15 Comments
Oct 23Liked by Dr. Jen Gunter

“I maintain that if pregnancy were a drug it would have one hell of a black box warning.” 💯

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Thank you for this. Maybe it’s because it’s October, and because I’m awaiting biopsy for a suspicious finding from high risk screening, but I’m beginning to feel like I’m drowning in breast cancer awareness and all kinds of confusing and conflicting information about what constitutes risk — even from what I would consider respectable sources like the NYT.

I do hope you’re going to get to that post you mentioned a while ago getting into the science of “high risk breast cancer” and how that should influence individual health care decisions.

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I am working on that post, and thinking good thoughts for you as you await your results.

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Thank you for this information! Can you please comment on (or write about) the notion that we can "balance" our hormones with food? I'm a registered dietitian and keep seeing programs for women that claim to be able to "balance" their hormones with food or some kind of special diet and I know this is not true. Have you written about it before?

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I have written about it in my book Blood, but I can put something up here as well.

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I also hear that I can “heal” my hormones with food a lot, which strikes me as equally if not more problematic!

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Heal hormones -- that's a good one... as if hormones were a disease...

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Ah, but pregnancy is “natural” and contraception is “unnatural”.

In this day and agewhen maternal mortality in the US is on the rise and access to quality prenatal care and obstetric care is often spotty and difficukt to attain it is almost criminal to focus on the small negative effects or purported negative effects of highly effevtive contraceptives. But that’s how we roll here.

Having said all that the treatment for even low risk early breast cancer or DCIS (theorectically not even cancer) is disfiguring and life-altering for women. The body image issues, trauma and sexual side effects that women suffer are stunning.

And oncologists really have very little to offer. Studies about HRT after breast cancer are practically non-existant.

And like maternal mortality breast cancer seems to affect women of color more and in worse ways than white women and also very little research is geared towards that.

Leaves women between a rock and hard place with little reasonable discussion and data.

Thanks for shining a little light into this darkness.

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I've worked in health and medical communications for years as we've worked diligently to carefully communicate and educate about risk and benefits so people can make informed decisions - especially those with poor health literacy. We always used to say 'absolutely report absolute risk' and I've been to entire meetings devoted to helping people who aren't literate understand the data. I worry social media and headlines that need to drive algorithms is undoing all that hard work.

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I agree. And the media are playing a big role because scaring women is profitable.

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Always and forever grounded in science. Thank you for keeping it legit. It’s so appreciated.

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Very interesting how the studies differ. I wonder if the researchers ever study the impact of viagra the same way?

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I can tell you that Viagra and other ED drugs are offered automatically to men with GU cancers, but very little is offered to women with decreased sex drive or painful sex after cancer treatment.

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Thank you for this blog/posts Dr Gunter. Appreciate you taking your time to do this.

Do you see any value in keeping a Levonorgestrel iud for sexually active women (early 50s) who meet diagnostic criteria by FSH levels (80-100s)? And essentially 1+ yr amenorrhea in context of iud use.

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"...no one has figured out how to sell a blood-clot preventing cleanse. Yet."

I love it... such a sense of humor...

Thank you for this post. From what I'd read, I knew that the risk was small, and that these headlines are always written for shock value, & that association does not equal causation. I was also suspicious that what I'd read was not the whole story. Thanks for filling in the lacunae.

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