Beating cancer naturally

bshubbard — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:55:00 GMT

In 1991, I visited my GP to ask for advice about a large lump on top of my neck. I was told that everyone in their fifties starts to get lumps like these, and there was nothing to worry about. I was then 54.

Two year later, I asked the same GP to check out the lump as it was throbbing, and my mouth was full of blood each morning. At first told I was told I had gum problems, and I should see my dentist. I insisted that this was not so, and an appointment to have an ultrasound examination at the local NHS hospital was arranged. When I got there, the operator could not work the machine properly, and only a vague shadow about 4 by 2 centimetres showed up. He suggested that I come back the following month when he would obtain a special dye that, if injected into blood stream, would improve the quality of the image.

Not happy with that experience, I demanded that the GP refer me to a head and throat specialist at the local private hospital as I had medical insurance for 20 years, and which I’d never used. I saw a specialist within a week, who said that I should have visited him two years before. I was operated on within two weeks and a salivary gland, with a large tumour within, and some lymph glands were removed.

The tumour was diagnosed as being slow growing and was resistant to radio- and chemotherapy, and as I had been swallowing blood, it was likely to spread to the lungs rather than reoccur in the upper neck. The doctor suggested that it would be better if I had a second operation two weeks later to remove another lymph gland and flesh around the gland - and then retire early to my Spanish holiday home full time for a less stressful, Mediterranean diet and physically active lifestyle - but to come back for annual check-ups.

So, in 1994, I did as the doctor ordered and moved full time and solo to Spain and did four things: I researched what the real Mediterranean diet had been in our then self-sufficient valley and started to follow it; I started to mountain walk; I worked on the Executive Overseas project at high altitude in Bolivia for a month and then walked in Peru to build up strength in my lungs; and I developed a mountainside garden that included areas for healthy ecological herbs and vegetables, and which involved collecting tons of rocks in a wheelbarrow, and eating ecological local meats and I caught my own fish in sea.

In 1996 I met Clodagh, now my wife, on top of mountain. Clodagh then was known as ‘the Green Witch’ for her amateur knowledge of beneficial uses of herbs. She had stopped drinking coffee and tea and was instead drinking infusions of mint, rosemary, lemon verbena, lemons, ginger, rue etc.

In 1998, and by then 61, I walked across Spain via the Pyrenees from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean in 52 days – that’s 950 kilometres and up and down 33,000 metres - with Clodagh, and with heavy rucksacks and tent. As a result of seeing small communities still self sufficient in organic/ecological vegetables, and as traditional agriculture in our valley was being abandoned at a fast rate and was changing from natural to chemical methods, we took on an allotment to have the space to become self sufficient in ecologically grown vegetables, herbs, edible flowers and soft fruits. Although I’ve grown a hundred different vegetables, we focussed especially on those with high antibiotic, vitamin and mineral content.

I expanded the number of beneficial herbs in the garden, and I made both the garden and house chemical-free. I stopped going for check-ups as regular x-rays are a risk in themselves ( I suspect that dental x-rays were one of the possible causes of the cancer, and I refused the dentist’s money spinning x-rays since 1993).
In 1999, we started to write our six books on gardening in Spain, giving radio talks and talks to gardening and dinner groups plus writing articles for many newspapers and magazines..

In 2001 we walked around Cuba to see the food growing revolution for ourselves. This helped us improve some of our practices, and we started to breed chickens and quail for eggs and meat, and rabbits for a healthy meat for an AB blood group.

Last year we took over the stewardship and regeneration of an abandoned olive grove – and we started the ‘Living well from your garden’ blog for WDDTY.

This year I’m 72, and still enjoying mountain walking, physical work in the garden allotment and olive grove. I talk every week about ‘Living well from your garden’ to local gardening and embryo allotment groups which are new to Spain.

We continue to eat well, and we are looking forward to our own first cold pressings of hand-picked extra virgin olive oil in 2011.

Interestingly, the surgeon has never enquired if his advice worked or if I am still in good health!

Luckily the increase in the popularity of our latest trilogy of books ‘Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’, ‘Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain’ and ‘Your Garden in Spain’ funds our purchase of eco wines cheeses and lamb, which we don’t home produce.

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Beating cancer naturally