Political Boobs

I'm so tired of those with a financial interest in pharmaceuticals, testing equipment, etc., making the decisions. The doctor who was in charge of my mother's health cost her $800-$900/month in medications versus the now $200/month with a different doctor and the same medications.

I've never been told my breast density but I'm going to ask now. I always go for my yearly mammogram, then go home and wait for my letter telling me everything is okey dokey, but that's all the information I get.

I intend on calling my GYN this week and see if I can find out my density, and I'm going to ask about MBIs.

Thank you, Darren. This video is much appreciated both by me AND my very nonpolitical boobs. :)

This is something that needs a lot more attention.

thanks for sharing..

This really needs to be widely shared. In my late 50's, I passed two mammograms with flying colors but fortunately also had an MRI which caught the cancer that would have killed me.

If you double click on the video it will open to the Youtube page were I got it. look under the video for the word embed this will give you the code. copy it and then open a post in Gather. use the HTML function to embed the video into your post.
Wright your own Boob story and share it on Gather. then share to Face book and Twitter. There is no reason not to duplicate this everywhere.

I would have expected the video to be on the TED site. They have amazing videos there. I totally loved the one presentation a brain scientist gave on her own stroke.

My boob story is boring except for the lucky accident of my having awesome insurance which put patient's needs and good health first. And so I did not die.

the embedding from TED is not as stable as YouTube. Boob story's are never boring :) and even though this is a womans issue it would be good to get it out to as many men as possible. There needs to be greater clarity about the health risks of a for profit driven health system.

I am alive solely because I do not have profit driven health insurance. I am covered by the military insurance program Tricare. Far too many women have died because they have private, profit driven health insurance. Well, men have died also as have children because their insurance puts profit first. I have a friend with a mass in her breast that has been growing for 5 years. Her insurance and supplemental insurance will not cover labs or tests and she can't come up with $800 for a mammogram. I am optomistic that she has a cyst. Most lumps are cysts even though women immediately panic and think cancer. Rule of thumb - if you can move the lump, is is probably a cyst. If it is rigid and you can't move it - get to a doctor fast. I had an uncle with breast cancer. You guys have boobs too you know.

Men need to know that reconstructed breasts don't look really real. They are scarred, the nipples (if any) are carved out of flesh and are tattooed, and there is no feeling since all the nerves have been severed. There is also only a thin layer of skin over the implant so it doesn't feel real. You also have to be careful in the cold. Having a slushie in your chest feels weird. Oh, and some insurances will not cover reconstruction. Should anyone you love ever have breast cancer, do not ever give even the tinest hint that what passes for a breast afterwards grosses you out.

Yeah, it's not just a women's issue! Men get breast cancer, too!

Looking at the whole market surrounding Boobs makes me feel like we as a people should look at how the market objectifies women through Boobs. The quest for the perfect breast assumes that one sizes fits all. It also seems to me that the market pushes women to objectify themselves.

There is great presser to be thin, were the latest fashion and if you can't then this is a sing of your inferiority. At the same time women are looking to be loved and respected as people and for there individuality.

So if I spend all my time making myself into an object of desire then I will naturally be admired by and object collector. Like all collectibles I will have a place until a new object replaces me.

The basic logic of this kind of dehumanizing marketing should make us cringe. But we are all in on the ugly joke every time we pick up GQ or Cosmopolitan magazine. and every time we self identify with these stupid diet adds on Gather.

For the most part, I avoid reading women's magazines. While they might have the occasional good article, they are mainly full of articles about what is wrong with you and here is what to do to fix it. I find a steady diet of that depressing.

Thanks! Featured in the Triple Name Club.

wow, exactly what i hate about US medicine and what my parents hated about it, too and why they were researchers = my stepmother had an MD but hated the american busienss of mediine and chose to do research. my parents did research in big pharma in the US and canada when there was pure research' not by pharma, but by the national insitutes of health and so on, not tied to a company. I hate us medicine because most people neve3r realize how many things doctors tell them are products of financial concersn.

let's take a different topic for a minute, then i will get back to breast screening.

a few weeks ago i looked into Vitamin D studies. The study revealed that labs set an artificially low threshold for so-called 'low Vitamin D.' The labs state that if a person has a Vitamin D level less than 30, it will register as low. In reality, this is perfectly normal and not low. Why are the studies now stating that a person in the North of the Mason Dixon cannot get enough sunshine in the winter, ever? Was that a problem for people who spent their lives outdoors in the 40s, 20s, 50s, 70s, 80s, 90s? Likely not.

I also subscribe to about 1 dozen medical alerts from JAMA , the new england journal of medicine. I read the free article provided in each one and the headlines of the other articles. In the one about vitamin D, it was revealed that most caucasians have a vitamin d level of 20 and most african americans have a level of 10. Is a leve of 20 really that problematic? no. What about 10? Yes most definitely. Diet plays a large part in this, as most milk drinkers do not have D deficiencies. Many African Americans cannot drink much dairy and this is true for most Asians. Dietary choice also plays a part. But the question we need to ask and no one I know IS asking? are these labs somehow tied to prescription D which all docs want you to take instead of milk, sunshine and OTC D? Why is this a problem now?

My father developed rickets in the 20s because my grandmother kept him indoors for the firwt few y3ears of his life, because he was delicate and could hurt his skin easily. this was before milk contained D. When he began to go outside3 at age 3 and 4 the rickets went away.

The fucking garbage that permates so much of America is always tied to the dollar.

Now back to boobs. And cancer. every Honors and AP high school anatomy student uses a college textbook that clearly states that cancer cells wander in and out of our body through out life. In many cases, these cells do not cause cancer. Other factors have to be present for cancer to take hold.

Also know that chemotherapy was considered the lat resort even 30 and 40 years ago, in 1978. Chemo has been around since the 20s and has always been highly toxic.

Western medicine, allopathic medicine, takes a drug and surgicasl approach to disease; this is especialy true in the US. A book was written not long ago about a man who had a shoulder injury (he wrote the book) and he went around the world getting medical opionion as to what to do for his shoulder. Invariably, US doctors recommended surgery; other doctoers around the world suggested PT, for example.

The drugs culture that began long before the 60s got a lot worse - not with subcultures but with the highly egotistical turf wars of american medicine. American medicine has traditionally rejected anything not mainstream, which included immune building, homoeopathic medicine and Chinese medicine, often likening all these to witchcraft.

IF a person has a suspected cancer or if something is cancerous, the old standby about chemo is just as true today as it was in the 20s or in the 70s and 80s. If the cancer doesn't kill you, the cure will. Chemo kills fast reproducing cells and all other cells in the process. Many cannot withstand the rigors of chemo and expire. Cancer treatment in Germany has shorter chemo runs and lower doses to avoid the high toxicity in the US.

If I get cancer of any type I will not do the following:

Have chemo
Have surgery.

My body hates being cut ( I have a genetic thing from my father/grandfather/uncle that my sister and her son also have of very frail skin. Respiratory and skin infedtions are risky. I was born without skin on the front of my legs and every single one of my cells is missing some protein. As long as I don't bump into furniture, and as long as I don't get pneumonia, I am fine. But any type of surgery tends to rip my tissues beyond the normal. My skin is like paper. My tolerance for any substance like beer or OTC or script is a lot lower than most people's.

We are forgetting about the immune response. Building our body's defenses through certain vitamins can really help in cases of ilness prevention and managment/cure. I take a ton of vitamin C. Linus Pauling, a Nobel winning Chemist, wrote about C and the Common Cold in 1972. IT works for me and has since that time. A few years alter, he wrote asbout Vitamin C and Cancer. The medical industry doesn't want to hear it. In his studies of terminal cancer patients - in the 70s that meant people for whom surgery was not an option due to metatstasis and that their only option was chemo and that they were given 3 months to live. That the medical industry has now twisted this medical reality to state ok it has metastized and we will treat it with chemo and you will be sick but it is your best chance - is yet another lie about the medical industry. all docs know thjis. when you grow up in a medical family, you hear the docs tell you things they wouldnt tell patients.

back to C. Paulilng's study revealed:
Some patients did die within the months they were given, but not a high percentage. All had been given a 3 month death sentence,.

Some patients' tumors had shrunk with the C regimen of up to 100 G (100,000 mg a day). Pills are usualy in 500 mg or 1,000 mg.

Some patients' tumors had disappeared completey with the C.

Pauling gave the patients up to 100 grams (100,000 mg) a day. C is water soluble. If you don't need it, you pee it. If you are ill with a cold, you need more. If you have cancer, you will not get the stomach ac hes or the cankers you might get if you are beginning C for the first time.

The cancer patients tolerated the ultra high doses of C without the expected complications.

Time for my daily C of 2 G. If I have a cold or cough, I up it to 10 G for a few days, plus dectromethorpan and it goes away.

Our bodies do not make C, even though most other animals do make their own C. If you ahve chapped lips, you are low on C. If you smoke, your body is zapping your C and you really need a ton of C.

I do not use Chapstick. C will get4 rid of chapped lips. C helps the tissues become strong. Pure orange juice is good as an addition and lemons and limes and oranges tomato3es and peppers are great to eat, too. Food is not enough.

The RDA for C is 60 mgs, which is equiv to one orange. The RDA standards. Do you know what they mean? They are not standards that make you healthy; they are standards that disease is prevented at that level; with C, that means one orange a day or a lime! will prevent scurvy, which can be fatal. Remember the limeys and early ship travel, such as the Pilgrims.

But you cannot OD on C like you can with A and E. Your body needs C to survive. One orange a day will prevent death, but 2 to 4 G of C as a regular regimen can improve tissue quality, ranging from your skin to your mouth to all your internal organs. Look at my icon and tell me C and Nivea doesn't help a 59 year old woman. I was 58 in the photo. I actually went for years without Nivea, but I have taken C regularly since 1972.

I will take C and juice all my fruits and veggies even more than I do now, if I ge3t cancer.

After all, why I should I take chemo, which will make me sick and might kill me when I have at least as good a chance to survive with juiceing and C? And I won't be sick.

Without surgery and chemo, many cancer patients do not feel symptoms until it truly is too late. In most cases where people survive and where they do not, the treatment is what causes the most pain in cancer.


So read the vitamin people and know that all practitioners in the US, and all labs and every single company with the exception of Dr. Rhodes and MBI have a buck to gain from your illness.

Welcome to the US of Captialism.

there is no money to be made in well people. Having said that we do have the power of consumerism, we can choose whet to buy and we can talk freely about what is just fascist spam

Very interesting about the vitamin C. I've had dry skin and chapped lips for much of my life. About 3 months ago, I started taking C and now my lips seldom chap. Never made the connections until this morning.

C is one of the best things for us in so many ways.

Darren, how very true. This was an excellent video and thank you for sharing it and the other one, also excellent.

in my 20s, I didn't want to take C pills, so I drank at least a quart of orange juice a day and ate salads. when I had dental work, the dentist said my tissues were excellent! when I did get sick, theraflu to sleep for 3 days minus meal time plus tons of C was what got me better from what otherwise would have been bad bronch. i have been taking daily C since the 80s and mostly fruits and veggies, usually uncooked, though in the winter, slow cooker soups.

my above comment was meant for susan. and anyone else who cares to read it

Kathryn Esplin thank you .. the more the share the more power we have.