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By 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.
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 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 ? 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.
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 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.