10/22/2026
Beyond the Pink Ribbon: What Breast Cancer Awareness Should Really Be About
Why I don't support pink ribbons and why we need to talk a lot more about breast health, prevention and informed choice.
Every October, everything turns pink. Pink ribbons. Pink products. Pink fundraisers. “Race for the Cure.” “Shop for the Cure.” “Support the Cause.”
Now, before anyone misunderstands what I’m saying, I am not against women wearing pink. For a breast cancer survivor, someone currently going through treatment, or someone who has lost a mother, sister, daughter or friend, that ribbon may mean something very personal. I respect that.
What I question is, at what point did awareness of this disease become a propagandized marketing machine? There is even a name for companies wrapping products in pink while using breast cancer as a marketing strategy: Pinkwashing.
The documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc. explores this in depth, and I strongly encourage women to watch it. It asks something we should all be asking: Who benefits from all this pink? The patient? Research? The company? And how much of the purchase actually goes where consumers assume it goes?
Some businesses receive enormous goodwill because they put a pink ribbon on a package. But what if that company is selling products containing ingredients people may reasonably want to avoid?
Healthcare in the United States is not just healthcare. It is also an enormous industry. Pharmaceutical companies are businesses. Hospitals are businesses. Medical-device companies are businesses. Insurance companies are businesses. There is nothing automatically sinister about a business making money. I am not anti-doctor/hospital/insurance. They all have an important place. But incentives matter.
When a healthcare system earns enormous amounts of money diagnosing, treating and managing chronic disease, I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask how financially motivated is that system to make people need less healthcare? That doesn’t mean your doctor wants you sick, but a system built primarily around treatment naturally pours enormous resources into better drugs, better diagnostics, better surgeries and better treatment technologies.
I wrote to supposed “charities” like the American Cancer Society years ago to ask where my money was going. At the time, over 90% was going to “administrative fees” The rest went to Pharmaceutical companies, advertising and so-called “educational” campaigns. Billion dollar companies certainly don’t need my money.
I asked how much goes to alternative therapy research and was told they would have to get back to me with that information—that was several years ago and I am still waiting on a reply. Why are natural and integrative approaches so often treated like an afterthought instead of something worth seriously investigating?
There are also deeper questions. Mammography uses low-dose ionizing radiation. If ionizing radiation itself is a known carcinogenic exposure, I think women have every right to ask about cumulative exposure, how often screening is truly necessary for their individual risk, and when other imaging such as ultrasound or MRI may be appropriate. I also think women deserve accurate information about the benefits and limitations of every option—including thermography—so they can make an informed decision rather than simply being told what to do.
But here is the question I keep coming back to:
What are we doing to help women avoid getting breast cancer in the first place?
After decades of awareness campaigns, screening, research and treatment, I think we have to ask how much progress we are really making where it matters most. In 2000, 178,555 invasive breast cancers were reported among women in the CDC cancer-registry data available at that time. By 2023, the latest year with finalized incidence data, 288,494 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. The older registry system did not yet capture the entire U.S. population, so those two numbers are not a perfect one-to-one comparison, but they certainly do not suggest that breast cancer has become a small or disappearing problem.
The death numbers are even easier to compare. In 2000, 41,872 women died from breast cancer in the United States. In 2024, the latest year with completed mortality data, 43,402 women died.
On the financial side, a national study estimated that breast-cancer screening alone costs approximately $11 billion every year and the CDC reports that breast cancer treatment cost approximately $29.8 billion in 2020 alone. That means we are spending roughly $40 billion a year on screening and treatment.
So I think it is completely reasonable to ask, with billions of dollars being spent every year finding and treating breast cancer, why are nearly 300,000 women still being diagnosed and more than 40,000 women still dying from it every year?
I am glad we have better treatments. I am glad more women survive. But shouldn’t one of our greatest measures of success also be fewer women developing breast cancer in the first place?
That is why I keep coming back to prevention. Not simply finding disease sooner. Not simply treating it better.
Why is it happening—and what can we do before it happens? Detection is not prevention.
Conventional medicine is very good at looking for disease. Testing. Scanning. Diagnosing. Biopsies. Prescribing. Operating. But prevention asks a very different question. Instead of asking: “How early can we find disease?” “What can we do to help support health before disease ever develops?”
Conventional medicine does talk about some preventive factors: Exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, limiting alcohol and not smoking are routinely mentioned. But look at where most of the medical system’s attention, money and infrastructure go. It is overwhelmingly built around what happens after something is wrong.
Imagine if your mechanic only cared about your car after the engine blew. No oil changes. No maintenance. No checking the fluids. No paying attention to that funny noise. Just, “Come back when the engine fails.” We would think that was ridiculous. Yet when it comes to health, we often accept a very similar model.
How much attention is given to environmental exposures? Hormonal exposures? Metabolic health? Nutrition? Physical activity? Endocrine-disrupting chemicals? Stress levels? Detox pathways? Lifestyle?
When I talk about supporting breast health, I don’t just want to talk about one body part. The breast is connected to every other physical body part and those physical parts are also connected to our mental, emotional, energetic, spiritual and relational parts. We cannot look at one part by itself. And if any of those parts feel unsafe, true healing is inhibited.
We don’t need more awareness. We need better education.
Women are aware of breast cancer. What I want is breast health awareness.
I want women understanding how their bodies work. I want women understanding modifiable risk factors. I want environmental health taken seriously. I want nutrition discussed before disease. I want natural and integrative health researched seriously. I want women asking questions about medications instead of assuming everything prescribed is risk-free. I want companies being held accountable for what they sell while using women’s health as a marketing tool.
I want people looking at the whole person instead of waiting for one body part to become diseased. And most of all I want fewer women getting breast cancer, not simply more women finding it earlier. Not simply more treatments. Not simply more survivors. Fewer diagnoses!
What can support breast health?
What does our diet look like? Are we living primarily on ultra-processed foods, sugar, refined carbohydrates and food-like products while expecting the body to keep performing perfectly? Or is our focus on whole foods, vegetables, fruits, quality protein, healthy fats? Foods rich in indole 3 carbinol promote healthy estrogen metabolism by shifting breakdown products toward beneficial, protective forms (such as 2-hydroxyestrone) and lowering unwanted estrogen loads.
Move your body in ways you enjoy enough to keep doing.
Reduce unnecessary toxic exposures in personal care and cleaning products. Avoid xenoestrogens (man-made or environmental chemicals that mimic or disrupt natural estrogen in the body). I would avoid plastics, pesticides, air pollution and occupational exposures as much as possible. This is why I often recommend EWG.org as one tool for researching ingredients.
Hormonal contraceptives and menopausal hormone therapies certainly alter hormonal exposure. Combined estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives have been classified by IARC as carcinogenic to humans.
How are you supporting your nervous system? Does your body feel safe to repair itself?
Support your liver and detoxification pathways. The liver is instrumental in filtering mutated hormones from the body and that debris is carried out through detoxification pathways such as the lymphatic system. Keeping these working at optimal levels contribute to better health.
I also look at the emotional and relational side of breast health. In the mind-body work I use, the breasts can bring up themes around love, nurturing, giving, receiving and feeling supported. So I believe it's worth asking: Do I feel loved and supported? Am I constantly giving without receiving? Are there relationships where I need stronger boundaries? These questions aren't about blaming emotions for disease. They're about looking at the whole person instead of pretending our emotional and relational lives have nothing to do with our overall wellbeing.
Breast health also means knowing your own body. What is normal for you? Does something suddenly feel different? A new lump? Thickening? Skin changes? Dimpling? Ni**le changes? Unexpected discharge? A change in shape?
It is not about becoming afraid of everything. It is about becoming curious. Your body communicates. Pay attention.
So this October, don’t stop at the ribbon. Look deeper. Ask questions. Connect the clues. And become an active participant in your own health.
If you’d like help taking a whole-person look at your own health—physical, nutritional, lifestyle, stress and other patterns that may deserve attention—you’re welcome to reach out to me. Sometimes the first step is simply having someone help you connect the clues and determine where to begin.
Your health deserves more than awareness. It deserves your attention.
