Childhood radiation means later danger

Imagine the relief a family must feel when their cancer-stricken child is finally given a clean bill of health.

Now, imagine how that same family must feel when, years down the road, that same child, now a grown woman, gets diagnosed with breast cancer.

It’s been known for a while now that treating childhood cancer with intensive radiation raises the risk of breast cancer, but a new study shows that even a relatively small dose of radiation can raise the risk of breast cancer much later in life (an average of 23 years later, according to the study).

The other new finding is a big one–this study shows for the first time how radiation for cancer compares to other risk factors like the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations.

Overall, women at the age of 50 have about a four percent chance of having breast cancer. Women who had been exposed to high levels of radiation to treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma had a 31 percent chance. Women who carry the BRCA1 mutation have a 30 percent chance.

Low-level radiation more than doubled the expected risk and was comparable to the ten percent risk rate that women with the BRCA2 mutation have.

Of course, these new findings unfortunately have wrong-minded researchers scrambling to point out the importance of early cancer screening for girls who have been exposed to radiation for cancer. You know, screenings like the mammograms that also increase cancer risk.

Making a choice for cancer treatment doesn’t have to mean rolling the dice for your future. If you were exposed to radiation as a child, or if someone important in your life was, later cancer screening doesn’t have to mean raising your risk.

Search “cancer” in the free archives at www.wrightnewsletter.com for pages and pages of alternatives.

P.S. Radiation isn’t the only danger to navigate after a cancer diagnosis. There are all kinds of myths–taken as truth by the mainstream–that could be downright deadly. Click here to learn the truth that could save your life from our affiliate The Douglass Report.

Sources:
“ASCO: Early RT Hikes Risk for Breast Cancer,” Medpage Today (medpagetoday.com)