Prof Jane Plant has developed a dairy-free lifestyle programme to beat breast cancer. Sylvia Thompson reports Different approaches in the battle against breast cancer stir debate and emotions
When Prof Jane Plant began to spread her message about how dairy products were a causal dietary factor in breast cancer in the Western world, she says she was treated as "the wicked witch of the West". "It's difficult to be the first to say things," she says now, six years after the publication of her groundbreaking book, Your Life in Your Hands - understanding, preventing and overcoming breast cancer (Virgin Publishing).
Plant has since written The Plant Programme with Gill Tidey (Virgin Books), Understanding, preventing and overcoming osteoporosis with Gill Tidey (Virgin Books) and Prostate Cancer - understand, prevent and overcome (Virgin Books). The third edition of Your Life in Your Hands was published earlier this year.
In Dublin recently to give seminars at the Your Health Show in the RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin, Plant explained how more doctors are "coming round to the idea that people need to be given more control over their health and involved in the process of treating illness".
Plant is a geochemist professor of environmental geochemistry at the Imperial College London. Her interest in what causes cancer - particularly breast and prostate cancer - grew out of her personal battle with breast cancer in the early 1990s.
"In 1993, despite several operations, 35 radiotherapy treatments, irradiation to induce the menopause and chemotherapy treatments, I was told I had only months to live after my breast cancer [this time, a tumour in the neck] returned for the fifth time," she explains.
Throughout her treatment, Plant had rigorously questioned the cancer experts about her best treatment options and followed a vegan diet to reduce the side effects of various treatments.
Her experience working in China on environmental problems led to a question which proved to be the key to her recovery. Why, she asked herself and her husband, Peter (also a professor of geology), was the rate of breast cancer in China just one in 100,000 women compared with one in 10 women in some parts of the West?
Together they decided, the key difference was that Chinese women didn't eat any dairy products.
"I decided I had nothing to lose by giving up the two low-fat yogurts I was eating a day. To my and everyone else's amazement, the cancer disappeared in six weeks, and I have remained cancer free ever since," she explains.
Plant's personal experience of breast cancer then led her to search the scientific literature for studies which found a link between dairy products and cancer.
She found epidemiological studies which showed a positive correlation between dairy product consumption and breast cancer risk going back two decades.
She explains: "Dairy products contain growth factors [ specifically insulin-like growth factor 1 or IGF-1] which have exactly the same chemistry as the growth factors implicated in breast and prostate cancer. These human growth factors start at a low level and build up in the body until puberty when they reach their peak. But, if you keep taking dairy products, you are promoting cancer cells.
"A lot of pharmaceutical work has been done to stop these growth factors from linking on to receptors in breast tissue. I'm just saying don't eat the foods which are full of these growth factors."
Following her own recovery from breast cancer, Plant was called upon to give advice to friends and family members of colleagues. And more than 60 other women overcame their disease by following the now widely renowned Plant Programme in conjunction with conventional cancer treatments.
Some aspects of the Plant Programme also reduced nausea and prevented hair loss - two common side effects of chemotherapy.
The Plant Programme has 10 dietary factors and 10 lifestyle factors that Plant believes are important in preventing and treating cancer.
Apart from avoiding all dairy products, the programme advocates the avoidance of all processed and pre-prepared foods - particularly those sold in plastic. And the addition of lots of fruit and vegetables, nuts, seeds, soya foods, herbal, green and Chinese teas and organic wine or cider vinegar.
Plant does not advocate the use of food supplements. "I don't like taking synthetic vitamin pills. You can eat a proper diet with foods which are naturally enriched.
"The only supplements I suggest are selenium or brewer's yeast, and I take a teaspoon of cod liver oil every morning."
The lifestyle factors in the Plant Programme aim to reduce or remove other factors associated with cancer, including stress and harmful chemicals in the home and the environment.
In her book Your Life is in Your Hands, Plant speaks frankly about how she found value in psychotherapy, and she regularly practises yoga.
In the midst of all this, Plant worried that she might develop osteoporosis given that she had removed dairy products - the primary source of calcium in the Western diet - from her diet.
She then discovered World Health Organisation findings that countries which have low intakes of calcium do not have an increased incidence of osteoporosis.
"Like breast cancer and prostate cancer, osteoporosis is mainly a disease of rich Western countries where people consume a diet that includes large quantities of animal protein [especially dairy produce and meat] and junk food and drink, with too little or inappropriate exercise," she writes in Understanding, Preventing and Overcoming Osteoporosis (Virgin Books).
She adds: "The myth that osteoporosis is caused by calcium deficiency was created to sell dairy products and calcium supplements."
Through her research, she came to the conclusion that the root cause of osteoporosis is not the lack of calcium but an excess of protein.
"Scientists are now suggesting that the demands placed on the skeleton by typical Western diets and lifestyle is the root cause of the epidemic of osteoporosis," she says.
In her book on osteoporosis, she explains in detail how our bodies become demineralised - which leads to osteoporosis - as the skeleton (which is the body's main store of minerals) releases minerals to neutralise acid in our blood, caused by excessive protein content in our food.
Plant continues to give talks on her findings and also fits in some private consultations between her lecturing hours at the Imperial College London.
She was made a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine for her books and her work on the links between the environment and human health.
She chairs the UK advisory group on hazardous substances and is the scientific director of a research project into primary prevention of cancer through identifying and reducing cancer-causing dietary and environmental factors at the Imperial College London.
And, nowadays, some medical doctors even give out her books to patients to help them cope with cancer, particularly those who have had a diagnosis of breast or prostate cancer.
• See www.cancersupportinternational.com and www.breastsense.org
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
Abbie Langtry, Action Breast Cancer: "At this point, there is no conclusive scientific research which points to dairy products as a cause of breast cancer. There are lifestyle issues that increase your risk of breast cancer, and a high-fat diet is one. We don't recommend either those who have breast cancer or those who are at risk of getting breast cancer to give up dairy products. We advise people to live a healthy lifestyle, eat a healthy balanced diet, be physically active and drink alcohol in moderation." Action Breast Cancer: 1800-309040
Prof Moira O'Brien, president of the Irish Osteoporosis Society: "Prof Plant is taking her case of lactose intolerance and applying it to the population. We've had patients who have given up dairy, cut down on protein, increased their fibre and reduced their bone density as a result. If you have excessive fibre in your diet, there isn't time for the products of digestion to be absorbed. Also, excessive fibre cuts down on the oestrogen and progesterone produced in the body, which affects vitamin D production and calcium absorption."