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Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV): Trouble On The Horizon

A quick blood test will verify that 98% of you are carrying an inactive form of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), one of several herpesviruses (human herpesvirus 4, to be exact) that can rest quietly in your body. You hope. That high percentage is confirmed by testing large populations for the presence of EBV antibodies, produced by […]

Can Your Diet Actually Prevent Breast Cancer?

An important study published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine confirmed what doctors had suspected for some time but had been unable to prove. You can definitely reduce your risk of developing invasive breast cancer by pledging to follow that Mediterranean Diet you’ve read about but never got around to taking seriously. Researchers in Spain […]

Some Good News About DCIS and Worrisome Mammograms

I’ve lost track of the number of women who’ve told me something like this: “My mammogram experience was horrible. They called me back with this get-in-here-right-away sense of urgency. I was terrified. They took lots of pictures, talked about calcifications. I had one biopsy, then had to return for another. The suspense was horrible.” And […]

What’s Your Risk? Breast Cancer in the News Again

I was pleasantly surprised to learn how much damage occurred at the Susan G. Komen Foundation in response to its astonishingly wrong-headed decision to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. Women (and smart men) around the country were rightly outraged that money earmarked for the breast cancer screening of low-income women–not for family planning or […]

Hormones and Breast Cancer

By noon on the day the story hit the news, I’d received a dozen emails from (sensibly) concerned patients asking what the study meant for them. First appearing in JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) and then picked up by the wire services and spread around the world, the article addressed phase two of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Study that was originally published in 2002.

Soy Foods and Breast Cancer

For the past several years, the advice given to breast cancer survivors by their oncologists simply didn’t make much sense. I must have heard this from dozens of women: “I was told to avoid soy because it would make the cancer worse.” They’d been told that soy “feeds” cancer, like adding gasoline to a smoldering […]

Iodine and You

You don’t see many people with goiters anymore. I remember seeing them as a kid, pointing out some poor person’s huge neck to my mother while asking, “Hey, what’s growing on that woman’s neck?” before getting an educational jab in the ribs. To see a mild goiter click here.

Breast Thermogram

Click here for the Health Tip link. We’ve had so many inquiries from women about breast thermograms during the past year that we decided to do some homework before offering it to our patients. The test’s complete name is “digital infrared thermal imaging,” or DITI. For the test, your breasts are photographed with an infrared […]

Q&A: Alcohol and Breast Cancer

Click here for the original post. Q: I wanted to ask your opinion on the recent research that shows drinking even moderately can raise a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer by 30 percent. I enjoy my nightly wine, and this new information really has me wondering. A: When you’ve been in practice as long […]