Monday, October 29, 2012

Breast Cancer. WHY WOMEN IN CHINA DO NOT GET BREAST CANCER.

Like to share a write-up by  By Prof. Jane Plant, PhD, CBE. Very interesting and informative. Hope that the article below helps us understand this dreaded illness.


             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.