Everyone knows that dogs’ noses are very powerful. It turns out that they are so powerful that dogs can actually detect cancer, sometimes before it will be detectable via sophisticated medical equipment! Researchers first tested this with lung cancer, dogs were able to detect this using people’s breath.
Actually, dogs are ninety-nine percent accurate in detecting lung cancer in this way. They also can detect breast cancer at eighty-eight percent. The next cancer that researchers are trying to see if dogs can detect will be ovarian cancer.
Dogs are trained and tested using breath samples kept in identical boxes. Some of the dogs really love doing this, so to keep them from flinging the sample boxes around the lab the researchers weigh the boxes down with bits of concrete.
For the tests, four dogs were used and they had to accurately identify the correct sample thirty times. This testing is being done by Michael McCulloch of the Pine Street Foundation, partnered with the University of Maine.
You may be thinking, this is kind of strange, why bother? The thing is, dogs can detect cancers very early, and early detection is key to survival. At present, the survival rate for ovarian cancer is only five years. The earlier they catch ovarian cancer the better your chances of survival. Unfortunately, women don’t have many symptoms of ovarian cancer until it has progressed and is hard to treat.
Sometimes traditional medical tests can find ovarian cancer early, but not always. That’s where the dogs come in. If a god can find it earlier than a test can, then the patient has a better chance of successful treatment.
Ovarian cancer is not the only cancer that is best caught early of course. Lung cancer also responds to treatment better if caught early. Some types of breast cancers can be aggressive and grow quickly. These are hard to treat once they are advanced. Mammmography helps us find breast cancer earlier than we would with a self-exam, but dogs may be able to find the cancers even before that point.
There are herbal supplements that may help cancer patients, but there are no herbal remedies for cancer. You have to go to the doctor, and be sure to let them know what supplements you are using or considering. Your doctor and oncologist need to know this because some herbs can interact with chemotherapy treatments.
Refer to more pieces of work written by this very author covering items such as plastic wine glasses and unbreakable wine glass.