Walter's story

Dear Professor Plant,

I hope you don't mind me contacting you but I wanted to thank you for your excellent books on Prostate Cancer and diet (The Plant Programme).

Back in May this year I discovered, quite by accident, that I had a PSA score of 241. I saw the urology consultant in June and was prescribed Zoladex by slow release injection every twelve weeks. The diagnosis was something of a shock as I had had minimal and transitory symptoms masked to some extent by being on diuretics for hypertension. We had a further shock when a bone scan revealed bony metastases in four locations. We found your books through the Penny Brohn Centre at Bristol having borrowed copies initially from the local library. Your book on Prostate Cancer was an exciting read quite apart from my own health problems! Having had a science based education and working in healthcare most of my life the results and conclusions of your research made excellent sense.

Within days of diagnosis we were juicing fruit and vegetables and within a fortnight we had adopted a dairy free, farmed meat and farmed fish free diet. We eliminated plastics from the kitchen and consigned the microwave to the garage! Fortunately my wife is an excellent cook but the diet presented her with a bit of a learning curve. However, we persisted in reading all supermarket food labels and the new recipes soon became manageable. We quickly grew to like the new diet and would not want to go back to the former regime - and we thought we already had a healthy diet!!

I felt certain that following your diet would maximise the effect of the Zoladex but I hardly dared believe what the outcome might be. Cancer apart, my wife and I both feel significantly better physically since changing our diet.

I saw the consultant last week and my PSA score had fallen to 3.8!!!! I think he was a bit surprised at such a dramatic fall in so short a time.

In response to my enquiry about a repeat bone scan to check the progress of the metastases he said that there was no need for a further scan as it would probably return normal - ie. he considered that the metastases would have disappeared. The consultant also felt that the risk of the cancer becoming androgen independent was reduced as there had been such a rapid fall in my PSA levels.

So, thank you so much for your work in identifying the links between the incidence and progress of cancers, prostate cancer and breast cancer in particular, and diet. I am somewhat perplexed that we have yet to hear of a clinician who suggests to patients with cancer that they might like to consider making such changes to their diet! Please add me to your list of evidence surporting this link!!! If you want further information about the supplements (not many) that we use or an expansion of any of the above please contact me.

All good wishes,

Walter

PS: Nearly 50 years ago I did some post doctoral research at the Royal School of Mines. Little did I think then that I would some day be writing to someone such as yourself!

... Other success stories

See also some reviews of Jane Plant's books !