Tag : x-ray

Everyone seems to agree that prevention of disease is critically important, but most of what doctors do under the heading of preventive care is not prevention, it’s really just early diagnosis.

Pap smears and mammograms don’t prevent breast and cervical cancer; they help us diagnose them early. Prostate exams, chest x-rays, and your annual physical don’t prevent disease, they help us find it early. It is possible not to have a disease, but still be weak, tired, and overweight, while robust good health means being fast, strong, lean, smart, and sexy.

But fast, strong, lean, smart, and sexy pretty much define optimal health, and optimal health requires you and your doctor working together to change your lifestyle, enhance your diet and supplements, move your hormones back to a robust youthful level, and boost your immune system. This is the direction I think medicine should be moving.

We have known for years that exposure to x-rays increases the risk of cancer. Because America does more x-ray imaging than any other country on the planet, researchers have looked closely at the impact of medical x-ray studies on cancer incidence.

The best current estimates are that between two and 3% of all of the cancers in America are caused by medical imaging studies. According to the American Cancer Society, there were about 1.4 million new cancers diagnosed in the US last year. That means that last year alone, roughly 40,000 Americans got cancer due to their x-ray