Early-stage Breast Cancer: No Treatment IS Treatment
Lao Tze teaches us to do nothing in order to achieve more. He calls it wuwei (无为), or non-doing. In the original phrase of Chinese, it literally means ‘doing nothing’.
“In the U.S., many women with breast cancer are being massively over treated.”
“This year more than 40,000 women in the U.S. will die of breast cancer. That’s the same, give or take, as last year, and the 13 years before that.” There is a new treatment proposal from breast cancer surgeons at the University of San Francisco hospital. Current studies show that no matter how a woman is treated for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the mortality risk is 3%–similar to the average for the general population. This implies that most women with early-stage breast cancer (DCIS) don’t benefit from chemo/radiation and can skip it. Using just the medication tamoxifen, which inhibits estrogenic activity of tumors, DCIS can just be monitored biannually without further treatment.
This ultimately means that breast cancer is not a one size fits all diagnosis and that people have choices and need to be their own strong advocate for the proper path to take.
In related news, women under the age of 45 will be relieved! The American Cancer Society (ACS) recommends that women with an average risk of breast cancer should undergo regular screening mammography starting at age 45 years instead of the previous guideline of 40 years of age. This is according to the October 20, 2015 guideline update from the ACS.