Like all tissues and organs in the human body, the female breasts are multidimensional in function. Their most recognized part is as exocrine glands, producing breast milk for newborns, a process common to all mammalian species. Given the multifaceted functions of the breasts, a discussion of breast health approaches could be complex. Therefore, this article will limit our discussion to what women can do from the Ayurvedic perspective to reduce their chances of developing the most dangerous breast disease: breast cancer.

First, let’s briefly review some simple breast anatomy. Mammary glands are highly modified and specialized sebaceous glands derived from embryonic ectoderm. The adult breast comprises glandular tissue, adipose tissue (fat cells), nerves, blood vessels, and lymphatics. Anatomically, it overlies the pectoralis major muscle and is anchored to the pectoralis fascia by suspensory ligaments known as Cooper’s (not shown).

The breast contains about 15 to 25 lobes formed by “milk glands,” or lobules. Each lobule comprises hollow milk-producing acini (alveoli) and feeds into a milk duct leading to the nipples. The ducts converge near the areola, the darker area around the nipple, to form ampulla or milk storage cavities. Around the areola are small glands known as Montgomery’s, which secrete an oily substance that protects the nipples during nursing. Lymph nodes within the breast drain into the axillary lymph nodes in the armpit, the first place to which breast cancer will typically metastasize.

What Is Breast Cancer? The Western View

Cancer is fundamentally a disease of failure of regulation of tissue growth. For a normal cell to transform into a cancer cell, the genes that regulate cell growth and differentiation must be altered. A gene is a specific sequence of DNA at a particular location of a specific chromosome. Only 5-10% of breast cancers are inherited; the vast majority are due to sporadic, acquired mutations Yarlesac.

The affected genes are divided into two broad categories. Oncogenes are genes that promote cell growth and reproduction, and tumor suppressor genes are genes that inhibit cell division and survival. Malignant transformation can occur through the formation of abnormal oncogenes, the inappropriate over-expression of normal oncogenes, or the under-expression or complete arrest of tumor suppressor genes. Typically, changes in many genes are required to transform a normal cell into a cancer cell.

Large-scale mutations involve a deletion or gain of a portion of a chromosome. Gene amplification occurs when a cell gains many copies (often 20 or more) of a small chromosomal locus, usually containing one or more oncogenes and adjacent genetic material. Translocation occurs when two chromosomal regions become abnormally fused, often at a distinct location. Disruption of a single gene may also result from integrating genomic material from a DNA virus or retrovirus and resulting in the expression of viral oncogenes in the affected cell and its descendants, but this is not the case in breast cancer.

The transformation of normal breast cells into cancer is akin to a chain reaction caused by initial errors, compounding into more severe errors, each progressively allowing the cell to escape the controls that limit average tissue growth. This renegade-like scenario causes an undesirable survival of the fittest, where the natural forces of evolution become distorted and work against the body’s design and harmonious order. Suppose the rate of DNA damage exceeds the capacity of the cell to repair it. In that case, the accumulation of errors can overwhelm the cell and result in early senescence, apoptosis, or cancer. Once cancer has begun to develop, it uses the body’s design to serve its own destructive and invasive purposes.

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We are very excited to impart to you the seven principles of health. We are looking at what can allow you to live a vibrant, happy, fulfilling, and healthy life. Of course, any information we will share with you is purely information, not medical advice. You are, however, most welcome to go and seek your medical advice, specifically from your health professional. But this information tells about proven methods against the test of time.

So you’ve heard a lot about my health and living and the seven health principles. There are a lot of different thoughts about these principles. In general, we are talking about the health principles that matter. Sure, there might be a couple you could apply in your life, but these are essential ones you should include in your lifestyle. The whole aim of this article is to get a good appreciation of them so that you, too, can live a healthy life.

We don’t want people to be sick, and we certainly don’t want people to be taking mostly prescription drugs when they don’t have to. Now, is there any reason why we think that way? Because there are many natural health measures to prevent ailments in the first place. You can certainly take alternative health measures. For instance, you can take a look at your diet and consider what you partake of every day.

Is it toxic to your body, or is it good for you? Are you unknowingly building things or destroying things in your body? These are what the seven principles of health build upon. It gives you an idea that you can move forward positively for your body, not negatively. If you stifle your growth and the cleansing processes of your body that are naturally set up, you’re preventing yourself from being healthy.

We’re only going to touch the surface, only looking at the concept from a general point of view because there is vast information available on this topic, and there’s only so much we can share. But we’re certainly excited to talk about these things, which you can apply in your everyday life, and that’s the beauty of it. Helping you take care of yourself every day using health principles.

WHOLE FOODS

Now let’s have a look at the first one, Whole Foods. These include natural whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, herbs, and other naturally grown and unprocessed things. You can grab them off the tray or consume them without any preparation. So how is it that for several millennia, people have looked after themselves and not gotten into the same troubles that we are in now?

It seems like we’ve gotten a lot sicker and a lot frailer. That is because of the processed foods that we have been consuming nowadays. We’ve upset our balance of the natural foods that we should be partaking in. If you look at today’s Western diet, we can see that we have way too much sugar and saturated fats, and we substitute water for sodas or colas. It’s just not right because our whole body is being thrown out of what it’s used to.

Our bodies expect some natural foods or sustenance to build and repair themselves, and it’s not getting it most of the time. So if our bodies are getting something different from whole foods, we would be expecting different results, of course. That is why people get a lot sicker nowadays than those who lived many centuries ago. The processed food revolution of the last hundred years has changed our health and brought it downhill.

Let’s go back and embrace the principle of natural, healthy food the way we used to do many, many years ago. People will not experience the health problems we are experiencing today because they haven’t been laden with chemicals or impurities in their bodies; we could look at whole foods as real eye-openers. This is one of the basic principles of good health, just like taking fruits alone, with their healing properties and ability to provide energy and vitality to our bodies.

It is just a matter of taking in fruits, which will help boost our energy to keep us healthy and stable. We won’t have to worry that much about viruses, bacteria, and other harmful agents that will enter our bodies because they will be removed fairly quickly. Vegetables are good food sources to strengthen our bodies and keep us strong and healthy. That’s especially true if you consume low GI, such as sweet potatoes, brown rice, beetroots, carrots, etc. They will help strengthen our bodies.

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I have been a health insurance broker for over a decade. Every day, I read more and more “horror” stories posted on the Internet regarding health insurance companies not paying claims, refusing to cover specific illnesses, and physicians not getting reimbursed for medical services. Unfortunately, insurance companies are driven by profits, not people (albeit they need people). If the insurance company can find a legal reason not to pay a claim, chances are they will find it, and you, the consumer, will suffer.

However, Most people fail to realize that there are very few “loopholes” in an insurance policy that give the insurance company an unfair advantage over the consumer. In fact, insurance companies go to great lengths to detail the limitations of their coverage by giving the policyholders 10-days (a 10-day free look period) to review their policy. Unfortunately, most people put their insurance cards in their wallets and place their policy in a drawer or filing cabinet during their 10-day free look. It usually isn’t until they receive a “denial” letter from the insurance company that they take their policy out to really read through it.

Most people who buy their own health insurance rely heavily on the insurance agent selling the policy to explain the plan’s coverage and benefits. This being the case, many individuals who purchase their own health insurance plan can tell you very little about their plan, other than what they pay in premiums and how much they have to pay to satisfy their deductible. For many consumers, purchasing a health insurance policy on their own can be an enormous undertaking. Purchasing a health insurance policy is not like buying a car.

The buyer knows that the engine and transmission are standard and that power windows are optional. A health insurance plan is much more ambiguous. It is often tough for the consumer to determine what type of coverage is standard and what other benefits are optional. In my opinion, this is the primary reason that most policyholders don’t realize that they do not have coverage for a specific medical treatment until they receive a large bill from the hospital stating that “benefits were denied.

Sure, we all complain about insurance companies, but we do know that they serve a “necessary evil.” And, even though purchasing health insurance may be a frustrating, daunting, and time-consuming task, there are certain things that you can do as a consumer to ensure that you are purchasing the type of health insurance coverage you really need at a fair price. Dealing with small business owners and the self-employed market, I have realized that it is tough for people to distinguish between the type of health insurance coverage they “want” and the benefits they really “need.

Recently, I have read various comments on different Blogs advocating health plans that offer 100% coverage (no deductible and no coinsurance) and, although I agree that those types of plans have a great “curb appeal,” I can tell you from personal experience that these plans are not for everyone. Do 100% health plans offer the policy holder greater peace of mind? Probably. But is a 100% health insurance plan something that most consumers really need?

Probably not! In my professional opinion, when you purchase a health insurance plan, you must achieve a balance between four important variables; wants, needs, risk and price. Just like you would do if you were purchasing options for a new car, you have to weigh all these variables before you spend your money. If you are healthy, take no medications and rarely go to the doctor, do you really need a 100% plan with a $5 co-payment for prescription drugs if it costs you 300 dollars more a month?

Is it worth $200 more a month to have a $250 deductible and a $20 brand name/$10 generic Rx co-pay versus an 80/20 plan with a $2,500 deductible that also offers a $20 brand name/$10generic co-pay after you pay a once a year $100 Rx deductible? Wouldn’t the 80/20 plan still offer you adequate coverage? Don’t you think it would be better to put that extra $200 ($2,400 per year) in your bank account, just in case you may have to pay your $2,500 deductible or buy a $12 Amoxicillin prescription? Isn’t it wiser to keep your hard-earned money rather than pay higher premiums to an insurance company?

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Today, healthcare fraud is all over the news. There undoubtedly is Fraud in health care. The same applies to every business or endeavor touched by human hands, e.g., banking, credit, insurance, politics, etc. There is no question that healthcare providers who abuse their position and our trust to steal are a problem. So are those from other professions who do the same. Why does healthcare fraud appear to get the ‘lion’s share of attention?

Could it be that it is the perfect vehicle to drive agendas for divergent groups where taxpayers, healthcare consumers, and providers are dupes in a healthcare fraud shell game operated with ‘sleight-of-hand’ precision? Please take a closer look, and one finds this is no game of chance. Taxpayers, consumers, and providers always lose because the problem with healthcare fraud is not just the Fraud. Still, our government and insurers use the fraud problem to further agendas. At the same time, they fail to be accountable and take responsibility for a fraud problem they facilitate and allow to flourish.

1. Astronomical Cost Estimates

What better way to report on Fraud than to tout fraud cost estimates, e.g.,

– “Fraud perpetrated against public and private health plans costs between $72 and $220 billion annually, increasing the cost of medical care and health insurance and undermining public trust in our health care system… It is no longer a secret that Fraud represents one of the fastest-growing and most costly forms of crime in America today… We pay these costs as taxpayers and through higher health insurance premiums… We must be proactive in combating healthcare fraud and abuse… We must also ensure law enforcement has the tools to deter, detect, and punish health care fraud.” [Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE), 10/28/09 press release]

– The General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that Fraud in healthcare ranges from $60 billion to $600 billion per year – or anywhere between 3% and 10% of the $2 trillion healthcare budget. [Health Care Finance News reports, 10/2/09] The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress.

– The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) reports over $54 billion is stolen every year in scams designed to stick our insurance companies and us with fraudulent and illegal medical charges. [NHCAA, website] The NCAA was created and is funded by health insurance companies.

Unfortunately, the reliability of the purported estimates is dubious at best. Insurers, state and federal agencies, and others may gather fraud data related to their missions, where the kind, quality, and volume of data compiled varies widely. David Hyman, professor of Law at the University of Maryland, tells us that the widely disseminated estimates of the incidence of healthcare fraud and abuse (assumed to be 10% of total spending) lack any empirical foundation at all; the little we do know about health care fraud and abuse is dwarfed by what we don’t know and what we know that is not so. [The Cato Journal, 3/22/02]

2. Health Care Standards

The laws & rules governing health care – vary from state to state and from payor to payor – are extensive and confusing for providers and others to understand as they are written in legalese and not plain speak.

Providers use specific codes to report conditions treated (ICD-9) and services rendered (CPT-4 and HCPCS). These codes are used when seeking compensation from payors for patient services. Although created universally to facilitate accurate reporting to reflect providers’ services, many insurers instruct providers to report codes based on what the insurer’s computer editing programs recognize – not what the provider rendered. Further, practice-building consultants instruct providers on what codes to write to get paid – in some cases, regulations do not accurately reflect the provider’s service.

Consumers know what services they receive from their doctor or another provider. Still, they may not know what those billing codes or service descriptors mean in explaining benefits acquired from insurers. This lack of understanding may result in consumers moving on without understanding what the regulations mean or in some believing they were improperly billed. The multitude of insurance plans available today, with varying levels of coverage, add a wild card to the equation when services are denied for non-coverage – especially if it is Medicare that denotes non-covered services as not medically necessary.

3. Proactively addressing the healthcare fraud problem

The government and insurers do very little to proactively address the problem with tangible activities that will detect inappropriate claims before they are paid. Indeed, payors of health care claims proclaim to operate a payment system based on trust that providers bill accurately for services rendered. They can not review every claim before payment because the reimbursement system would shut down. They claim to use sophisticated.

Computer programs to look for errors and patterns in claims have increased pre-and post-payment audits of selected providers to detect Fraud and have created consortiums and task forces consisting of law enforcers and insurance investigators to study the problem and share fraud information. However, for the most part, this activity deals with activity after the claim is paid and has little bearing on the proactive detection of Fraud.

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With all the shouting about America’s healthcare crisis, many are probably finding it difficult to concentrate, much less understand the cause of the problems confronting us. I find myself dismayed at the tone of the discussion (though I know it—people are scared) as well as bemused that anyone would presume themselves sufficiently qualified to understand how to improve our health care system best simply because they’ve encountered it when people who’ve spent entire careers studying it (and I don’t mean politicians)

They aren’t sure what to do themselves. Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that if he had an hour to save the world, he’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only 5 minutes solving it. Our healthcare system is far more complex than most who offer solutions admit or recognize. Unless we focus most of our efforts on defining its problems and thoroughly understanding their causes, any changes we make will as likely make them worse as they are better.

Though I’ve worked in the American health care system as a physician since 1992 and have seven year’s worth of experience as an administrative director of primary care, I don’t consider myself qualified to thoroughly evaluate the viability of most of the suggestions I’ve heard for improving our health care system. I do think. However, I can at least contribute to the discussion by describing some of its troubles, taking reasonable guesses at their causes, and outlining some general principles that should be applied to solve them.

THE PROBLEM OF COST

No one disputes that healthcare spending in the U.S. has been rising dramatically. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), healthcare spending is projected to reach $8,160 per person per year by the end of 2009, compared to $356 per person per year in 1970. This increase occurred roughly 2.4% faster than the increase in GDP over the same period. Though GDP varies from year to year and is, therefore, an imperfect

Way to assess a rise in health care costs in comparison to other expenditures from one year to the next, we can still conclude from this data that over the last 40 years, the percentage of our national income (personal, business, and governmental) we’ve spent on health care has been rising. Despite what most assume, this may or may not be bad. It all depends on two things: why spending on health care has been increasing relative to our GDP and how much value we’ve been getting for each dollar we spend.

WHY HAS HEALTH CARE BECOME SO COSTLY?

This is a harder question to answer than many would believe. The rise in the cost of health care (on average, 8.1% per year from 1970 to 2009, calculated from the data above) has exceeded the increase in inflation (4.4% on average over that same period), so we can’t attribute the increased cost to inflation alone. Healthcare expenditures are closely associated with a country’s GDP (the wealthier the nation, the more it spends on healthcare). Yet, even in this, the United States remains an outlier (figure 3).

Is it because of spending on health care for people over the age of 75 (five times what we spend on people between 25 and 34)? In a word, no. Studies show this demographic trend explains only a small percentage of health expenditure growth. Is it because of the monstrous profits the health insurance companies are raking in? Probably not. It isn’t easy to know for certain as not all insurance companies are publicly traded and, therefore, have balance sheets available for public review. But Aetna, one of the largest

Publicly traded health insurance companies in North America reported a 2009 second-quarter profit of $346.7 million, which, if projected out, predicts a yearly profit of around $1.3 billion from the approximately 19 million people they insure. If we assume their profit margin is average for their industry (even if untrue, it’s unlikely to be orders of magnitude different from the average), the total profit for all private health insurance companies in America,

Which insured 202 million people (2nd bullet point) in 2007, which would come to approximately $13 billion annually. Total healthcare expenditures in 2007 were $2.2 trillion (see Table 1, page 3), which yields a private healthcare industry profit of approximately 0.6% of total healthcare costs (though this analysis mixes data from different years, it can perhaps be permitted as the numbers aren’t likely other by any order of magnitude).

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