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Opting for Preventative Mastectomy

From the Show: Staying Well
Summary: Is the chance of cancer worth losing both of your breasts?
Air Date: 5/23/13
Duration: 10
Host: Melanie Cole, MS
Guest Bio: Sara Gottfried, OB/GYN, MD

saragottfriedDr. Sara Gottfried, MD, is a Harvard-trained integrative physician who helps women feel at home in their bodies again, regardless of age. She is the creator of "Mission Ignition: Sex Drive," a wildly popular online course for women to re-ignite their sex drive using her 3-Step Gottfried Protocol for natural hormone balancing–utilizing nutraceuticals, botanicals, and when needed, bio-identical hormones; along with little-known esoteric practices.

After graduating from the physician-scientist training program at Harvard Medical School and MIT, Dr. Sara completed her residency at the University of California at San Francisco, where she still serves on the faculty. She is board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology, a teacher of the adjunct faculty at Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and a mentor to medical students in her integrative medicine practice, The Gottfried Center for Organic Gynecology in Berkeley, California. She teaches natural hormone balancing to both women and other clinicians, and is a popular guest on TV, radio and at health, medical and yoga conferences.

Dr. Sara is the author of the forthcoming book, The Hormone Cure (Simon & Schuster, 2013). She has been featured in Yoga Journal, Glamour, Diablo and Natural Health magazines. She is also the medical expert featured in the award-winning film on women and yoga, YogaWoman. Dr. Sara is quick to add, "My method is not one-size-fits-all. My mission is to help women feel sexy, vital and balanced from their cells to their soul."

Opting for Preventative Mastectomy
The number of women who are opting for preventive mastectomies has drastically increased in recent years. Angelina Jolie announced that she underwent a double mastectomy after learning she had a mutation of the BRCA1 gene, which raises the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

Why are so many women opting for surgery when survival rates for breast cancer are extremely high when caught at early stages?

The operation doesn't give a 100% guarantee so, is it worth losing both of your breasts?

Harvard Integrative Physician Sara Gottfried, OB/GYN, MD, speaks about the BRCA gene testing, the removal and reconstruction procedures, and the other options that women have besides surgery.