Sam Corti had a sense of foreboding as she drove to hospital. For more than a year, the 40-year-old had been suffering increasingly painful and heavy periods and cramping pain in between.
Although her GP had reassured her it was probably nothing more sinister than fibroids – benign growths in the womb – her instinct was that it was much more serious.
‘Jade Goody had just been diagnosed with cervical cancer and I’d had the same disease when I was 21,’ she recalls. ‘Unlike Jade, my cancer had been caught in the very early stages – it was picked up on a smear test – and treated successfully.
‘Even though I’d had annual smear tests since, which were always clear, I had this horrible feeling the cancer had returned.’
Unfortunately, her instinct proved right. A scan and a further internal examination showed a grapefruit-sized tumour had wrapped itself round her bladder and bowel.
The tumour was graded as a very aggressive 4a – with 1a being the least aggressive. Sam was also told they had found several inflamed lymph nodes in the groin area. Her chances of survival were 50:50.
‘Jade Goody had just been diagnosed with cervical cancer and I’d had the same disease when I was 21,’ she recalls. ‘Unlike Jade, my cancer had been caught in the very early stages – it was picked up on a smear test – and treated successfully.
‘Even though I’d had annual smear tests since, which were always clear, I had this horrible feeling the cancer had returned.’
Unfortunately, her instinct proved right. A scan and a further internal examination showed a grapefruit-sized tumour had wrapped itself round her bladder and bowel.
The tumour was graded as a very aggressive 4a – with 1a being the least aggressive. Sam was also told they had found several inflamed lymph nodes in the groin area. Her chances of survival were 50:50.
Although Sam felt ‘completely helpless’, she says: ‘I thought there must be something positive I could do.’
She decided radically to alter her diet – and started to drink lots of green tea. Within just four weeks, her cancer had withdrawn from her bowel – to the astonishment of her surgeons.
She is now clear of cancer and, while radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment have been key, she is in no doubt that her green tea diet has been significant to her recovery.
Her doctors are more sceptical – and point out that tumours can spontaneously shrink for reasons we don’t know.
‘I’d been through cancer before, but being older and now having my boys Joseph, five, and Nathan, four, made it seem worse’
They also say the medical proof of green tea’s cancer-killing properties is limited. So who is right?
When Sam was first diagnosed, such a positive outcome was far from certain. She was told that a gynaecological cancer surgeon and a bowel surgeon would need to remove the tumour; this would involve removing her womb and ovaries, as well as sections of her bowel.
She would also need a colostomy, at least temporarily, and then chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
‘I’d been through cancer before, but being older and now having my boys Joseph, five, and Nathan, four, made it seem worse,’ says Sam, a former advertising executive.
‘I couldn’t believe my cancer could be so advanced when I’d had an all-clear result from my smear the year before. But I was told that tests fail to detect cancer in 18 per cent of cases and I was one of the unlucky ones.
‘Either that or the tumour had grown rapidly since my last smear.’
The operation was scheduled for four weeks later.
‘I was so worried that the cancer might spread in the meantime, that I started looking on the internet for information to try to halt the disease.’
Sam came across articles about cancer and diet and how particular foods such as green tea had anticancer properties.
Jade Goodie
Unlike Jade Goodie, who died from cervical cancer, Sam was diagnosed early
Many theories focused on the low incidence of breast cancer in China, where 1 in 100,000 gets the disease compared to one in ten in the UK.
Diet and the high consumption of green tea seemed to be a factor.
Research by Dr David Servan-Schreiber, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh, who had devised his own anti-cancer diet after being diagnosed with a brain tumour, also grabbed her interest.
‘He talked about how cancer fed on sugar and caused inflammation in the body,’ she says.
‘He also advocated changing diet as an add-on to medical treatment, to give your body the best chance of responding to surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
‘I’d never turn my back on medicine or suggest diet alone could cure cancer, but I felt excited that there might be something I could do to stop my cancer spreading.’
After buying a copy of Dr Servan-Schreiber’s book, The Anti Cancer Diet, Sam went to the supermarket and filled her trolley with shiitake mushrooms, berries, green tea and cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower.
‘I also bought red wine, as it’s packed full of antioxidants,’ she says.
‘Dairy foods were out, as some compounds in milk may encourage cancer growth, likewise with sugar.
‘We decided as a family to all have the diet. And although I thought we’d eaten healthily before, it was a huge lifestyle change.
‘The children still had their treats, but they started eating more fruit and veg, too.
‘The difference was instant. I no longer had mid-afternoon energy slumps nor craved sugary snacks.’
After more research Sam also learned about Sencha, a type of green tea popular in Japan, and started drinking six cups a day.
‘I did get a bit obsessive about it – as a result I lost about a stone in weight, even though I was eating three times as much.’
Four weeks later, on November 17, 2008, Sam went in for her operation.
‘Although I felt calm as I went into theatre, a sense of apprehension set in. I wondered what they were going to find, and dreaded waking up with the colostomy bag.’
‘Dr Servan-Schreiber advocated changing diet as an add-on to medical treatment’
But, four hours later, though, when Sam woke up, there was no sign of it.
She says: ‘My first instinct was that the cancer had spread too much for them to do anything, but the nurses told me everything had gone well.
‘They’d done the hysterectomy and removed nine lymph nodes, but when they’d moved over to the bowel and bladder they couldn’t find anything.
‘I was told the cancer had totally retracted from my bowel and bladder and, unbelievably, they’d downgraded my tumour from an advanced 4a to an early stage 1b.
‘Several of the medical team kept asking what I’d done for this to occur and in my mind there’s no doubt – it was my change of diet.’
Although Sam’s surgeon, Mr Mahmood Shafi, lead consultant surgeon for gynaecological oncology at Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, cannot confirm this, he is certainly open to the idea.
He says: ‘All the investigations showed it was very likely that her cervical cancer had spread to her bowel. But when we opened her up, although we found the tumour in her cervix, we couldn’t find anything abnormal in the bowel.
‘My colorectal surgeon colleague did a flexible sigmoidoscopy, where the inside of the colon is inspected with a lighted scope, to make sure, but could find nothing abnormal.
‘It’s possible the previous investigations could have shown inaccurate results, but it’s unlikely as she had a biopsy, an MRI scan, and an examination prior to surgery, all carried out by very senior colleagues, which suggested her cancer had spread to the bowel.
Dr Servan-Schreiber recommends changing your diet to give your body the best chance of responding to treatment
New ideas: Dr Servan-Schreiber recommends changing your diet to give your body the best chance of responding to treatment
‘I can’t speculate as to what might have caused this apparent regression, but I’m open-minded about what can affect the progress of disease in patients with cancer.
‘I have found that individuals who have a positive attitude can make a difference to the outcome. A change in diet may well play a part in this. We’re delighted for Sam.’
After her surgery, Sam underwent radiotherapy and chemotherapy and – in the past 12 months since the operation – no cancer has been detected. Could green tea have made a difference?
The evidence for its cancer-fighting benefits is not strong. A study published in the British Journal of Cancer in 2001, based on laboratory research in the U.S. and Korea, suggested that catechins found in green tea may inhibit blood cell formation and tumour growth in colon cancer.
But a review of 50 studies on green tea and its role in preventing cancer published by the Cochrane database, in July, couldn’t reach a conclusion – the authors said there was so much conflicting evidence and poor quality research.
Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of Cancer Partners UK, a private cancer network, says: ‘Green tea does have anti-cancer properties, but whether it affects the progress of cancer once you’ve got it is unclear.’
The benefits, Sam says, are clear.
Indeed, she is now devoting her energies to launching a new company, Tea4Life, selling the teas she believed helped save her life.
‘There is no way I’m saying green tea cured my cancer on its own,’ she says.
‘I just want other cancer patients to know that changing their diet may help them fight the disease – I think it worked for me.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1235900/My-doctors-arent-convinced–I-believe-green-tea-cured-cancer.html
The ongoing debate over Vitamin D levels continues. The latest research from the USA suggests that 20% of the US population of Children and teenagers are considered deficient in Vitamin D. Translating those rates to the UK, while not statistically proven, would suggest that the problem in our children may be just as severe. Given that we have less sunshine than the USA the problem might be even worse. If even 5% of our children are severely deficient in Vitamin D we should be seeing a rise in the incidence of Rickets (caused by Vitamin D deficiency). There is growing concern and evidence that Rickets is on the increase – especially in Asian families – see
