Your Life in Your Hands [Hardcover]

Jane Plant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 7, 2000

In 1987, Jane Plant developed breast cancer. It recurred four times over the next six years. Finally, she took control of the disease and her life. She has also helped 65 other women to do likewise. This is her story - a story which offers hope and advice on prevention and treatment to many others.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"I didn't choose to study breast cancer--it chose me," writes Jane A. Plant, Ph.D., chief scientist of the British Geological Survey. Plant knows firsthand the terrifying experience of battling breast cancer that grew progressively worse five times and spread to her lymph system. She also knows the exhilaration and empowerment of defeating it.

Your Life Is in Your Hands is a detailed account of both Plant's personal story and her tenacious hunt for controllable risk factors for breast cancer. Her conclusion: dairy-product consumption is a risk factor for breast cancer (and perhaps prostate cancer), as smoking is for lung cancer. "Cow's milk is a perfect food for a rapidly growing baby calf," she writes, but "cow's milk isn't intended by nature for consumption by any species other than baby cows." Plant presents a lifestyle program to reduce your risk of cancer, including dietary, stress-reduction, and environmental suggestions.

Plant aims Your Life Is in Your Hands at a wide audience: women who want to avoid breast cancer, women with active cancer, and health professionals who want to help patients with the assistance of Plant's interpretation of a body of scientific evidence. Despite the amount of detail, Plant writes clearly, even informally, for the layperson. (She refers to her prosthesis as her "false boob.") If you feel you have to skim over the long explanations of her medical treatments, for example, you find a list of tips at the end.

Plant's ideas are controversial, but her scientific reputation is indisputable. She was awarded the Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Prize, Britain's most prestigious science honor, in 1999. --Joan Price --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Plant, a British geochemist, claims that eliminating dairy products from her diet saved her from dying of breast cancer (which recurred five times)--and argues that readers can prevent such a diagnosis or recurrence by doing the same. Although this recommendation is based largely on her own experience, she initially discusses how she used her scientific training to discover what caused her cancer. Subsequent chapters address how cells become cancerous; the scientific link between dairy and breast cancer; Plant's dietary and lifestyle recommendations; and why the medical establishment and policy-makers have failed to look sufficiently at the role of dietary and environmental factors in cancer. Plant also includes worthwhile tips for coping with health professionals, conventional treatment (which she supports along with her recommended dietary changes) and the emotional impact of a positive diagnosis. The scientific case Plant builds against dairy products suggests this area is worthy of further study, but the evidence she presents is not substantial enough to warrant her claims. Moreover, her recommendation that women replace dairy products with soy products is also troublesome, as some studies show large amounts of soy stimulate breast cancer cells in women who have had cancer. Although Plant is no doubt sincere, the suggestion that women can "conquer" cancer by following the "Plant Program" is overly simplistic and optimistic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Virgin Hardbacks; First Edition edition (June 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1852278099
• ISBN-13: 978-1852278090
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,483,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Plain Common Sense, June 23, 2001

By 

Rosanne Sharp (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Your Life In Your Hands: Understanding, Preventing, and Overcoming Breast Cancer (Hardcover)

This is a book that really makes sense. We tackle other illnesses such as heart problems with diet and nobody seems to think it's cranky or extreme. So why does the connection between breast cancer and diet attract such scepticism?. Breast cancer is hormone related and has reached epidemic rates in many countries. It's just plain common sense to look for the causes and tackle breast cancer with diet and lifestyle. Our fish are becoming hermaphrodites - tap water often contains recycled hormone rich pee - plastic packaging leaches hormones into our food - milk contains oestrogens and growth factors. Young girls are reaching puberty earlier. Other cultures call breast cancer "rich womens disease".It all adds up. Professor Jane Plant is a respected UK scientist and her arguments are backed up with lots of research. At times the book lapses into personal history but be fair, getting breast cancer is a very personal affair. The personal touch also makes the book eminently readable to women who might not have a Phd in science. Most of the information she presents was already available but hidden in obscure studies and unrelated research, it just needed somebody to pull it all together and make sense of it. She's obviously a very intelligent woman who has thought about very deeply about breast cancer and the possible causes. No wonder the dairy industry hates this book. Others have said this book is as important as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring". I agree. I don't accept everything she says and have lots of questions but the basic underlying truths are self evident.This book should spark debate. Read, think, and prevent yourself and your daughters from becoming another contribution to the astounding increase in breast cancer rates. If you've already got breast cancer, even it's back again, give yourself a chance of curing it. Lots of the information is relevant to prostrate cancer, another hormone cancer showing a frightening rate of increase. I have been told that all the profits from this book go to a research foundation. I wish this book had been published years ago.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars life-saving: balanced, complete, lucid, honest, practical, March 10, 2001

By 

Rich Murray (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Your Life In Your Hands: Understanding, Preventing, and Overcoming Breast Cancer (Hardcover)

Jane Plant is endorsed by eminent scientists: T. Colin Campbell, David Perlmutter, John McDougall, Devra Lee Davis.

Now, one in nine USA women develops breast cancer. The 1992 average of all dairy products was 1.54 pounds daily, over 40% of total calories.

She recounts, 1987 to 1993, five breast cancers, a terrifying nightmare, with loss of one breast, radiation, and chemotherapy, an account given in honest detail, with mistakes confessed and many practical lessons shared.

She describes simply the scientific facts about cancer, and her search for causes. In rural China only 1 in 10,000 women have breast cancer in a year, vs 9 in the USA. "The Chinese don't eat dairy products!...Then I eliminated dairy products. Within days, the lump started to shrink...six weeks...I could not find it." It never returned.

Cow milk is for calves, not humans. In babies, milk problems include iron deficiency, GI bleeding, colic, allergies, and later childhood-onset diabetes. In adults, common lactose intolerance, Listeria monocytogenes, antibiotics, many added hormones, up to 2 million pus cells per teaspoon, pesticides, pollutants like PCBs, and IGF-1/rBGH growth hormone (which specifically speeds tumor growth), while also prolactin, EGF, estrogen, and casein promote tumors [80 references].

She details and explains: a delicious organic menu of non-dairy foods, drinks, and desserts, using many soy products, and the best cooking with meats, vegetables, fruits, fats, grains and seasonings; many ways of handling stress; the formidable vested interests that hinder public awareness of the power of nutrition to prevent and cure cancer. She has guided 63 other women to recover from breast cancer.

"I was a go-getting creer woman...young children...a full-time job...I had become ill nourished because of reading food-industry (so called health) propaganda. I had survived on what was marketed and advertised as health food, albeit low fat and high fiber with large quantities of dairy food: cottage cheese and yogurt and dishes made using ground meat from slaughtered dairy cows, washed down with milky tea or commercial orange juice. I ate lots of fruits and cereals but few salads or vegetables. I simply took high-dose vitamin C pills and multivitamin, multimineral pills to cover any deficiencies. I am now kinder to myself and to other people. I ensure that however hurried I am, however simple my meals, they are based on sound nutritional values. I now make time for family and friends and-- amazingly-- I seem to be even more successful in my work and my life...no longer a "fashion victim" in my clothes, home, garden or car...as unmaterialistic as possible ...concerned with the environment...Breast cancer changed me: from being insecure and easily persuaded by authority into a stronger woman who is her own person. It made me stop. And smell the (wild) roses..." ... This also applies to prostate cancer.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nutrition and Cancer, August 7, 2002

By 

Anthony M. Frasca (East Setauket, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Your Life In Your Hands: Understanding, Preventing, and Overcoming Breast Cancer (Hardcover)

This book by Jane Plant, a British geologist, deals with a very difficult and emotional subject for women, breast cancer. It also has the potential to raise the eyebrows of anyone with a scientific background. There are numerous traps that Jane Plant could have fallen into, however, she avoids all potential disasters and winds up with a very scientific treatise on the subject of nutrition and cancer (breast and prostate). The book is mostly about her fight against breast cancer and the revelation that Oriental women have a very low rate of breast cancer. From this morsel Jane deduces that there may be a significant dietary component to the cause of the disease. Working from there she goes on to discuss a number of scientific studies that involve the growth factors that are contained in dairy products. Jane uses logic and scientific fact to come to the conclusion that dairy products are the single most important factor causing breast cancer in western women. She concludes by offering an alternative diet for women who wish to lower their chances of contracting the disease. This book is a must read for any breast cancer activist and any health care professional who treats breast cancer in women. It is surprising that the book has not gotten more publicity and attention. I suspect the American dairy industry may have had something to do with that.