I was put onto this book by BF’s mum, and it implicates dairy produce as a direct cause of specifically breast cancer and prostate cancer. The theory is based on the fact that Chinese women (and men) eat absolutely zero dairy produce because they say that milk is for babies only. Only the rich Chinese eat dairy, and breast cancer is known in China as “Rich Womens’ Disease” because of this. Because dairy produce contains oestrogen (oestrogen is routinely fed to cattle to fatten them up, it is also produced by pregant cows who are milked - an unethical practice but one that does happen) it is implicated in oestrogen cancers, obviously, but worse than this is the fact that all animal milk, ours included (human breast milk), contains large amounts of Growth Hormone Factor. And I think the other thing is IGF, which is Insulin-Like Growth Factor. Anyway, it’s clear that growth hormones are there to stimulate growth of the young for whom the animal milk is produced, so it makes sense that the growth factors in all dairy, whether organic or not, would influence proliferation of cells, which is essentially what cancer is - an out of control growth caused by instructions from damaged cell DNA.
I was wondering if anyone had any experience of Jane Plant and her theories and diet plan, or any thoughts on it. Jane herself is an earth scientist, and had five recurrences before changing to a totally animal-free diet and it evidently destroyed all of her tumours within a very few weeks.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel, or is this another non-starter?
If you search the forums you will find lots of references to Jane Plant, both for and against.
My own feeling is that she may well have a sensitivity to dairy, but that her book did nothing to help me. And when you read the histories of the many women who have breast cancer, it is clear that even a pure vegan diet does not protect you.
IGF is a danger in the US and South America where it is added to animal feed. It is illegal in Europe to give it to animals and no meat or dairy products produced in Britain or mainland Europe contain additive IGF. Buy British.
I discussed all of this with my oncologist, as I was worried that giving up dairy products would increase the risk of osteoporosis! He suggested I started using organic dairy products as they are not treated with the hormone drugs.
Which I have started doing as it made sense to me.
Hi, Kim, Angel. Yes, read the other thread.
IGF is a growth factor in all milk, from human to rat, cow, dog, goat, sheep, monkey. It is a necessary component of mother’s milk - a growth factor healthy for suckling young and not for adults. Hormones are also natural constituents of milk although in non-organic farming systems the use of antibiotics and animal origin feeds and hormones do increase the levels. Organic milk contains IGF and casein. A small amount of IGF is present in our bodies anyway. Extra IGF is necessary breast cancer and very advanced tumours end up producing growth factors of their own. Casein feeds tumour cells. Casein is a protein only found in milk. The lower the fat content of dairy products (eg cottage cheeses and low fat yogurts) the higher the casein content. Also check out the origins of Jane Plant’s work: The China Study by T.Colin Campbell.
Jenny, I’m very interested in all this, and would prefer to discuss this with you on this thread rather than the one that has all the negative angst against JP. As I said on that thread, I’m with you all the way on the IGF (and the casein), and am very interested to hear your story of trying it. Do feel free to PM me (can you do that on this forum?) or I can give you my email address (if we’re allowed to do that here?) - not sure of the rules, all forums seem to be different!
What’s your opinion about phyto-oestrogens, soy and others in light of oestrogen +ve cancer?