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How Did I Get Cancer?
Worrying Symptoms
I noticed the first symptoms of my cancer just after Christmas 1992. My stools had a dark reddish-brown substance in their indentations. For three weeks I scrutinised what I had passed every time I went to the lavatory. I realised that what I saw was blood. I knew it was not from a damaged haemorrhoid: I didn't have piles and, even if I had, being at the anus, it would have been fresh red blood. So it had to be from further up.
For those three weeks I hoped it would go away.
It didn't.
In the third week of January 1993 I knew that I had to go to my doctor. I told him the symptom. He arranged for a specialist appointment which confirmed what I already suspected: I had colon cancer. Its technical name was adenocarcinoma. I was admitted to hospital on Sunday 4 April 1993. The operation was successfully performed two days later and on 13 April I left hospital. That day was our thirty-sixth wedding anniversary.
The background to my cancer
I was told later that to reach the size my cancer had would have taken between ten and fifteen years. That meant that it had started between 1977 and 1982. Most people cannot say with any degree of accuracy exactly what they were doing or eating up to fifteen years previously. I was unusual in this regard as I knew exactly what I had been doing and eating during those five years. It was a very special and memorable time of my life — it was when I built my own house.
In 1977, my wife, Monica, and I bought a piece of land in West Oxfordshire on which to build a house. At the time I was in the RAF working in Thatcham, Berkshire. It was exactly fifty miles door to door. During 1977 and 1978, the plans for our house were drawn and submitted to the District Council planning department. I finally drew seven sets before I found one they liked. At the same time, new neighbours moved in. They had a right of way over a lane which was part of our property — and they wanted to do far more with it than their rights allowed. It was a stressful time.
While I was in the RAF, Monica and I had moved some twenty times in as many years. We had lived in properties as diverse as caravans and large four bedroomed houses, from England to Singapore. Several of these had features we liked but we never found a house that had everything we wanted. So the idea was that I would design a house and we would get a builder to build it. But to design anything, you first have to know how it is made. So we looked at building plans; we traipsed around building sites; we measured wall lengths, window sizes, standard brick and concrete block sizes and so on. The standard of workmanship I saw on those building sites was so slipshod that I determined to see if I could do better.
We started to build during Easter 1978. After laying the foundation concrete, I started to lay concrete blocks. I had never done anything like this before. At first I mixed mortar by hand on a wooden board. I could mix enough at a time to allow me to lay six blocks an hour — and I had 2,000 of them! After the first week I got a cement mixer and my work-rate rose to twenty-five an hour.
Monica spread blocks around the site during the day while I was at work and when I came home I laid them. It took me ten weeks to reach oversite concrete level. This was hard, physical work which I wasn't used to, carried out after a long day at my "day job". During the first six weeks my weight dropped by twenty-eight pounds from 161 lbs to 133 lbs — and as I am 5 ft 9 ins tall, I wasn't overweight to begin with. Simultaneously, I was driving a hundred miles a day to and from work, and we were still being hassled by our new neighbour.
That was our life for the next two years: go to work, build, sleep, work, build, sleep . . .
Adding to the stress was the fact that as I was both the architect and the builder of the house, and with no experience of either, we could not get a mortgage. It all had to be paid for out of my salary.
Diet
During these five years my only dietary consideration was with my weight. I didn't know then what I know now about other health implications. Thus, I included such things as the wholemeal bread that Monica made for the sandwiches I took to work; I ate salads with prodigious quantities salad cream made with polyunsaturated vegetable oils; I had saccharine in tea. I did not know then that this was a dangerous combination: saccharine is carcinogenic (cancer causing); linoleic acid, the major polyunsaturated fatty acid in the vegetable oils, not only suppresses the immune system, it also promotes cancer; the bran in wholemeal flour is harsh — it scratches the mucosa of the gut and irritates the colon; and this was all on top of the unaccustomed hard physical work and mental stresses of the building project which were also damaging to my immune system. It is no wonder that I got cancer.
The diet I ate for five years of commuting — the time during which my cancer started — was very similar to the one now strongly promoted as "healthy". I regard my experience as confirmation that it is not — that the evidence linking a "healthy" diet to cancers is correct. You will not be surprised to learn that I do not recommend such a diet today. Nor have I lived on such a diet for over twenty years.
At the time my cancer was removed, there were three in the village where I live with the same disease. We all had the same treatment in the same hospital by the same surgeon. The others followed their consultant's advice to eat more fibre and cut down on fats. I am the only one who didn't — and I am the only one who survived.
The Situation Now
I retired from the RAF in January 1982. It was not until 1992 that I realised I had a problem. By then I was already researching, writing and lecturing on nutrition and health matters such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Having cancer gave me another subject to explore in detail; a subject in which I had a personal interest and now a subject about which I wanted to know as much as possible. Some of what I found within the orthodox medical world has shocked me. But others offer hope to the millions who will get cancer. The dissemination of that knowledge is the reason for this website.
It is now well over 30 years since my cancer started and almost 19 years since my operation. I have no sign of cancer.
Last updated 1 December 2011
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