My wife of 25 years passed away in the year 2000. She was a health diet and exercise type person. When she was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer
she did all the stuff along with the chemo like a good little trooper and died 20 months later. There was more than one time I prayed that if someone
had to die let it be me and spare her. She was one of the best people I have ever known and I am not saying that because she is dead.
I am remarried to a wonderful girl now and very happy with my new mate of 5 years....so no I am not destitute or miserable as some who have gone
through this sort of thing; I am very lucky and well loved.
I came across this article at a Chinese defense web sight and thought it interesting in that my Asian wife (not Chinese but I am sure there was one in
the wood pile long long ago) really has very little use for dairy products. Western Men get Prostate cancer and the article touches on that
too.....Anyway I thought the article was worth reading and the possibilities.
www.chinesedefence.com...
[QUOTE]
Welcome to Chinese Defence Forum
By Prof. Jane Plant, PhD, CBE
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 fiber.
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!” [END QUOTE]