New information to share...about breast cancer....
By Prof. Jane Plant, PhD, CBE ¡ '
" Why I believe that giving up milk is the key
to beating breast cancer..."
Extracted from Your Life in Your Hands, by Professor Jane Plant.
I had no alternative but to die or to try to find a cure for myself. I am a
scientist - surely there was a rational explanation for this cruel illness
that affects one in 12 women in the UK ?
I had suffered the loss of one breast, and undergone radiotherapy. I was
now receiving painful chemotherapy, and had been seen by some of the
country's most eminent specialists. But, deep down, I felt certain I was
facing death. I had a loving husband, a beautiful home and two young
children to care for. I desperately wanted to live.
Anyone who has come into contact with breast cancer will know that certain
risk factors - such as increasing age, early onset of womanhood, late onset
of menopause and a family history of breast cancer - are completely out of
our control. But there are many risk factors, which we can control easily.
These 'controllable' risk factors readily translate into simple changes
that we can all make in our day-to-day lives to help prevent or treat
breast cancer. My message is that even advanced breast cancer can be
overcome because I have done it.
The first clue to understanding what was promoting my breast cancer came
when my husband Peter, who was also a scientist, arrived home from working
in China with some amazing herbal suppositories, sent by my friends and
science colleagues in China .
The suppositories were sent to me as a cure for breast cancer. And I
remember saying that this was the treatment for breast cancer in China ,
then it was little wonder that Chinese women avoided getting the disease.
Those words echoed in my mind. Why didn't Chinese women in China get breast
cancer? I had collaborated once with Chinese colleagues on a study of links
between soil chemistry and disease, and I remembered some of the
statistics.
The disease was virtually non-existent throughout the whole country. Only
one in 10,000 women in China will die from it, compared to that terrible
figure of one in 12 in Britain and the even grimmer average of one in 10
across most Western countries. It is not just a matter of China being a
more rural country, with less urban pollution. In highly urbanized Hong
Kong , the rate rises to 34 women in every 10,000 but still puts the West
to shame.
The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have similar rates. And
remember, both cities were attacked with nuclear weapons, so in addition to
the usual pollution-related cancers, one would also expect to find some
radiation-related cases, too.
The conclusion we can draw from these statistics strikes you with some
force. If a Western woman were to move to industrialized, irradiated
Hiroshima , she would slash her risk of contracting breast cancer by half.
Obviously this is absurd. It seemed obvious to me that some lifestyle
factor not related to pollution, urbanization or the environment is
seriously increasing the Western woman's chance of contracting breast
cancer.
I then discovered that whatever causes the huge differences in breast
cancer rates between oriental and Western countries, it isn't genetic.
Scientific research showed that when Chinese or Japanese people move to the
West, within one or two generations their rates of breast cancer approach
those of their host community.
The same thing happens when oriental people adopt a completely Western
lifestyle in Hong Kong . In fact, the slang name for breast cancer in China
translates as 'Rich Woman's Disease'. This is because, in China , only the
better off can afford to eat what is termed ' Hong Kong food'.
The Chinese describe all Western food, including everything from ice cream
and chocolate bars to spaghetti and feta cheese, as 'Hong Kong food',
because of its availability in the former British colony and its scarcity,
in the past, in mainland China .
So it made perfect sense to me that whatever was causing my breast cancer
and the shockingly high incidence in this country generally, it was almost
certainly something to do with our better-off, middle-class, Western
lifestyle.
There is an important point for men here, too. I have observed in my
research that much of the data about prostate cancer leads to similar
conclusions.
According to figures from the World Health Organization, the number of men
contracting prostate cancer in rural China is negligible, only 0.5 men in
every 100,000. In England , Scotland and Wales , however, this figure is 70
times higher. Like breast cancer, it is a middle-class disease that
primarily attacks the wealthier and higher socio-economic groups ¨C those
that can afford to eat rich foods.
I remember saying to my husband, 'Come on Peter, you have just come back
from China . What is it about the Chinese way of life that is so
different?'
Why don't they get breast cancer?'
We decided to utilize our joint scientific backgrounds and approach it
logically.
We examined scientific data that pointed us in the general direction of
fats in diets. Researchers had discovered in the 1980s that only l4% of
calories in the average Chinese diet were from fat, compared to almost 36%
in the West.
But the diet I had been living on for years before I contracted breast
cancer was very low in fat and high in fibre. Besides, I knew as a
scientist that fat intake in adults has not been shown to increase risk for
breast cancer in most investigations that have followed large groups of
women for up to a dozen years.
Then one day something rather special happened. Peter and I have worked
together so closely over the years that I am not sure which one of us first
said: 'The Chinese don't eat dairy produce!'
It is hard to explain to a non-scientist the sudden mental and emotional
'buzz' you get when you know you have had an important insight. It's as if
you have had a lot of pieces of a jigsaw in your mind, and suddenly, in a
few seconds, they all fall into place and the whole picture is clear.
Suddenly I recalled how many Chinese people were physically unable to
tolerate milk, how the Chinese people I had worked with had always said
that milk was only for babies, and how one of my close friends, who is of
Chinese origin, always politely turned down the cheese course at dinner
parties.
I knew of no Chinese people who lived a traditional Chinese life who ever
used cow or other dairy food to feed their babies. The tradition was to use
a wet nurse but never, ever, dairy products.
Culturally, the Chinese find our Western preoccupation with milk and milk
products very strange. I remember entertaining a large delegation of
Chinese scientists shortly after the ending of the Cultural Revolution in
the 1980s.
On advice from the Foreign Office, we had asked the caterer to provide a
pudding that contained a lot of ice cream. After inquiring what the pudding
consisted of, all of the Chinese, including their interpreter, politely but
firmly refused to eat it, and they could not be persuaded to change their
minds.
At the time we were all delighted and ate extra portions!
Milk, I discovered, is one of the most common causes of food allergies .
Over 70% of the world's population are unable to digest the milk sugar,
lactose, which has led nutritionists to believe that this is the normal
condition for adults, not some sort of deficiency.
Perhaps nature is trying to tell us that we are eating the wrong food.
Before I had breast cancer for the first time, I had eaten a lot of dairy
produce, such as skimmed milk, low-fat cheese and yoghurt. I had used it as
my main source of protein. I also ate cheap but lean minced beef, which I
now realized was probably often ground-up dairy cow.
In order to cope with the chemotherapy I received for my fifth case of
cancer, I had been eating organic yoghurts as a way of helping my digestive
tract to recover and repopulate my gut with 'good' bacteria.
Recently, I discovered that way back in 1989 yoghurt had been implicated in
ovarian cancer . Dr Daniel Cramer of Harvard University studied hundreds of
women with ovarian cancer, and had them record in detail what they normally
ate. wish I'd been made aware of his findings when he had first discovered
them.
Following Peter's and my insight into the Chinese diet, I decided to give
up not just yoghurt but all dairy produce immediately. Cheese, butter, milk
and yoghurt and anything else that contained dairy produce - it went down
the sink or in the rubbish.
It is surprising how many products, including commercial soups, biscuits
and cakes, contain some form of dairy produce. Even many proprietary brands
of margarine marketed as soya, sunflower or olive oil spreads can contain
dairy produce .
I therefore became an avid reader of the small print on food labels.
Up to this point, I had been steadfastly measuring the progress of my fifth
cancerous lump with callipers and plotting the results. Despite all the
encouraging comments and positive feedback from my doctors and nurses, my
own precise observations told me the bitter truth.
My first chemotherapy sessions had produced no effect - the lump was still
the same size.
When I eliminated dairy products. Within days, the lump started to shrink .
About two weeks after my second chemotherapy session and one week after
giving up dairy produce, the lump in my neck started to itch. Then it began
to soften and to reduce in size. The line on the graph, which had shown no
change, was now pointing downwards as the tumour got smaller and smaller.
And, very significantly, I noted that instead of declining exponentially (a
graceful curve) as cancer is meant to do, the tumour's decrease in size was
plotted on a straight line heading off the bottom of the graph, indicating
a cure, not suppression (or remission) of the tumour.
One Saturday afternoon after about six weeks of excluding all dairy produce
from my diet, I practised an hour of meditation then felt for what was left
of the lump. I couldn't find it. Yet I was very experienced at detecting
cancerous lumps - I had discovered all five cancers on my own.. I went
downstairs and asked my husband to feel my neck. He could not find any
trace of the lump either.
On the following Thursday I was due to be seen by my cancer specialist at
Charing Cross Hospital in London . He examined me thoroughly, especially my
neck where the tumour had been. He was initially bemused and then delighted
as he said, 'I cannot find it.'
None of my doctors, it appeared, had expected someone with my type and
stage of cancer (which had clearly spread to the lymph system) to survive,
let alone be so hale and hearty.
My specialist was as overjoyed as I was. When I first discussed my ideas
with him he was understandably skeptical. But I understand that he now uses
maps showing cancer portality in China in his lectures, and recommends a
non-dairy diet to his cancer patients.
I now believe that the link between dairy produce and breast cancer is
similar to the link between smoking and lung cancer. I believe that
identifying the link between breast cancer and dairy produce, and then
developing a diet specifically targeted at maintaining the health of my
breast and hormone system, cured me.
It was difficult for me, as it may be for you, to accept that a substance
as 'natural' as milk might have such ominous health implications. But I am
a living proof that it works and, starting from tomorrow, I shall reveal
the secrets of my revolutionary action plan.
Extracted from Your Life in Your Hands, by Professor Jane Plant
