A friend sent me this image yesterday, with the message, “From her cute lips to God’s ear.”

I smiled and sent the e-mail on to my writing partner, Leslie. But last night, as I fell asleep, I thought about the e-mail’s real message.

I asked myself, “Why do we keep looking for “Cures” in our various “wars against (name of disease here)?”

Of course we want to heal and save our moms, grandmothers, sisters and daughters from Breast Cancer, but what are we doing as a society to PREVENT Breast Cancer in the first place?

I realize that we have learned much of what to avoid, and what to embrace to remain Cancer free from the all of the past and current Cancer research. I am grateful for that research and to those who contributed ‘time, talent and treasure’ to vanquish a disease that has taken so many of our beloveds.

Maybe I’m just ready to think about the issue differently…ready to switch the problem around 180 and look at the situation as an opportunity for change. What if we women were able to refocus our intention from being ‘at war’ with a deadly enemy, to being ‘in harmony’ with our body and our planet?

Just maybe, by living in peaceful accord with our feminine cycle, and all the other natural cycles of Mother Earth, our bodies would find the balance to heal. Perhaps living in synchronicity with nature would prevent illness? I don’t know, but living in alignment with your natural cycle can’t hurt, and being at war with Mother Nature has proven to be a failed strategy.

I vote for a peaceful, gentle approach to appreciating the wonder of the female cycle and just maybe we could reach that state of balance before our little lady “Grows Boobs”.

Think of just one thing you can do for your self to live within your feminine cycle.

Just one, it is a start.

Live gently on this earth and treat your body with love and understanding.

Be as kind to your self as you are to others.

Love yourself and appreciate the miracle of your body, mind and spirit. Laugh, feel your inner joy, if only for a moment, it is a start.

I would love to credit the creative team who developed this thought-provoking image, but the e-mail did not include a credit line. If some one knows, please let me know so I can thank them for their creativity in my Blog.

My best hope for the little girl in the photo that she grows up with healthy boobs, a vibrantly healthy body and the spirit to be an Inconvenient Woman.

©2012 An Inconvenient Woman. All Rights Reserved.

Please take the time to visit the Sister Study web site.

The Sister Study is the only long-term study of women aged 35-74 whose sister had breast cancer.  It is a national study to learn how environment and genes affect the chances of getting breast cancer.  A total of 50,000 women will join the effort to find the causes of breast cancer

WHO CAN JOIN THE SISTER STUDY?

You may be eligible to join the Sister Study if —

• Your sister, related to you by blood, had breast cancer.
• You are between the ages of 35 and 74.
• You have never had breast cancer yourself.
• You are a woman living in the U.S. or Puerto Rico.

SISTERS ARE STILL NEEDED!

As we approach our goal of enrolling 50,000 diverse sisters, we want to make sure that groups not yet as well represented among participants have an opportunity to join. Unfortunately, this means turning away some women who are already very well represented in the study group. Caucasian women ages 35-64 with more than a high school degree will no longer be able to enroll, but can help the Sister Study in other ways.  This group is now very well represented among our current participants

We still need women from the following groups to enroll in the Sister Study:

• African Americans, Latinas, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans between ages 35-74
• Caucasian women between the ages of 65-74 or with a high school degree or les

CAN YOU JOIN NOW?

If you need help determining whether you can join at this time, please call our toll free number 1-877-4SISTER or CLICK HERE to answer the screening questions at the Sister Study web site.

You can be a part of this landmark research effort to find the causes of breast cancer.

Join the Sister Study for your daughters, nieces,

granddaughters, and future generations!

Visit the Sister Study Homepage

©2012 An Inconvenient Woman. All Rights Reserved.

Women who take combined hormone therapy for about five years have a higher risk of abnormal mammograms and breast biopsies.

This, in turn, may decrease the effectiveness of these methods of detecting breast cancer, according to a new study published in the Feb. 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

“Women need to be aware of the risks, and it’s not just risk of increased breast cancer. It’s a risk of possibly having abnormal mammograms and really being tortured by them,” said Dr. Kristin Byrne, chief of breast imaging at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved with the study. “It’s a whole slew of things they need to be aware of before making a decision to go on hormone therapy.”

Study lead author Dr. Rowan Chlebowski, a medical oncologist with the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said that for women with severe menopausal symptoms, the new findings “won’t be an issue.”

“It [hormone-replacement therapy] is safer than we thought maybe a year and a half ago,” he said. “Certainly, no one is going to brush off a breast biopsy. But for women trying to decide whether to start on hormone therapy or who want to see if their symptoms get better, they have to think about whether they would mind having a call back” for a mammogram.

The landmark Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study found that combined estrogen plus progestin hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increased the risk of breast cancer. One recent study indicated that the risk was greater for lobular breast cancer than ductal carcinoma malignancy.

Since 2003, there has been a decline in breast cancer incidence that coincided with a decline in HRT use for menopausal symptoms. Nevertheless, Chlebowski pointed out, “a lot of people are still using hormone therapy.”

For the new study, the authors looked at 16,608 women who participated in the WHI from 1993 to 1998. The women were randomly assigned to receive combined hormone replacement therapy (estrogen plus progesterone) or a placebo.

Mammograms and breast exams were conducted annually and biopsies performed, if indicated.

More than one in 10 women had otherwise avoidable mammogram abnormalities (an increase of 11 percent), while one out of 25 women had otherwise avoidable breast biopsies (an increase of 4 percent), after taking the hormone therapy for five years.

Ten percent of women in the HRT group had to have a biopsy, compared to 6.1 percent in the placebo group. Yet the biopsies only detected 14.8 percent of cancers in the HRT group, compared with 19.6 percent in the placebo group.

“Your breasts become denser [with HRT], and we all know that mammography isn’t as sensitive for the detection of breast cancer in women with dense breasts,” Byrne explained.

The increase in abnormal mammograms persisted for at least 12 months even after discontinuing hormone therapy, the study found.

For the medical community, Chlebowski said, this finding “focuses attention that diagnosis is hindered. We have additional imaging modalities, and maybe we should evaluate them to see if we can get rid of this hindrance or delay in diagnosis. It hasn’t been a factor for attention before, but it probably should be.”

Chlebowski has consulted for several pharmaceutical companies.

A prepared statement from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which makes the hormonal product Prempro, said: “While the [study] authors report a link between an increase in abnormal mammograms and breast density among women taking combined estrogen plus progestin, this does not mean they are at an increased risk for breast cancer.

“The data used in this sub-analysis were taken from the combined estrogen plus progestin database of the WHI study and does not reflect the experience of the majority of women taking hormone therapy — those who take estrogen-alone,” the statement concluded.

Sources: Forbes.com

The Women’s Health Initiative —  U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

©2012 An Inconvenient Woman. All Rights Reserved.