Supplemental Imaging
WHY Infrared Mammography aka Thermography?
Breast cancer is a very real health threat. Here are the statistics.
- About 1 in 8 U.S. women (about 13%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime.
- An estimate from the American Cancer Society predicts that 297,790 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed among American women in 2023. In addition, 43,700 women are also expected to die from breast cancer this year.
- About 2,710 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in men in 2023. A man’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 833.
- Death rates have been steady in women under 50 since 2007, but have continued to drop in women over 50. The overall death rate from breast cancer decreased by 1% per year from 2013 to 2018. These decreases are thought to be the result of treatment advances and earlier detection through screening.
- For women in the U.S., breast cancer death rates are higher than those for any other cancer, besides lung cancer.
- https://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics
Breast cancer screening is important, but using traditional mammograms comes with problems, not the least of which is the incidence of false positive readings. This source said the false positive rate is as high as 12.3%! https://www.breastcancer.org/research-news/false-positives-may-lead-to-screening-delays Thermograms eliminate the stress and anxiety that comes with a false positive reading.
Supplemental Wellness has a state-of-the-art Infrared Mammography (also known as Thermography) breast cancer detection system. Partnered with Therma-Scan Reference Laboratory, you will have the most experienced and accomplished providers of medical thermology in the world. Visit their website at www.thermascan.com
How Does It Work?
Thermography works with heat signatures. Look at the photos to your right. The top photo is a normal thermogram. There are bright red spots just above the collar bone. Those are used as reference temperatures. You can see that the colors in the breast tissue are cool green or blue. Also, the breasts are similar on each side.
The photo below is that of an invasive cancer. The blood vessels that feed cancer cannot constrict, so they show up bright red. They show up particularly well when a "cold challenge" is used to highlight them, as is explained below. A thermogram done right, can pick up potential cancers 5 to 8 years BEFORE they become the situation you see on the bottom photo.
Look at this Comparison
These are the screening options that are currently available. As you can see, we can pick up potential cancers while they are still very tiny, about the size of a grain of rice. For the Screening MRI and X-ray Mammogram, they pick up calcium deposits in the tissues that happen after the cancer has begun to grow. At this point, it is difficult, if not impossible, to support the body to the point of healing itself. And that doesn't even address the number of times cancers are missed altogether. A change in heat signature can not be missed.
What's the process?
At Supplemental Wellness, a special room dedicated to performing thermograms was custom built. Look carefully and you can see the FLIR infrared camera and the little purple mat on the floor. As the patient, you stand on the purple mat, and the camera is about five feet away in front of you. NO compression, NO touching, NO RADIATION! The person taking the images stand behind the computer. You simply put your arms up and turn from side to side as the images are taken.
Do you see the big bowl on the stand in the back? The bowl contains very cold water. After a 10 minute cooling off period, three images are taken of your normal state. You then put your hands in the bowl for 1 minute. The cold water causes a total body constriction of the blood vessels. Remember we said that vessels feeding cancer cannot constrict? After 1 minute, you dry your hands quickly and three "post cold" images are taken to pick up any vessels that can't constrict.
The images are immediately sent to ThermaScan for processing. This can take anywhere from 3 days to 4 weeks, depending on the time of year. They get really busy in the fall. Breast Cancer Awareness is in October, so there is a flood of therms done. All of the images are personally reviewed by Dr Phillip Hoekstra, PhD. He has more experience reading thermography images than anyone in the world.
