Christina Applegate famously was diagnosed at a very early stage of breast cancer. And God bless her, ever since then, she has become a warrior crusader for women to get screened and take care of themselves to help prevent breast cancer ever since then.
Recently, she says that she firmly believes that having the MRI that detected her early stage breast cancer saved her life. And she wishes that this expensive detection test were more readily available to women. Especially women with a high risk of developing breast cancer, who have it in their family or who have been genetically tested and determined to have the markers that make them a higher risk.
Christina has also opened her own nonprofit organization which helps at risk women get these types of expensive tests, and helps them to determine what the right diets and lifestyles are for them to help prevent getting cancer as well.
Now, on the subject of MRI’s and other breast cancer detection tests like mammograms, there is some debate about what good they do. Some women firmly believe that these tests are lifesavers. But there is an opposition to that way of thinking. In fact, some people believe that there is too much testing, and that the radioactivity that comes from these testing actually can have an additive effect that leads to higher cancer rates, effectively being an added risk for developing breast cancer.
It all depends on what you believe after you’ve done your home work. It also depends of course on your personal background, what friends and relatives you’ve had that have had experiences with breast cancer, and also your personal risk level of developing breast cancer (which is often determined, at least in part, by whether women on the female side of your family have had it).
