A friend sent me this today. I post it here because I think it's important for women to read it. I hope it's not too long!..
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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 calipers 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 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.

Hi Moonstone,

Thank you for sharing this. I have to say, I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of dairy. But then, I think many things in our food chain are not fit for human consumption, so don't start me on that one!

We are the only mammal who use milk beyond breast feeding and we are the only species who go to another species and take its milk - yuck! Would we milk a dog or a cat? No way, we would think that was vile, so why do we think (or not bother thinking) that it is ok to milk a cow?

When you think that milk is the perfect food designed to nourish and grow babies and then you look at the size of a cow, it's digestive system (four stomachs for example) and we think that this is the perfect nutrition for *our* children and teenagers????? I don't think so!

My Dd has never had milk (just two years breastfeeding) and I don't buy into the calcium myth either - that's just fear talk by the government and milk-marketing board - she gets calcium from oily fish, seeds and leafy greens. The calcium in milk is hardly absorbable anyway.

I know that the Chinese eat a lot of soya and I have to say that I am torn on that one. I think the fermented products such as soya sauce, miso and tepeh are ok, but I'm not at all sure about soya milk. I remain open minded at this point.

I think the main problem is the gross denaturisation of our food. I saw the other day on a bottle of milk 'homogenised, standardised and pasteurised'. Say what?? I also remember a case of testing someone for food intolerances. He came up badly on milk, and then told me that he only had milk fresh from his cow. He bought me a sample to test and it was fine........just goes to show that all these measures designed to 'protect us' are, in fact *causing* alot of our health issues.

RIght, soapbox away...........

Rae x

Hi Houseofstrauss, I agree with you, if other mammals don't have milk after breast feeding why do we have to do it? I keep saying this to hubby, and he replies we are also the only mammals that cook their food, ad so what?.. But it seems unnatural to me. As children we kept being told: drink you milk, it's good for your bones, and so on.. I must admit I never liked milk much, but I love cheese! If I had to give up dairy products I would find it very hard to give up cheese. Still, it doesn't seem that the Chinese eat cheese either, and they are not bothered about it. What you don't have you don't miss. I suppose we are a product of our society, and some things are difficult to change..

Hi Moonstone,

Could you find out what webpage you got this from or where the information came from.

Just two days after reading this a client told me that she has just found out that she has breast cancer.

i mentioned this article and also said if she wants to know about alternative methods (as well as the docs of course) to let me know and ill let her have a list of different things she could try do use.

If anyone knows of other methods too then please let me know ill put togethet a database of web sites and books etc.

Diet and the way we think, letting our thoughts run rampant, seem to me to be what we should be looking to control.

Hi Sue

I do a few days a year with Breast Cancer Care (Charity1017658) I do Reiki workshops for women who have recently been diagnosed , alongside workshops by aromatherapists, reflexologists etc.

The charity offer a huge range of support for the diagnosed and their families the main helpline is 0800 800 6000, you could even phone them yourself and ask for some support literature or helpline cards that you can pass on to any clients.

They also have a website
http://www.breastcancercare.org.uk/content.php?page_id=418
I hope this proves helpful.

Sal

Thanks Sal,

Id beinterested to know how what you do in the Reiki workshops

do you attune them to Reiki 1 ?

have others that do Reiki on them with you?

I didnt offer to her just mentioned that i knew about alternative methods if she was interested, didnt want her to feel pombarded.

i hate that when you go into the doctrors and the receptionist starts telling you what you should and shouldnt be doing so i just left it at that.

Ill be looking into the website though

Thanks
Love Sue

Hi Sue,

This was sent to me by a friend. The article can be found here:
http://www.alkalizeforhealth.net/Lnotmilk6.htm

Also you can order her book from Amazon "Your Life in Your Hands: Understanding, Preventing and Overcoming Breast Cancer" by Jane Plant

If you do a Google search under Jane Plant you will find a lot of other related sites too. I do hope all this is helpfull to your client.

The workshops are an hour and half and i work with groups of 5 people. I very briefly explain what reiki is, check they are all ok with that. I take in loads of blankets and cushions and get everyone to lie on the floor or sit i then use a chakra meditation cd which everyone can listen to whilst i go around and give each person a brief taste of reiki.

When i was first asked to go and do the workshops i thought what on earth am i going to do with a group of people who have possibly no interest or may never have heard of reiki. The format works suprisingly well and i always say if you gain nothing else from the workshop at least you have had a lie down for an hour - i will wake up anyone who nods off at the end.

The group then goes on to a workshop with one of the other therapists and i get another group. We all lunch together and the participants get to experience about four or five therapies during the day.

Sal

The reason i like the helpline cards is that the client can make their decision if and when they want to ask questions and BCC have the information support to hand. I would never offer advise.