My breasts are dense. I know this because I hear it every time someone examines me, squashes my boobs into a mammogram machine, slides a gooey ultrasound wand up and down and all around my ta tas, or makes me dangle my girls through the slings of an MRI machine. Dense. So dense. Unbelievably dense.

Young women have dense breasts. That's just how it goes. And that's exactly why we youngsters -- meaning any of us under the age of 40 -- must take control of our own breast care. Mammograms are not the best for us -- that's why the imaging test isn't recommended for women under 40. They're not effective because they often don't pick up masses wound up in dense tissue. A mammogram missed my breast cancer a few years back. Ultrasound picked it up, though -- thankfully. But my first line of defense -- and the method that turned up my pea-sized hard tumor -- is self examination. That means once each month, girls, you must check your breasts. Here's how.

Schedule your do-it-yourself boob massage for one week following your menstrual cycle -- fewer hormonal tissue changes this way -- and do this: Recline your body or stand in the shower like I did that fateful day I found my pea. Put your right arm up over your head. Use the fingertips on your left hand to feel your right breast in its entirety. Then switch arms and hands and take care of your left breast. Note what you feel and remember it. Because when you check again a month later, you'll try to detect changes. If you find any, get yourself to the doctor. Because you are young, you may be dismissed -- I was -- but you just stand tall and firm and sure of yourself and demand that you be referred to a specialist, someone who will combine a mammogram with ultrasound, and maybe MRI too. Let your gut guide you. If it tells you something is wrong, it probably is. Pursue your health, my friends. Because no one else will.

Young women, dense as they can be, get breast cancer. I did. You might too. So get to work on saving your life. Now.

For more about young women and breast cancer, visit the Young Survival Coalition here.

Like most women I know, I schedule my annual and semi-annual exams when it works with my schedule. I know that a midday appointment at the dentist's office will always start late, so I make those appointments early in the day. And, I don't want to see the gynocologist on the morning of my anniversary, you know?

But, according to I'm Not Obsessed, there are certain times of the day (or month) that are best for certain appointments. For example:

• Mammograms should be done during your period or the week after.
  
  
• Schedule your colonoscopy first thing in the morning.
  
  
• See your dentist for a cleaning two weeks after your period.

Wondering why? Find out here.

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It's unfortunate that the small medical insurance copay cost of a mammogram is causing some women to forgo it. According to a recent study of Medicare customers, though, this is what is happening in many cases.

The $10 amount was the smallest amount found that would cause a woman (an older woman in most cases) to avoid the potentially life-saving test.

In the study, the mammogram screening rate was about eight percent lower when there was any type of customer payment involved when compared to those women having the test who have the entire cost provided for through full coverage insurance.

If you're 40 and have never had a mammogram, what's holding you back? For your health's sake, hopefully it's not a small, out-of-pocket expense.

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Did you know a mole doesn't need to be large or raised to be dangerous? How about the fact that just one alcoholic drink a day increases breast cancer risk by 10 percent? Aware of this one: Gaining more than 11 pounds after age 18 ups your risk for all types of cancer? Gain 20 pounds after age 18, ladies, and your risk of breast cancer is 40 percent higher. I wonder if pregnancy weight gain counts since I gained 50 and then 42 pounds and then got breast cancer 18 months later.

Here are four more shockers: (1) Frequent drivers are more likely to get skin cancer on the left sides of their bodies. (2) Too many imaging exams, like mammograms, are harmful to your health. (3) While breast cancer rates have dropped significantly for some populations of women, they haven't budged at all for Asian-Americans and Native Americans. (4) Living with a smoker pops your lung cancer risk up by 23 percent and spikes your breast cancer risk by 68 percent.

Ouch. These numbers numbers and facts sting a bit, don't they? Good thing we have some say in whether or not they come to haunt us. We can check out moles and take them to the dermatologist for annual screenings. We can limit our cocktails, lose weight, and wear sunscreen on our left sides. We can avoid smoking situations and urge those who live with others to take their butts outdoors. Clearly, it's up to us to take protective health action whenever possible. What will you do in light of these seven cancer considerations?

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According to this article from HealthDay, the interpretation of diagnostic (not screening) mammograms can vary, depending on the radiologist looking at them. To make sure that you get the most accurate interpretation of the results, health experts recommend that you:

• have your mammogram done at a location that has a breast-imaging specialist, or at least where the radiologist reads a significant number of mammograms a year.
• visit the same facility every time you have a mammogram, or at the very least bring your past films with you. Your radiologist needs to read the results on a continuum, or by looking at past images.
• have your mammogram done at a facility where there is more than one radiologist, so that, if necessary, consultation is possible.

Interestingly, experience doesn't seem to make a radiologist more accurate. Though experienced doctors were less likely to biopsy a false positive, they weren't as good as newer radiologists at picking up the cancer in the first place.

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Although mammograms are not the most comfortable exams known to women, they have saved quite a few lives due to being the cause of early breast cancer detection. Unfortunately, though, mammogram rates have dropped in women over 40, according to the National Cancer Institute.

After decades of steady increases, the mammogram rate has declined recently, and experts put the blame on the exam itself (uncomfortable) and the social stigma that some women believe follows a mammogram.

Just like a prostate exam in a male, a mammogram in a female may not be the most pleasant experience, but it's easily worth it if anything is detected and caught early. Do you agree?

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Black women in the U.S. are somehow not seeing the annual two-percent drop in breast cancer cases every year that white women are seeing. This comes from the American Cancer Society today along with some other statistics about breast cancer.

Breast cancer diagnoses dropped at an average 3.7 percent per year during the years 2001 to 2004, but the reasons are a little muddy: many women stopped taking hormone replacement therapy, and another group stopped having mammograms. Without a mammogram, less breast cancer cases will be diagnosed, according to the report.

However, the ACS stated that over 180,000 new breast cancer cases will be diagnosed in 2007, which will result in over 40,000 people dying from the disease, including men and women.

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One of the biggest challenges in the fight against breast cancer is getting women in the doctor's office for regular mammograms. Safeway is hoping to help out with this issue by creating an $800,000 digital mobile mammography unit (a van) that will make it easier for women to access screenings. The van can do up to 30 mammograms a day and will begin traveling around the Puget Sound area next month.

This digital "mammogram-obile" isn't the first of its kind -- they're growing more and more popular as a means of encouraging women to comply with one of the best known breast cancer treatment options we have: early detection.

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Well here's some great news! Breast cancer deaths in women have taken a dive, especially among those who have the most common type of tumor. This type of breast cancer, known as a estrogen-receptor (ER) positive tumor, is diagnosed in 75% of cases. ER positive tumors respond to circulating estrogens in the blood.

In women under the age of 70, the drop has been dramatic: 38% between 1990 and 2003. Experts attribute the drop to the use of tamoxifen, which reduces the risk of reoccurence and to better use of mammography, which is more likely to detect this type of tumor. Breast cancer deaths among other age groups and tumor types appear to be falling as well.

For more about breast cancer prevention, read this article from the American Cancer Society.

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Technology took a hit today when it was discovered that once again computers can't always do it better than humans can. The latest example is how well computers recognize and diagnose abnormal mammograms -- instead of the expected idea that they might miss things a human eye would catch, computer-read mammograms actually find too much -- they increase the risk of a "false positive."

So, all kinds of poor women have undergone unnecessary biopsies, along with the horrendous anxiety and stress that goes along with waiting and wondering if you have cancer. Thanks, technology.

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Despite the fact that the number of women who should be getting mammograms (over age 40) has increased over recent years, surveys show that the number of women who actually had mammograms dropped slightly in 2005. This has health officials both concerned and a little confused, wondering why exactly this is. The most likely reason is the very fact that so many women are getting older and needing mammograms the resources and clinics are getting stretched to the max, or possibly that finances and personnel issues are causing complications.

Regardless, women are encouraged to continue to treat breast cancer as a serious risk and put mammograms at the top of their priority list, as often and their doctor recommends. And hopefully, now that this problem is out in the open, the health industry can make some moves to fix it.

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Good news for women in the fight against breast cancer -- new and better detection technology is on the horizon.

Digital mammography, which to the patient looks and feels like conventional mammography, is growing across the nation. Medical professionals are finding that this particular form of screening is better at detecting abnormalities in women under 50, young women with dense breast tissue, and premenopausal women.

Other new technologies aren't far behind. Cone Beam Breast Computed Tomography (CBBCT) takes over 300 pictures of a woman's breast, then creates a 3-D image for examination. (As an added benefit, with this test, there are no glass plates to be smashed between!) The test can also examine tissue along the rib and into the armpit area, places traditional mammography has trouble seeing.

Doctors are hopeful that this new technology will be another powerful weapon in the war on breast cancer. But, they remind us, don't wait for new high-tech equipment to arrive in your doctor's office before you get your mammogram. Women 40 and above should be screened every 1-2 years.

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Good news! Researchers are reporting that there may be a less painful, and more accurate, way to scan breast tissue for abnormalities. Called the "Cone Beam Breast Computed Tomography" scanner, this new form of x-ray is basically a fancier version of the CT scan. It takes a three-dimensional view of the breast and the surrounding tissue, even over into the armpit, all without compressing anything between cold glass plates.

So far the scanner has detected all cancers found by standard mammography, and in one case created a clearer image of a cancer that was hard to see on the mammogram. Researchers are hopeful so far, saying that although several trials are still needed before the study is complete, it looks as though the new scan can detect more tumors than the mammogram can.

If approved, this procedure would be much pricier than a mammogram, and therefore most likely reserved for those at highest risk. But regardless, I'm sure women all over the world will have their fingers crossed that the results so far hold true!

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