There are lots of good reasons to try and follow a healthier diet. You lose weight. You feel

good, but the main reason to live a longer, happy, productive life. Sounds good, right?

And though it may sound deceptively easy, the devil is in the details. Welcome to the Nutrition

Facts podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Brecker.

Today we ask the question, who should get mammograms? Some women, all women, no women?

The guidelines for mammograms have been changing. None of the authorities seem to agree.

Should women start in their 40s, 50s every year, every other year? Well, as it turns out,

most women are just being told what to do rather than being given the facts necessary to make a fully

informed decision. Here is the story. Selling cancer screening can be easy. Starts an editorial

in the journal, The National Cancer Institute, induced fear by exaggerating risk, then offer hope

by exaggerating the benefit of screening and don't mention harms caused by the screening.

This ploy is especially easy with cancer. No diagnosis is more dreaded. And we all know the

mantra, early detection is the best protection. Doubt it and someone may suggest you need your

head examined and they are not exaggerating. Screening can lead to important benefits,

but it can also lead to important harms. And so that's the big challenge. Convang the counterintuitive

idea that screening doesn't always help and can even be harmful. Yet, surveys have shown that

most people believe that cancer screening is almost always a good idea and few believe harm

is impossible. In patient education materials passing references to potential harms may

deceptively be buried under a euphoria of benefits. The cancer screening test that has been

most carefully studied is mammograms. In the past 50 years, more than 600,000 women have

participated in 10 randomized trials. Given this extraordinary research effort, it's ironic that

mammograms contain to be one of the most contentious issues within the medical community.

...