Blah, blah blah, blah, blah

Ooohhh.... more information on breast cancer risk!!! Hot damn baby, this must have the clues I need!!!

Nope. Not there.

Here they are:

Hereditary: not me

"Being obese, smoking, drinking alcohol, using birth control pills, lack of exercise, early menstruation, and certain benign breast diseases, have all been associated with an increased risk for breast cancer"

I'll take the fifth here. But I wasn't fat until after breast cancer. And I have always been known to get exercise and have never been a fan of the pill.

And then there is something about how estrogen metabolizes in your body and there is a new fancy test for this. The 2/16 alpha-hydroxyestrone ratio which can be measured in a urine test. And you can balance your ratio by eating more plants.

Finally:

"Having one or more risk factors for breast cancer doesn't necessarily mean you’ll develop the disease, but being aware of the risk factors may inspire you to take preventive steps. This could have a huge impact on your health."

So, nothing new here. Its just blah, blah blah, blah, blah.

Maybe I'm in a cynical mood this morning.

When Its Not News!

But you think it is. Yesterday I was cruising through the Health section of cnn.com, reading an article here, and another there. At the bottom of each article were links to more articles. I was reading titles, clicking, and reading some more.

I always look at the cancer one, in case they have discovered a cure and I missed it while sleeping or something. The one I saw yesterday was called "Chemotherapy Game-Changer for Stage IV Cancer". Immediately intrigued, I clicked the link and landed here.

Its looks like a lovely article on chemotherapy and stage IV cancer patients. ITS NOT! Its a paid ad or blog post or whatever.

A week or so ago, I was also cruising around the health section of cnn.com and found this article on inflammation which I found barely interesting and biased. It was titled "Chronic Inflammation is the Fuse for Cancer" and it also was an ad. And from the same website, Envita.com, which is the website for a bunch of medical centers.

I felt duped. I found a link on cnn.com and thought I was reading articles, not ads. I did some more poking around and found that it seems there are always more ads linked in among the true articles.

The third article down on the left is titled 'The Secret to Sleeping Throughout the Night". Its basically an ad as well. You will note the source - Simple Skin Care.

I don't think CNN is trying to scam us. I think the stores at the bottom are found by search engines and compiled there - which is why when you go back to the article, chances are the list is different. Its the advertisers who are trying to fool the search engines into thinking they are news and not a load of propaganda.

So the moral of the story is basically 'buyer beware'. Just because you think its news doesn't mean it is.

Ignore all the headlines

I think I spend too much time reading the headlines, especially in the category of health news. If I believed them:

• I will get the flu because it is rampant across the country
• The cure for many things can be found in some obscure arctic bacteria
• Booze is so bad for you, you could poison yourself easily.
• Pain killers are now the street drug of choice.
• Our phones are suffocating us.
• Cancer is due to back luck.
• The cure for some obscure form of cancer will be found shortly.

I am so done with all that. I am going to be healthier this year and am promising myself, I will stop  bouncing through the news headlines. We know Dr. Google doesn't know anything. So we should also assume that Dr Internet knows nothing.

Emotionally, grabbing at headlines can be very stressful. The yo-yo effect of the constant ups and downs are significant. Its sort of like scanxiety at a lesser level. I need to take more control of more levels of my life, as I have blogged about before, and this is just another one.

With bad medical diagnoses, we tend to grab at straws looking for the magic cure. Then we develop the bad habit of following anything we can find - usually ending at disappointment - and keep repeating the process because it offered us a small glimmer of hope however fleeting.

So I am going to stop reading the over-hyped headlines that offer false hope and start looking for real information. I can't live on false hopes and the ensuing roller coaster.

Blah, blah blah, blah, blah

Ooohhh.... more information on breast cancer risk!!! Hot damn baby, this must have the clues I need!!!

Nope. Not there.

Here they are:

Hereditary: not me

"Being obese, smoking, drinking alcohol, using birth control pills, lack of exercise, early menstruation, and certain benign breast diseases, have all been associated with an increased risk for breast cancer"

I'll take the fifth here. But I wasn't fat until after breast cancer. And I have always been known to get exercise and have never been a fan of the pill.

And then there is something about how estrogen metabolizes in your body and there is a new fancy test for this. The 2/16 alpha-hydroxyestrone ratio which can be measured in a urine test. And you can balance your ratio by eating more plants.

Finally:

"Having one or more risk factors for breast cancer doesn't necessarily mean you’ll develop the disease, but being aware of the risk factors may inspire you to take preventive steps. This could have a huge impact on your health."

So, nothing new here. Its just blah, blah blah, blah, blah.

Maybe I'm in a cynical mood this morning.