’s increasingly common and can mess up your life in ways that you would never normally associate with anything related to digestion.

Leaky Gut can be a Factor in:

  • Attention deficit disorder
  • Symptoms resembling autism
  • Chronic and rheumatoid arthritis
  • Chronic fatigue syndrome
  • Eczema
  • Food allergies and intolerances
  • Inflammatory bowel disease
  • Irritable bowel syndrome
  • Joint and collagen problems
  • Compromised liver function
  • Malnutrition
  • Multiple chemical sensitivities
  • Psoriasis
  • Skin disorders ranging from urticaria to acne and dermatitis
  • Symptoms like schizophrenia

Leaky Gut can cause stress to your immune system leading to chronic problems (the ones that don’t get better) of all kinds.

What Is It?

To understand Leaky Gut, you must know about the two main functions of the “gut” (small intestine):

  1. To absorb nutrients from the food you eat by transferring them from the gut into the bloodstream.
  2. A barrier to protect your body from the microbes, undigested food and other unwelcomes from escaping out of the gut.
Fatty Liver Chart

“Leaky Gut” happens when your gut fails to some degree with these two functions.

Leaky gut is associated with a wide range of general symptoms such as fatigue, abdominal pain or bloating, diarrhea, feelings of toxicity, memory loss, difficulty concentrating, and poor tolerance of exercise.

Because your absorption of food is affected, you can have multiple health problems from malnutrition, despite eating a healthy diet.

Do I Have Leaky Gut?

If you have one of the conditions listed at the beginning of this article, or if you have chronic health problems of long duration, there is a possibility that Leaky Gut is a contributing factor or the primary cause of your difficulties.

There are degrees of Leaky Gut. The problem is that once this gets started, it tends to become worse and rarely heals itself.

How to Avoid or Improve Leaky Gut

  1. Clean up your diet. Food chemicals such as preservatives, colors, and flavor enhancers often worsen gut problems. Eat fresh foods, not canned, bottled, or bagged. Stop all fast and junk foods. Limit restaurant foods.
  2. Find your allergies and avoid them. There are effective blood tests for this. Allergies are one of the main stress factors that worsen Leaky Gut.
  3. Eat protein and veggies, limit carbs and eliminate sugars.
  4. Avoid antibiotics (soaps and drugs) unless absolutely necessary.
  5. Eat plenty of high-fiber foods.
  6. Don’t take NSAIDs (like ibuprofen).
  7. Eat fermented foods and take good probiotics.
I hope this helps!

Dr. Melodie Billiot

More about Leaky Gut

READ: Leaky Gut: Hey, It’s All Your MOM’S Fault

What Do You Mean By Leaky Gut

Ronald Grisanti D.C., D.A.B.C.O., DACBN, MS, CFMP

The intestinal lining has two opposite functions:

  1. The absorption of nutrients from food in the digestive tract.
  2. A barrier function, to control microbes or large food particles from going beyond the gut environment and getting into the bloodstream.

The digestive tract has tiny permeable openings between the cells (called tight junctions) to absorb nutrients from our food. If these pore-like structures open too wide, toxins from the gut can spill over into the bloodstream, overwhelming the liver and causing allergies or any of dozens of other ailments.

This malfunction is known as hyperpermeability because the lining has become too permeable (porous)

It’s also called Leaky Gut Syndrome because the gut begins leaking larger food particles and toxins from the gut.

It’s not a disease per se, but rather a natural process gone bad. Under normal optimal conditions, these pores open and close whenever nutrients are absorbed from our food. Only when the pores open too wide is leaky gut is said to occur.

The Big Picture Behind Leaky Gut: The Real Story

Here’s a detailed account of how leaky gut occurs. Let’s use the example of someone who has a food allergy. Suppose Mary has a wheat allergy and innocently eats a bagel; this can elicit a reaction in her body. If she has an immediate food allergy, her immune system may begin reacting right away. If she has delayed allergies, the reaction may not occur for as long as three hours, but it could take as long as forty-eight hours to occur.

What is surprising is that no matter when it occurs, Mary may not even be aware that it’s happening. She may have a vague feeling of discomfort that could include mild indigestion, a headache, or even joint or muscle aches.

Although she may not notice anything more than vague discomfort at the time, she may develop some chronic problems later down the road, such as auto-immune disorders, allergies, asthma, or arthritis. And she probably won’t link it to this microscopic process going on in her digestive tract as the lining becomes too permeable and begins leaking tiny particles.

On the other hand, she may have noticed that if she cheats on her allergy diet and has milk for breakfast, sometime that day or the next, her joints may be achy, and exercise will become a major effort.

The response of Mary’s body to the offending food also activates her immune system. When she eats allergic foods, her immune system sounds the alarm through chemical messengers, the cytokines. They act like horn-blowers calling out the cavalry, and their job is to bring the infection fighters (the antibodies).

Now the immune system is set in motion. While we always have cytokines as an essential part of our system, the gut will start leaking when too many cytokines and other immune chemicals are circulating in the bloodstream.

The Healthy Mucosal Lining

When Mary’s system is working properly, absorption occurs through tiny structures in the small intestine lining. All this is happening on a microscopic level. Nutrients are being absorbed through three structures:

  • Directly through the cells of the gut lining, called transcellular absorption
  • Between the cells, in paracellular absorption
  • In the crypts, tiny crevices in the lining of the gut

Each structure is programmed to absorb nutrient molecules of a particular size and electromagnetic charge. Between the fingerlike villi lining the gut are crypts, crevices at the base of each villi, like the webbing between your fingers. Because of their larger size, the crypts absorb bigger molecules, such as the disaccharides, which are complex sugars.

Between every cell in the gut lining is a tiny pore-like structure called a tight junction. These tiny pores are also active during digestion. They expand and contract just as other muscles do, opening and closing to release nutrients from the gut into the bloodstream or contain the food mix as it passes through the gut.

The Damaged Mucosal Barrier

Too many immune chemicals can cause the pores to open too wide, causing too much permeability. When there’s inflammation or any crisis in the body, if too many immune-signaling chemicals are circulating in the bloodstream, they can overstimulate the tight junctions, causing the pores to open too wide.

This process can be compared to a house with doors wired to a fire alarm system. If the alarm system malfunctions, it may keep all the doors in the house open and won’t let them close. Clearly, other problems can result. Intruders could easily enter the house.

Leaky gut can raise the body’s exposure to intruders, such as bacteria, yeast, or large food particles that would normally remain in the gut. Again, when the pores open too wide, material is inappropriately released into the bloodstream. In Mary’s case, if her immune system detects large food particles in the bloodstream (perhaps other innocent foods, released through the leaky gut), it will assume they’re allergens and launch a second attack, flooding her system with more cytokines. Then the whole dynamic just gets worse.

Resolving hyperpermeability can have Real Benefits.

Leaky gut is associated with a wide range of general symptoms such as fatigue of unknown origin, abdominal pain or bloating, diarrhea, feelings of toxicity, memory loss, difficulty concentrating, and poor tolerance of exercise.

Hyperpermeability can be an underlying factor in such conditions as:

  • Attention deficit disorders
  • Symptoms resembling autism
  • Chronic and rheumatoid arthritis
  • Chronic fatigue syndrome
  • Eczema
  • Food allergies and intolerances
  • Inflammatory bowel disease
  • Irritable bowel syndrome
  • Joint and collagen problems
  • Compromised liver function
  • Malnutrition
  • Multiple chemical sensitivities
  • Psoriasis
  • Skin disorders ranging from urticaria to acne and dermatitis
  • Symptoms like schizophrenia

Conditions that May Cause Leaky Gut

  • Aging
  • HIV
  • AIDS with diarrhea
  • Alcoholism
  • Malnutrition
  • Burns
  • NSAIDS
  • Cancer
  • Pancreatitis
  • Celiac disease
  • Psoriasis
  • Certain drugs
  • Radiation therapy
  • Chemotherapy
  • Rheumatoid arthritis
  • Chronic hepatitis
  • Shock or anaphylaxis
  • Crohn’s disease
  • Toxic shock syndrome
  • Cystic fibrosis
  • Trauma
  • Giardia and other parasites
  • Ulcerative colitis

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Would you please take five minutes to fill out a health assessment survey and send it to me? I’ll call you for a phone consult and discuss what could be done about your health. It’s complimentary, no strings attached. Either I can help you or point you in the right direction to get help. Don’t give up! You can recover your health if you persist.

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Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating. For example, you might eat only between 8 AM and 6 PM, or you might fast for two full nonconsecutive days a week. There are a lot of variations.

The benefits: The idea is to improve your health by mimicking ancient eating schedules instead of always having food available. Reportedly, you can increase your mental clarity, burn fat and lose weight, feel better overall and improve your health to avoid diseases.

Ahh! You picked up on that “reportedly” I dropped in the last paragraph. But this doesn’t mean that I disagree with intermittent fasting in general.

I believe that some people may get substantial benefits from intermittent fasting. I’ve read the research and rationales behind it, and much of it does make sense.

Where I can’t entirely agree is that any diet, food, supplement, or treatment could work for “everyone.” As an example, in my practice, I see mainly severe chronic cases. These people are physically very stressed. They are very toxic and usually have some immune suppression. Intermittent fasting would be about the worst thing that many of these people could do to themselves.

“Testing,” a Weird New Idea?

I can’t think of any single food, supplement, or treatment that would be appropriate for every patient I’ve had in the past year. Well, except for maybe clean water.  Every person is unique in many ways and needs different solutions.

When I make this statement to people, they often ask, “But, how would you be able to tell who would benefit and who would not?” This confusion shows how foreign the concept of TESTING is to most people. If you could accurately test someone to determine what foods, supplements, diets, and treatments would be effective and safe for them—why would anyone make any decisions without testing first?

Intermittent Fasting Test: Could You Benefit?

One method of testing is to observe clues shown by the body. This method is crude, and there are much better ways to test, but try it out!

  • Do you get shaky or irritable if hungry?
  • Do you get out of breath climbing stairs?
  • Are you fatigued in the afternoons?
  • Do you have trouble getting or staying asleep?
  • Do you have stiff or painful joints?
  • Do you have fluid retention?
  • Do your ears ring?

If you have several of these symptoms, intermittent fasting might not be a good thing for you to do. More accurate testing could determine what diet would be ineffective for you and precisely what WOULD work to improve your health.

Medicine’s Failure to Test

When medical doctors treat patients with chronic illness, they test to diagnose but don’t test to determine causes. Not knowing the cause, the doctor must follow a fixed treatment protocol for that diagnosis and often only treat symptoms. The result is often a lessening of the symptoms but no solution to the actual problem. The undiscovered cause of their conditions or diseases may continue to deteriorate their health, and the patient may suffer from chronic health conditions for the rest of their lives.

“One Accurate Measurement is Worth a Thousand Expert Opinions”

—Admiral Grace Hopper

The practice of medicine relies on the doctor’s opinion as the primary method of deciding what is wrong with the patient and what treatment would be effective. This is so true that it’s normal to seek a second opinion to see if you can get more than one doctor to agree on your treatment.

My long experience is that many—maybe most—people are so used to this medical guessing that they’ll shrug and say, “So what’s the problem with opinions?” The problem is that an opinion is really a guess.

Doctors have been practicing this way for so long that we think it’s normal. But what other profession could get away with this approach? Would you need a “second opinion” on the engineering of a bridge or skyscraper or the design of your car? These and almost all other professions rely on accurate measurements and proven methods based on scientific and engineering principles that consistently get results.

Engineers do not guess. Neither do carpenters, chefs, pilots, accountants, or carpet installers.

Professionals are expected to “know their stuff” and get a predictable, effective result. Except for doctors! (Well, and, maybe philosophers, sports bookies, and politicians.)

The Takeaway:

Everyone’s body is different.

Your genetics, damage from illnesses and injuries, the diet you were raised on, your preferences, your environment, available food, your drug history, stress history, personality, and many more variables are all different from other individuals.

So, there is no “universal” diet, food, lifestyle, supplement, drug, or treatment that would get good results for everyone. Far, far from it!

The ability to test any of the above items before recommending them to an individual is not only of critical importance, it is obvious.

Because: the only other option would be to GUESS.

Watch this video to see one example of advanced testing.

 

Find Out How to Get Help with your Health:

Would you please take five minutes to fill out a health assessment survey and send it to me? I’ll call you for a phone consult and discuss what could be done about your health. It’s complimentary, no strings attached. Either I can help you or point you in the right direction to get help. Don’t give up! You can recover your health if you persist.

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