There is more than one choice between modern Western medicine and alternatives. There are three traditions of healing.

The Wise Woman tradition, focusing on integration and nourishment, and insisting on attention to uniqueness and holographic interconnectedness, is another choice: a new way that is also the most ancient healing way known. A way that follows a spiral path, a give-away dance of nourishment, change and self-love. “Trust yourself.”

Alternative health care practitioners usually think in the Heroic tradition: the way of the savior, a circular path of rules, punishment, and purification. “Trust me.”

AMA-approved, legal, covered-by-insurance health care practitioners are trained to think in the Scientific tradition: walking the knife edge of keen intellect, the straight line of analytical thought, measuring and repeating. Excellent for fixing broken things. “Trust my machine.”

The Scientific, Heroic, and Wise Woman traditions are ways of thinking, not ways of acting. Any practice, any technique, any substance can be used by a practitioner/helper in any of the three traditions. There are, for instance, herbalists, and midwives, and MDs in each tradition.

The practitioner and the practice are different. The same techniques, the same herbs are seen and used differently by a person thinking in Scientific, Heroic, or Wise Woman ways.

Thinking these ways does lead to a preference for certain cures. The Wise Woman helper frequently nourishes with herbs and words. The Heroic savior lays down the law to clean up your act fast. The Scientific technician is most at ease with laboratory tests and repeatable, predictable, reliable drugs. But still, the practices do not conclusively identify the practitioner as being in a particular tradition.

The intent, the thought behind the technique points to the tradition: scientific fixing, heroic elimination, or wise womanly digestion and integration.

You contain some aspects of each tradition. And the three traditions are not limited to the realm of healing. The Scientific, Heroic, and Wise Woman ways of thinking are found in politics, legal systems, religions, psychologies, teaching styles, economics. As the Wise Woman way becomes more clearly identified, it opens the way to an integrated, whole, sacred, peaceful global village, interactive with Gaia, mother, earth. As each discipline spins anew its wise woman thread, we reweave the web of interconnectedness with all beings.

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Susun Weed
PO Box 64
Woodstock, NY 12498
Fax: 1-845-246-8081
www.susunweed.com
www.ashtreepublishing.com

Women find their own breast cancers most of the time (90% of the time according to one English study).

Monthly breast self-exam (or breast self-massage) provides early detection at lower cost, with no danger - and more pleasure - than yearly screening mammograms.

Most breast cancers (80%) are slow growing, taking between 42 and 300 days to double in size. A yearly mammogram could find these cancers 8-16 months before they could be felt, but this “early detection” does little to improve the already excellent longevity of women with slow-growing, non-metastasized breast cancers.

The 20% of breast cancers that are fast growing are the trouble-makers. They can double in size in 21 days. Monthly breast self-exams are much more likely to find these aggressive cancers than are yearly mammograms. (A 21-day doubling cancer will be visible on a mammogram only six weeks before it can be felt.) If you massage or examine your breasts even six times a year, you can take action on fast-growing lumps. If you rely on mammograms exclusively, the cancer could grow undetected for months.

In a recent look at 60,000 breast cancer diagnoses in the United States, 67% were found by the woman or her doctor - and over half of these were not visible on a mammogram - while 33% were discovered by mammogram. (This may seem like a substantial number of cancers found by mammography, but the majority of them were in situ cancers, a controversial type of cancer that may - but often does not - progress to invasive cancer.)

Green blessings!

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Susun Weed
PO Box 64
Woodstock, NY 12498

www.susunweed.com

www.ashtreepublishing.com

All mammograms are x-rays

A mammogram uses radioactive rays to “see” breast tissues. X-rays are known to cause DNA damage in breast cells.

A diagnostic mammogram is used when a woman or her practitioner feels a lump and wants to see it. (Sonograms - a non-radioactive test - can be used instead.) Most diagnostic mammograms are not one x-ray, but a series of x-rays.

A screening mammogram is done on a healthy woman to determine if there are unsuspected signs of cancer, such as a shadow or micro-calcifications. A screening mammogram is not one x-ray, but a series of x-rays, usually two per breast, four in all.

Mammograms distract us from the need for societal commitment to true prevention

Many of the cancers found by mammographic screening are in situ cancers. Women with in situ cancers rarely die from them. With or without early detection and treatment, 93% survive more than five years. When in situ breast cancers are found by mammogram, treated, and added to the statistical base, breast cancer cure rates and longevity statistics improve. No wonder mammography is praised. It has done what decades of research into cures for breast cancer have failed to do: make it appear that there is some progress in stemming the tide of breast cancer. But finding and treating an ever-increasing number of breast cancers isn’t real progress; committing to reducing chemical and radioactive pollution is.

Yearly screening mammograms aren’t cost effective to society nor are they safe environmentally

The Southern Medical Journal reports that the cost effectiveness (defined as the number of dollars spent so one person can live one year longer) of mammograms for women under 55 is $82,000. A recent analysis found that it cost $195,000 to detect one breast cancer using screening mammograms.
Dr. Charles Wright of Vancouver General Hospital estimates that the cost of saving one life by mass screening is $1.25 million (Canadian).

The mammography industry could gross $1 billion per year if every woman aged 40-49 was screened yearly. Less than 10% of all breast cancers occur in women that age.

Choosing screening mammograms means I choose to contribute to the stream of low-level radioactive waste leaving hospitals. Will my mammogram increase my daughter’s risk of developing breast cancer by increasing the amount of radioactivity in her environment? What is the real cost of this choice?

Green Blessings.

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Visit Susun Weed at: www.susunweed.com and www.ashtreepublishing.com

Mammographic screening increases risk of breast cancer mortality in premenopausal women. A Canadian study of 90,000 women (published in Lancet, November 1992) showed a 36-52% increase in mortality from breast cancer in women 40-49 who had annual mammograms.

The Swedish Malmo Screening Trial (as reported in The British Medical Journal, 1988) which also included tens of thousands of women, showed 29% greater mortality from breast cancer in women under 55 who were regularly screened with mammograms. (Studies of women 50-59 showed no difference in breast cancer mortality between women who did and women who did not have regular screening mammograms.)

Critics of these studies claim that newer mammographic equipment uses less radiation. This belies the point that mammograms are inherently dangerous. Orthodox medicine tells me again and again to overlook the harm that it has done to women and promises a future where the machines will be better calibrated and safer. But what of the harm that has been, and is now, done?

Mammographic screening is not and never will be a safe way to find breast cancer. Although safer after menopause than before, mammography is never without risk entirely.

Why I haven’t had a baseline mammogram: The idea behind having a baseline mammogram -that there will be a norm to refer back to - is erroneous. Breast tissues are constantly changing as menstrual, ovulatory, pregnancy, lactational, and menopausal hormones change. Science, the constant straight line, meets woman, the ever-changing spiral. And younger breast tissue is especially sensitive to radiation. According to J. W. Gofman (M.D., Ph.D., authority on dangers of radiation exposure), a 35-year-old woman whose normal risk of developing breast cancer is 1 in 1500 increases it to 1 in 660 by exposing herself to the radiation of a baseline mammogram. The National Women’s Health Network says baseline mammograms should be abolished.

If you’ve already had a baseline mammogram and now feel worried, make yourself a soup of lentils (to restore damaged DNA to normalcy), seaweed (to remove radioactive isotopes), and carrots (to support your immune system). Season with miso and tamari (to stop the promotion of cancer cells), and thyme, rosemary, and garlic (to further strengthen the immune system). Breathe in, relax, don’t worry.

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Green Blessings.
Susun Weed PO Box 64 Woodstock, NY 12498 Fax: 1-845-246-8081 Visit Susun Weed at: www.susunweed.com and www.ashtreepublishing.com. For permission to reprint this article, contact us at: susunweed@herbshealing.com