Tuesday December 15, 2009, 9:27 pm
Well of course....that's why they wanted my friend to sign a waiver when she went in for one. It's also why she walked out without having the CT scan done.

Tuesday December 15, 2009, 9:59 pm
How scary; sometimes you feel as if you are damned if you do or damned if you don't...

Tuesday December 15, 2009, 10:39 pm
Earlier I have submitted a related article..but so far there is no perfect evidence to prove that the CT scan radiation does really cause cancer.

Tuesday December 15, 2009, 11:05 pm
Noted thankyou

Tuesday December 15, 2009, 11:55 pm
There's no hard evidence that radiation from CT scans increases cancer risk at all really. All of the evidence for the idea that CT scans cause cancer is based on comparing exposure data with that of Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and estimated radiation doses they received at various distances from ground zero. Trying to deduce cancer risk from CT scans from atomic bomb survivor data is flawed for several reasons. First of all, most of the atomic bombs survivors probably drank contaminated water and ate contaminated food, so they received doses of radiation far higher than the x-ray and gamma ray exposure from the initial burst. Second, many of these survivors were also likely exposed to other carcinogens such as chemical carcinogens from smoke and fires burning after the bomb blast.

Also, there are even some studies that suggest small amounts of radiation may be good for us. in Ramsir, Iran, many inhabitants are exposed to natural background radiation levels of 130 mSv per year (due to natural spas in the area with high concentrations of radium). That's over 70 times higher than the average background dose in the United States. Given this, we would expect to see higher than average cancer risks among people living in Ramsir, Iran. But we don't. Their risk is no higher than the average risk of people living in areas with 70x less radiation.

So for every study that suggests that such and such number of people will die from radiation received during a CT scan, we must remember that there are plenty of other studies that suggest that the amount of radiation necessary to significantly increase cancer risk may be much higher than we think it is.

Now that doesn't mean everyone should go out and get unnecessary CT scans of course. Prudence is the best policy. But it does mean researchers should stop publishing these kinds of studies based on flawed historical data from atomic bomb victims, just to make a name for themselves. And it means the media should stop eating up this kind of fear based reporting that causes people who have had CT scans to sit there and worry, when in fact, there is no hard evidence that the radiation dose from CT scans increases cancer risk at all.

Tuesday December 15, 2009, 11:58 pm
Even if CT scanning does increase cancer risk, those who have had CT scans should not worry. The individual risk is extremely small, especially when you take into consideration the average background risk of getting cancer, which is about 1 in 3. So any added risk, if there is any added risk at all, from a CT scan is really quite minuscule.

Probably, sitting around stressing over the idea that the CT scan you got is going to give you cancer, is more likely to give you cancer than the CT scan is. since stress is a recognized risk factor for cancer because if weakens the immune system.

Wednesday December 16, 2009, 8:51 pm
damned if you do, damned if you don't

Thursday December 17, 2009, 8:03 am
Interesting, some alternative health care professionals have suggested this in the past, and now it's finally coming to wider recognition.

Thursday December 17, 2009, 9:27 am
Great research, good article, i´ll kook in to it, thanks sooo much!

Thursday December 17, 2009, 7:20 pm
Some alternative health care practitioners also believe that low doses of radiation are actually good for. Many Native Americans make use of radon caves in Montana for example. Natural radon spas are used through the world in many countries. Even some main-stream scientists believe that low doses of radiation are healthy. There's a model for it called the radiation hormesis model. The basic idea is that low exposures to radiation "wake up" mechanisms in cells that detect damage, and cause damaged cells to destroy themselves. This is damage that might have otherwise gone undetected and resulted in cancer developing.

There are a few studies that actually support this idea that low level exposures to radiation might actually be good for us:

* The medical history of 26 workers accidentally exposed to plutonium in 1944-1945 suggests that that the plutonium exposure was actually beneficial (study too small to be of statistical significance).

* A study of 22,552 British nuclear workers who were exposed for 2 to 30 years to greater than 10 mSv found no leukemia deaths among them, which is lower than what would be expected in a random sample of that many people who had not been exposed to radiation.

* Russian plutonium workers who inhaled plutonium dust and were exposed to 800 mSv or less of radiation over a 40 year period showed significantly lower rates of lung cancer deaths than a control group that was not exposed to radiation.

* 100 years ago, it was found that guinea pigs exposed to x-ray radiation showed no evidence of disease when infected with diphtheria, whereas those who had not been exposed to the radiation died within 24 hours of being infected with diphtheria.

* A study during the Manhattan Project found that mice who ate uranium dust lived an average of 120% longer than mice who did not.

* A study on 152,000 nuclear workers who were exposed to low level doses of radiation compared to 149,000 unexposed persons working in similar conditions found that those workers who were exposed to low doses of radiation had a 48% lower cancer mortality rate then the unexposed workers.

So there is plenty of evidence to support the idea that many alternative medicine practitioners believe, and that some mainstream science also believes, that low doses of radiation are actually good for us.

Of course, above a certain threshold of exposure, there is no doubt that cancer rates rise dramatically. But that threshold is far higher than one gets from even multiple CT scans. It's quite possible that this is one of those things where a little bit is beneficial, but too much is deadly, kind of like Vitamin A is good in small doses, but too much can be deadly.

Again, this doesn't mean everyone should go out and get unnecessary CT scans because more research is needed on whether low levels of radiation actually are good for us or not. But with significant amounts of evidence supporting the idea that they are, it does mean that this study is alarmist, flawed, and not based in anything we know to certain about low doses of radiation. Lots of additional research is still needed, but just maybe, it might actually turn out that CT scan actually reduced your risk of cancer rather than raising it.

Thursday December 17, 2009, 8:30 pm
"* A study during the Manhattan Project found that mice who ate uranium dust lived an average of 120% longer than mice who did not."

Typo in there that I need to correct cause the typo changes the meaning. It should have said "120% AS LONG" not "120% LONGER". So they actually lived 20% longer.