Thermography Heat Imaging
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SAFE, PAINLESS BREAST SCREENING
D.I.T.I. - Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging
Safe Breast Cancer Screening Test Your Doctor Isn’t Going To Tell You About:
Please read all about it, below:
BREAST SCREENINGS
NOW BEING OFFERED AT OUR
OFFICE
● No
Painful Compression or acupuncture
● No Radiation Exposure
● Protects Implants from Rupture
● FDA Approved Breast Screening
● Appropriate for Women of all Ages
● Over 97% accurate in the Early Detection
of
Breast Cancer

A woman
does not have to be able to have
ovulation, nor does she need to be in menopause, suffer anxiety or to have
received cancer treatment to benefit from Thermography. Our special
infrared camera measures heat variations (without radiation) of the entire chest area, detecting
potential problems 8-10 years earlier than traditional screening methods. It
takes many years for a tumor to grow. Detect it early enough so you can DO
something about it, nutritionally, hormonally and by reducing
inflammation
Please call
us at 954-742-440 to schedule your appt.
or email davidtippie@anti-agingcliniccpc.com

Safe Breast Cancer Screening Test Your Doctor
Isn’t Going To Tell You About:
You may not know it, but there’s
a tool available right now – today -- to help you identify the conditions
and diseases that could be growing inside you, symptom-less and seemingly
harmless … for the moment.
If you’re a woman concerned about
breast cancer -- and what woman isn’t? – this technology could quite
literally save your breasts, and your life.
Your body has an amazing capacity
for self-healing.
When something goes awry with the
normal functioning of your body, it will try to heal itself through natural
processes. If those processes fail, symptoms will develop. This is the point
at which most people realize they need help – when symptoms appear which
affect their lives, or even threaten them. But what if you could get a
heads-up that your body was going through some abnormal changes an entire
decade before discernible symptoms develop – well before your life is in
potential danger?
Unfortunately, conventional
medicine is stubbornly holding on to old ideas of cancer detection and
treatment, no matter how ineffective it’s been proven to be. Breast cancer
detection methods used by the mainstream medical community include
mammography, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI's), and PET scans.
Education and awareness of
better, less risky and more effective options for detecting breast cancer
are woefully deficient, but as you will learn, they do exist.
Health officials recommend that
all women over 40 get a mammogram every one to two years, yet there is no
solid evidence that mammograms save lives, and the benefits of mammograms
are controversial at best.
Meanwhile, the health hazards of
mammography have been well established. The routine practice of taking four
films of each breast annually results in approximately 1 rad (radiation
absorbed dose) exposure, which is about 1,000 times greater than that from a
chest x-ray.
John Gofman, M.D., Ph.D. – a
nuclear physicist and a medical doctor, and one of the leading experts in
the world on the dangers of radiation – presents compelling evidence in his
book, Radiation from Medical Procedures in the Pathogenesis of Cancer and
Ischemic Heart Disease, reveal that over 50 percent of the death-rate from cancer
is in fact induced by x-rays.
X-rays and other classes of
ionizing radiation have been, for decades, a proven cause of virtually all
types of biological mutations. When such mutations are not cell-lethal, they
endure and accumulate with each additional exposure to x-rays or other
ionizing radiation.
X-rays are also an established
cause of genomic instability, often a characteristic of the most aggressive
cancers.
Additionally, radiation risks are
about four times greater for the 1 to 2 percent of women who are silent
carriers of the A-T (ataxia-telangiectasia) gene, which by some estimates
accounts for up to 20 percent of all breast cancers diagnosed annually.
When everything is taken into
account, reducing exposure to medical radiation such as unnecessary
mammograms would likely reduce mortality rates.
The practice of screening
mammography itself poses significant and cumulative risks of breast cancer,
especially for premenopausal women. Making matters even worse, false
diagnoses of breast cancer are very common – as high as 89 percent – leading
many women to be unnecessarily and harmfully treated by mastectomy, more
radiation, or chemotherapy.
There are instances where
mammography may be warranted. But the fact remains that there are other
technologies that are proven to be more effective, less expensive, and
completely harmless, that can save far more lives.
Now, imagine being able to look
inside yourself and be able to get as much as 10 years warning that
something is about to develop. What would you do with that information? How
would it change your life?
Breast Thermography: An Invaluable Tool in Early Breast Cancer Detection:
The best researched use of
thermal imaging to date has been in breast cancer detection. For three
decades, over 250,000 women have been studied, some of them for up to 12
years.
A critical difference between
Thermography versus mammography is the ability to detect problems early
enough to use preventive measures, rather than detecting disease at a stage
where treatment is imminently required.
Thermography for breast
abnormalities has an average sensitivity and specificity of 90 percent. The
thermal map of a woman’s breast is as individual as her fingerprint.
Confirmed results of multi-year
studies show that:
A suspicious finding via
Thermography is the single most important indicator of high risk for breast
cancer – it is eight times more indicative than a first order family history
of the disease.
A consistently abnormal
thermogram translates to a 22 times higher risk of developing breast cancer.
An over 60 percent increased
survival rate is attained when Thermography is used with other breast health
monitoring methods (self-exam, physician visits, and mammography).
An astounding 95 percent of
early stage breast cancers are diagnosed when Thermography is used in a
multi-modal approach to detection and treatment.
Thermography can also detect
inflammatory breast cancer, a type of cancer that does not develop as lumps
or masses in your breast. IBC is a rare but aggressive form of the disease
that accounts for one to five percent of all breast cancers in the U.S.
Inflammatory breast cancer cells block lymph vessels in the skin of your
breast. This type of cancer grows rapidly and often spreads to other organs
in your body. In addition to lumps and breast cancer, thermal imaging can
detect other breast abnormalities like fibrocystic breast disease and
mastitis.
In order to make optimal use of
thermal imaging, a woman initially receives two scans, about three to four
months apart. The reason for this is because active cancerous masses
typically double in size and heat at 100 day intervals.
If no abnormalities are suspected
with the first two scans, thereafter, an annual scan is considered
sufficient to reveal ongoing changes in heat patterns, alerting to possible
areas of concern.
Thermograms can be especially
useful for younger women, since 23 percent of all breast cancers occur in
women under the age of 49.5 Breast cancer in younger women is more
aggressive and has lower survival rates, so an annual thermogram – starting
with a baseline scan at around age 20 – coupled with regular self-exams and
breast health checkups is a very smart way to go.
Thermograms are ideal for all
women and particularly those who:
cannot tolerate radiation
are under age 40
have dense, fibrocystic or
large breasts
have had implants or reduction
surgery
are on hormone replacement
therapy
are pre-menopausal, pregnant
or nursing
So, Why the Push for Screening Mammograms?
It’s important to make the
distinction between screening and diagnostic mammograms. Diagnostic
mammograms are given in situations in which a breast mass or other
suspicious symptom has been detected and requires further investigation.
Screening mammograms are those given to presumably healthy women in order to
check for changes or lumps in the breast that have not been found through
manual examination.
According to Barbara Brenner,
Executive Director of the San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Action advocacy
group and herself a breast cancer survivor: “The United States’ public
campaign to eradicate breast cancer has not focused on prevention, but
largely on efforts that promote mammography screening.”
This Is Called Pink Profiteering
The push for women over 40 to
have regular mammogram screenings has taken on a life of its own (think pink
ribbon campaigns). It is on some level simply the thing to do – it’s in
vogue, in other words.
Everyone can get behind a
movement purporting to help women detect breast cancer, right?
It’s a worthy cause and an image
enhancer, no matter the product or business. In fact, everything from vacuum
cleaners to yogurt is promoted with pink ribbons each October, the official
‘Breast Cancer Awareness Month.’ And in another twist on the pink ribbon
marketing phenomenon, certain major cosmetic companies slap pink ribbon
replicas on products that contain toxic chemicals suspected of causing
cancer, among other illnesses.
A loose estimate of the money the
medical establishment rakes in on mammograms:
$100 average cost per screening
x 65 million U.S. women age 40
and over
= $6.5 billion dollars per year
Add to that a few million $1,000+
biopsies and it becomes clear that annual Mammography screenings for women
40 and older is at least a $10 billion dollar per year industry.
Mammography – What Every Woman Must Know
1. Mammograms do not prevent
breast cancer – they detect it once you have it (and not 100 percent of the
time).
2. Contrary to what you’ve been
led to believe by PR campaigns promoting yearly mammograms, screening
mammography has not been proven to increase breast cancer survival rates to
a degree sufficient to outweigh the risks associated with the procedure.
This is especially true for women 40-49 years of age.
In fact, in 2007 the American
College of Physicians produced a set of detailed guidelines for screening
mammography among younger women which encourages doctors toward a careful
assessment of each woman’s breast cancer risks, as well as discussion with
patients about the risks and benefits of screening mammography.
3. Mammography uses ionizing
radiation, a known cancer-causing agent which has a cumulative effect on
your body. The practice of annual mammograms, which involves taking four
films of each breast, delivers about one rad (radiation absorbed dose)
exposure.
If you’re premenopausal your
breast is more sensitive to radiation, and each one rad exposure can
increase your breast cancer risk by about one percent. In 10-years of
screening, you can accumulate a 10 percent increased risk for each breast.
4. Mechanical compression of your
breast – as well as biopsy – can dislocate and spread existing malignant
cells. This occurs when the small blood vessels that support a cancer are
ruptured. Think about it: medical students are taught to handle breasts
gently during examination so as not to spread a possible existing cancer.
Now contrast that with what happens to your breast during a mammogram.
5. The quality of a mammography
screening depends on several factors: the age and condition of the
equipment, the skill of the technician who performs the exam and the
radiologist who reads the images.
6. A percentage of mammogram
results present false negatives, meaning that cancer is present but goes
undetected.
7. A percentage of mammogram
results also present false positives – the mammogram detects something in
your breast, a biopsy is performed, and there is no cancer present.
In fact, up to 75 percent of
biopsies performed as a result of a mammogram finding reveal benign
conditions. And while biopsies are a relatively simple procedure, they are
frightening and stressful, and can result in scarring and disfigurement. In
the U.S. alone, it is estimated that the cumulative risk for a false
positive result after 10 mammograms is nearly 50 percent. And the risk of
enduring an unnecessary biopsy is approximately 20 percent.
8. Many women under the age of 50
have dense breast tissue, which makes mammogram images especially difficult
to read. The combination of exposure to radiation and false positives due to
dense breast tissue in women in this age group (from about 40 years of age
to 50) indicates that mammography can do more harm than good.
9. In women over 69, the benefit
of screening mammography is essentially nonexistent.
10 According to the AMA: "Women's
preferences for a small gain in life expectancy and the potential harms of
screening should play an important role when elderly women are deciding
about screening."
11. Your best defense against
both the harmful effects of routine screening mammograms and the disease of
breast cancer is literally in your hands.
If you perform regular
breast-self exams, combined with a yearly professional manual exam and
Thermography screening, you can stay on top of your breast health. If you
notice something suspicious between yearly visits to your doctor, you’ll
want to make an appointment right away. If your physician feels it’s
warranted, you may need to undergo a diagnostic mammogram and additional
tests to investigate a suspicious lump or other finding.
Given the risk-benefit analysis
of the advisability of screening mammograms, it’s wise to question the
motives of the traditional medical establishment and organizations like the
American Cancer Society in promoting mammography to the exclusion of most
other screening devices, including breast Thermography. Ignoring the value
of Thermography as part of a multi-modal approach to early breast cancer
detection – and prevention -- is nothing short of negligent.
Cancer is the Number One Killer in the U.S.
Heart disease used to be the
leading cause of death in the U.S., but in 2002, the tide turned. Cancer
became the number one killer of Americans under the age of 85. This trend is
expected to continue, and in another ten years – by 2018 – cancer will be
the number one killer of all Americans, young and old alike.
The American Cancer Society
estimates that over 270,000 women will die of cancer in 2008 – 40,000 from
breast cancer alone.
The ACS also estimates that in
2008, 745,000 men and 692,000 women will be diagnosed with cancer. Of the
women diagnosed, over one quarter will be found to have breast cancer. If
you’re female, you have a one in eight chance of developing breast cancer
during your lifetime.
Detecting the Beginnings of Disease:
Fact:
Inflammation (which
generates heat) is the first sign – the earliest stage – of serious diseases
like arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure,
stroke, and others.
Unfortunately, the majority of
diagnostic tests are intended to find the most recent, most critical stage
of a disease process. Mammography, for example, can only tell you whether
something has already developed, not whether you’re on the path toward
developing cancer or some other disease at a later stage in life.
The good news is:
If
inflammation is discovered
through Thermography, and treated early – as opposed to the norm, which is
years later when anatomical damage has occurred -- it may prevent or inhibit
the development of further illness.
Most serious illness is
lifestyle related, not hereditary.
Inflammation can be addressed
through lifestyle changes such as diet, supplements, exercise, and stress
management
Cancer Has A
Hot Core
Since the technology of
Thermography is perfectly suited to the early detection of breast cancer in
particular, let’s begin our exploration there.
Long before you or your doctor
are able to feel a suspicious lump in your breast, and long before a mass is
detectable by traditional screening methods, there are very likely other
indicators that something is wrong.
Your body, when healthy, is
thermally symmetrical. This means that when, for example, both your breasts
are equally healthy, their blood flow and heat patterns are nearly
identical.
However, if something is going
awry inside one of your breasts, the vascular patterns between the two will
be different – in other words, asymmetrical. Thermal asymmetry can be an
indicator of disease in the making. Another sign of a potential problem is a
relatively high level of chemical and blood vessel activity in breast
tissue.
Breast masses, both pre-cancerous
and cancerous, require large amounts of nutrients to sustain growth.
Angiogenesis is the scientific term used to describe the process by which
your body forms a direct supply of blood to feed cancer cells the nutrients
they demand. This happens as a necessary step before cancer cells can grow
into tumors of size. As your body feeds the cancerous tissue, the surface
temperature of your breast rises.
Heat-Seeking Technology Gives You a TEN YEAR Warning!
Thermography, also known as
digital infrared thermal imaging, easily detects and exposes thermal
asymmetry and the irregular heat patterns which precede a conspicuous breast
lump.
The enormous benefit of breast
Thermography is that it can detect the beginnings of possible cancer cells
up to 10 years before they would be detected by any other screening method.
In stark contrast to mammography, thermal imaging is non-invasive, painless,
and utterly risk-free.
Thermography Is The Newest Old Technology!
While you may have heard of
medical Thermography only recently, the principle on which it’s based – heat
differentiation within your body as an indicator of disease – is centuries
old.
It was first noted by Hippocrates
in 480 B.C.16 It was common practice during that time for physicians to
paint a patient’s body with mud or wet clay, and then watch for which areas
dried first. Those areas were considered ‘hot,’ and were thought to be
indicators of underlying disease.
Hot Bodies Are the Key to Early
Disease Detection Hippocrates explained it this way: “Should
one part of the body be colder or hotter than the other, disease is present
in that part.”
In the 1800’s, Sir Frederick
William Herschel, a British astronomer and composer, discovered infrared
radiation. He established that ‘dark heat’ is emitted and that it behaves
like light, meaning it can be reflected and refracted under certain
conditions.
In the 1950’s, the military
adopted the use of infrared monitoring systems. During the same decade, Dr.
Ray Lawson began using a thermocouple device to look for possible breast
cancer in his patients. He discovered increased temperature patterns in
patients who later were diagnosed with breast cancer.
During early clinical use of the
technology, the only method for detecting potential health problems was by
informal observation of the images produced by the equipment.
Protocols and controls either
didn’t exist, or weren’t carefully followed by clinicians. Simple and Easy
to Understand And when, for example, a thermal image showed positive for
inflammation but no tumor was immediately found, the test result was deemed
inaccurate rather than as an early detection device for potential cancer.
The result was that Thermography received an initial bad rap by the medical
establishment.
What early thermal imaging clinicians failed to realize was:
Thermography is a functional
test which measures heat patterns created by increased vascularity – this
may be due to cancer, or it may be
inflammation without cancer.
The only way to diagnose a
cancerous tumor is through biopsy of the suspicious tissue – no screening
test can diagnose cancer, it can only point to the possibility that it
exists.
The main advantage of
Thermography over other screening tests is that it can measure and monitor
inflammation at an early stage, potentially before cancer or other
life-threatening disease gets a foothold.
Conventional Medicine Views on
Thermography Recognition by the medical establishment of the benefits of
thermal imaging has been a series of stops and starts – and more stops. In
the early 1970’s, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare declared
that Thermography was viable as a diagnostic procedure to detect breast
cancer.
In the early 80’s, the FDA gave
Thermography the thumbs up as another option in breast cancer screening.
However, for six years in the mid-1970’s, a study was conducted (the Breast
Cancer Detection and Demonstration Project) that was so poorly executed it
exacerbated lingering doubts among clinicians about the viability of thermal
imaging as a diagnostic tool.
Insurance companies, some of
which initially paid for the procedure, have since decided in masse to
refuse coverage. This is in spite of a unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court
Ruling that Thermography is a valid diagnostic test and should be a
reimbursable claim. Also in spite of the fact that the U.S. legal system
allows thermal images as evidence in court cases. Use of the technology by
both traditional and alternative healthcare practitioners is directly
proportional to insurance reimbursement.
Unholy Trinity Which Is: The AMA, Lobbyists, and the American Cancer
Society!
The AMA has successfully lobbied
against Thermography, choosing to view it as competitive to mammography
rather than as a viable alternative -- or even as a vital tool in a
multi-modal approach to early breast cancer detection.
As of now, the American Cancer
Society continues to promote only mammography, despite ample evidence
against the advisability of frequent mammograms, especially for younger
women.
The fact is that in order to find
objective information about the very real risks – and often debatable
benefits – of regular mammography screening, it’s necessary to search beyond
the traditional U.S. medical establishment for unbiased reporting.
Thermography Explanation:
Thermography uses an infrared
camera to graphically illustrate skin temperature by way of a color image.
On the image, degrees of heat appear as different colors. Your skin
temperature is affected primarily by blood flow. Standard diagnostic tests
such as mammograms, x-rays, MRI’s, ultrasounds and CAT scans are designed to
test your anatomy. By contrast, Thermography tests for physiological change
and metabolic processes. It measures the amount of body heat delivered to
your skin through cellular metabolism and your nervous system.
From the Outside In: Your Skin
Temperature As a Measure of Your Health, Each area of your skin is connected
to internal organs through a neural reflex arc via the spinal cord. That’s
how serious underlying disease often signals its presence – in the form of
skin tenderness and sensitivity to touch.
For example, if you have heart
disease, you’re apt to feel sensitivity on the skin of your neck, left arm
and left chest wall. If your appendix is inflamed or diseased, you’ll feel
skin tenderness over the site of that organ, among other symptoms. The
regulatory pattern of your skin reflects the condition of the corresponding
internal organ.
Your skin temperature patterns
are indicators of metabolic activity in different parts of your body.
Disturbances in your body’s metabolic processes appear via thermal imaging
as areas of inflammation,
degeneration and/or blockage. Left untreated, these metabolic and cellular
stresses often show up in the form of anatomical damage years later.
Thermal Images Can Reveal The Following:
Thermography detects patterns of
blood flow, vascular changes,
inflammation and asymmetries. Some very
practical areas of application include:
Possible Early breast cancer
detection.
Back thermal imaging: Thermal imaging detects
and illustrates nerve root involvement and soft tissue damage often
associated with back problems.
Thyroid thermal
imaging: Warm or cold patterns
can indicate a problem with thyroid gland function.
Dental (TMJ, cavities, gum
disease thermal imaging:. Thermography can detect
inflammation of your gums as well as
certain drainage patterns. It can point to potential problems with an
infected tooth and also the condition known as TMJ.
Carotid artery thermal
imaging:. Inflammation
(occlusion) in this artery may indicate an upcoming problem with blood clots
or stroke. Thermal imaging quickly detects an inflammatory condition.
Arthritis (osteo and
rheumatoid) thermal imaging:. The inflammation of arthritis appears as a
‘hot’ area when imaged.
Muscular-skeletal
thermal imaging:
Thermography can detect and differentiate among conditions such as pinched
nerves, muscle spasms, hairline fractures, inflammations, radiculopathy,
referred pain, etc.
“Radiculopathy” is a term used to describe conditions which have caused
damage to the nerve roots which connect the spine to the rest of the nervous
system.
Sinus thermal imaging:. Thermal imaging reveals
drainage patterns in the ethmoid sinuses into lymphatic pathways.
Nerve irritation or damage
thermal imaging: Shows up on thermal imaging as an abnormal cold pattern.
Asymmetric densities
thermal imaging: Densities in your body (growths, masses, lumps, cysts, etc.) tend to have
cold rather than hot patterns.
Thermal imaging is able to detect
asymmetrical cold patterns, and the colder the image, the bigger the density
is likely to be. Thermography, or thermal imaging, creates images called
Thermograms as pictured at the beginning. These images are what illustrate the unique heat patterns in
your body.
You Can Enjoy Pain Free & Risk Free Testing:
Thermography scans are absolutely
painless and risk-free. They involve no compression of tissue, are
non-invasive, and emit no radiation. The technology is cost effective
(prices range from about $150 for a region of interest scan up to
approximately $500 for a full-body scan) and provides instant images of
scanned areas of your body. A scan of a targeted region takes about 15
minutes and a full body scan runs about 30 minutes.
A yearly full-body scan will show
alterations in your body’s heat patterns over time, alert you to deviations,
and best of all -- give you time to pursue natural, conservative treatment
options to slow or halt potential disease processes.
Think of Thermography as
preventive medicine which can be used to detect, control and even prevent
serious illness or disease that otherwise would not be diagnosed until it is
well-advanced.
Also Thermography Can Be Seen As Biological Medicine.
Biologic = the logic of nature.
Thermographic images reveal clues about your body’s ability to balance and
normalize the state of your well-being.
Your body in its natural state is
self-healing and self-regulating. When your health is compromised,
Thermography can provide clues to what is standing in the way of your body’s
ability to heal.
What You Can Expect During Thermal Imaging Testing:
1. You will be placed in a
climate-controlled room to allow your body to cool from any external
conditions.
2. Next you’ll be placed in front
of a thermal imaging camera while the technician takes digital pictures.
(You’ll be able to see your body – represented by color – on the computer screen
during this part of the session.)
3. Your pictures will be read by
a certified Thermography clinician who will analyze both the amount of heat and the
symmetry of the heat patterns your body generates. (This process will take a
few days or weeks.)
4. Your doctor or other
healthcare specialist will sit down with you to review the report of
findings resulting from your Thermography scan. Together you will determine
next steps, which may include a personal consultation about ways in which to
reduce inflammation.
Thermal imaging sessions are
quick, non-invasive, entirely painless, and risk free. There is no need for
‘test anxiety’ at any point leading up to or during your Thermography
session.
Projection Or Future of Thermography:
To date, clinical Thermography
has been used primarily to detect and assess breast cancer, Reflex
Sympathetic Dystrophy, and pain syndromes.
Obviously, there are many other
health-related situations and conditions in which thermal imaging can be
extremely valuable. And in fact, as the use of thermal imaging continues to
gain momentum, it holds infinite promise for the detection and prevention of
serious disease.
There Has Been Little Mainstream Acknowledgement Of Thermography:
Thermal imaging technology has
been researched for 40 years. Thousands of papers have appeared in a wide
range of medical journals supporting the use of Thermography as a valid
diagnostic tool. The vast majority of papers have been presented in peer
review journals, including:
Anesthesia
Journal of the American Dental
Association
Journal of the American
Medical Association
Pain Journal
Spine Journal
Medical associations have issued
statements confirming the usefulness of Thermography as a diagnostic tool. A
few of those include the American Academy of Medical Imaging, the American
Academy of Pain Management, the American Academy of Head, Neck and Facial
Pain, and the ACA Council on Diagnostic Imaging. Thermography screening is
being used across the U.S. in a number of well-known medical settings such
as the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins,
and Tulane University.
It is also being used in
countries outside the U.S., at well-respected institutions like the
University of Copenhagen, Italy’s Verona University Hospital, the Louis
Pasteur Institute in Paris, and Israel’s Yeshiva University Medical School.
Our Mission Statement Is: Your Future Health Is In Your Hands!
The human race is growing sicker
by the year from environmental and lifestyle-related causes. The cost of
traditional healthcare continues to soar, both in terms of dollars and
quality of life issues that arise from treatment – rather than prevention --
of serious, debilitating, life-threatening illness.
The real advantage of
Thermography resides in its potential as preventive medicine. Where most
diagnostic screening technology can be thought of as life preserving,
thermal imaging stands apart in its potential to preserve wellness.
It’s the difference between
overturning your boat in shark-infested waters, life preserver in hand,
outcome unknown … and learning how to keep your boat upright so that you
never need a life preserver in the first place.