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.
Fortunately, this desire drove me to unearth the facts, some
of which were known only to a handful of scientists at the
time.
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 back from working in China while I was being plugged
in for a chemotherapy session.
He had brought with him cards and letters, as well as 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. Despite the awfulness of the situation, we both had a
good belly laugh, 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 withnuclear
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, 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
yogurt. 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 yogurts 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 yogurt 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 yogurt but all dairy produce
immediately. Cheese, butter, milk and yogurt 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.
Then 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 sceptical.
But I understand that he now uses maps showing cancer
mortality 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.
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