Give up dairy to beat cancer - Leading scientist
A scientist and cancer patient who cut dairy products from her diet nearly 20 years ago claims doing so has helped her beat the disease.
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Jane Plant, who was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987, said she believes the disease is inextricably linked to animal products.
In 1993 when Professor Plant, now 69, was struck down by breast cancer for a fifth time, doctors warned she had just months to live.
The secondary tumour, this time a lump the size of half a boiled egg, was growing on her neck.
Writing on her website, Professor Plant said: 'I was first diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 42.
'I thought I'd beaten it, but five years later it returned with a vengeance.
'I carried on fighting, but when it recurred for the fifth time I asked my doctor to end my life for me there and then — I didn't see how I could go on battling a disease that seemed hell-bent on finishing me off.
'But as I wept I heard my little boy, then just six years old, crying out for me in another room. I knew then I could never again allow myself to feel as though it was an option to leave him.
'Five weeks later, when I was told that I had, at the very most, two months to live, I wasn't upset, angry or frightened — I'd already hit rock bottom a few weeks earlier. I was on the way back up now and had already begun to search my own scientific mind for a way out of this mess.
'I was gripped with a great sense of urgency that I had to find an answer quickly if I was to stand any chance of surviving.
'Despite the awfulness of my situation, my scientific knowledge and experience clicked in to save my life.'
Drawing on her experiences of working in China, she was aware that Chinese women had historically shown very low rates of breast cancer.
'My husband Peter and I had both worked in China on environmental problems in the past,' she said.
'I suddenly remembered that a wonderful epidemiological atlas presented to me by my Chinese colleagues showed a background rate of breast cancer of one in 100,000 women, compared to a rate of one in 10 in much of the West at that time.
'I had checked that the information was correct with senior academics I knew well in China and also with some Chinese doctors who told me that they had hardly seen a case of breast cancer in their careers.'
Yet for those Chinese women who moved to live in the U.S., UK or Australia and who lived on western diets, the rates were more in line with western rates.
Professor Plant said she asked her husband, Mr Simpson, the question she credits with saving her life, "Why don't Chinese women in China get breast cancer?"'
The mother-of-two, added: 'I knew that Chinese women living on western diets, for example in Singapore or in Chinatown in Britain, did have breast cancer.
'Peter and I brainstormed the subject for just a few minutes and decided that it must be diet related. We then remembered two incidents.
'Peter remembered when his Chinese colleagues had produced powdered cow's milk on a field expedition for him because they did not drink it themselves, in fact at that time in the early 80's they did not even have a dairy industry.'
The revelation inspired her to switch to a dairy-free, Asian-style diet.
'I decided I had nothing to lose by giving up the two low fat organic yoghurts I was eating a day each day,' she added.
She also cut out most animal protein such as meat, fish and eggs and banished all milk products.
Within six weeks - during which time she was undergoing more conventional treatment, including chemotherapy - the lump on her neck disappeared.
Within a year, she was in remission and lived cancer free for the next 19 years.