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Saturday 28 September 2002

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Formula that gave new life

(Filed: 26/07/2002)

 

 

Given months to live, Lesley Garner's mother changed her diet and

took an Indian herbal remedy

 

 

I first heard about the Indian herbal remedy Carctol two years ago,

when it was prescribed to my mother. She had been very ill and had been

diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, untreatable. The doctors at her local hospital

put in a stent, which relieved her sickness and jaundice, but they said there

was nothing more they could do - no surgery, no chemotherapy, no radiation.

 

 

Benefit: more than two years on, Gwen Garner is in remission

from cancer

The NHS consultant, without looking her in the eye, had told her to

go home and they would arrange for a Macmillan nurse to call. He didn't say the

words, but what he meant was: go home and die.

 

This was devastating for her and for us. In four out of five cases,

pancreatic cancer kills within months. Her GP was no more positive and a

dietician from the hospital simply told her to go on a low-fat diet.

 

My ex-husband, a doctor, spoke to an NHS cancer specialist he knew

in London, who suggested she go to the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, where they

offer a holistic approach using diet, relaxation, complementary therapies and a

lot of comfort and moral support.

 

My parents, who like science with their medicine and come from the

stiff-upper-lip, no-nonsense school of life, were encouraged by this

recommendation from such a conventional source, and they booked a private

consultation with Dr Rosy Daniel, now an independent holistic medical consultant

with a Harley Street clinic and private Bristol base, but formerly medical

director of the Bristol Centre. There was a feeling of having nothing to lose.

 

Timing was in their favour. It was February 2000 and Dr Daniel had

just started prescribing Carctol, which was unknown in this country - except in

the Asian community. A friend in Bristol, Yashu Amlani, had been nagging her for

some time to find out more about this herbal mix, which had been used

successfully for more than 20 years in India by a Dr Tiwari in Rajasthan.

 

" Yashu had been tugging at my sleeve for a year before I finally

went to India and met Dr Tiwari, " Dr Daniel says. " He comes from a long line of

ayurvedic practitioners, and he had done case studies of 1,900 patients. I met a

number of his patients, all in the 'should be dead' category, who had been given

three to six months to live - and this was five to 10 years later.

 

" Carctol is made of eight herbs, none of which is anti-neoplastic,

but there must be something in the mix. I've just been approached by a doctor

from Leicester University who met a patient of mine on Carctol and who wants to

analyse it to establish the anti-cancer mechanism.

 

" When you take Carctol, you take no acid fruits, you drink up to

five litres of cooled, boiled water daily, and you take digestive enzymes. A big

strand of the thinking is to get the body less acid and more alkaline, the idea

being that cancer thrives in acid conditions and if you change the pH of the

body, that will restrict it.

 

" Most of the patients who come to Dr Tiwari have already been

written off by the medical profession. He asks his patients to self-score how

they are doing, on a range of 0 to 100. It pans out that 25 per cent see no

difference, the middle range see up to 75 per cent improvement while the top 25

per cent experience 100 per cent improvement. "

 

Carctol and its related diet was not a soft option: I must stress

that the Bristol Cancer Help Centre does not prescribe it, nor was it happy with

Dr Daniel prescribing it. But Dr Daniel had seen my mother privately, and she

also suggested she follow a diet that was rigorously low-fat and high in

vegetables, vitamins and lots of pure water. Dr Daniel admits that many patients

simply can't face the discipline and the change in their way of life, and don't

go down that route.

 

My mother is made of sterner stuff. She turned down the offer of

counselling, but had a go at healing and stuck doggedly to the diet, the

vitamins and the water. She is also of an irrepressibly cheerful, optimistic,

pragmatic and serene disposition - which, everyone agrees, makes a big

difference. Who knows which of these elements has had the most benefit? Or is

it, like Carctol itself, in the mix?

 

Happily for my family, my mother, who was told she had a few months

to live, is doing fine two and a half years later. A scan six months after she

started her new regime showed that her tumour had stopped growing. A bladder

cancer, which she already had, and was being treated, has disappeared. She does

not claim that she has been cured, only that she is in remission, but the cancer

has been checked and her quality of life is good. When she goes for check-ups,

the doctors look at her notes and do a double-take.

 

Dr Daniel now has about 250 patients on Carctol. It is too small a

number to count as a proper trial - she hopes that one day Carctol will be

formally trialled - but her experience matches Dr Tiwari's. His best results

were with patients who had abdominal cancers - of the pancreas, liver, kidney,

stomach and oesophagus - rather than hormonally linked cancers such as breast

and prostate. Where her patients are receiving hospital treatment, Carctol is

used as an adjuvant. Where they are considered beyond treatment, Carctol is the

only treatment they get.

 

The results are good enough for Dr Daniel to feel ready to encourage

the rest of the medical profession to prescribe Carctol. Yesterday, she

addressed a seminar on Carctol in Leicester. Before that, she started by

approaching 60 doctors known to her who share her holistic approach.

 

" At the start, my main consideration was that it was not toxic. We

went through toxicology testing and I'm happy that it is safe. We have had a

long dialogue with the Medicine Controls Agency, who have classed it as a

medicine, which would normally mean expensive trialling, but it is considered a

traditional herbal remedy, and we use it under the escape clause that any doctor

who believes a medicine to be valuable may prescribe it, even if it has not been

trialled and licensed. There is a growing awareness that medicinal plants can

act as nature's own preventive to cancer and protect from cellular mutation. "

 

There is no single factor in treating cancer and, in some ways, Dr

Daniel's patients have chosen themselves. It's not just a matter of taking

herbal pills. They have to be willing to change their lives - to alter their

diets and to take a proactive role in their own care, which is, in itself, a

good indication for success. But, after two years and 250 cases, Dr Daniel is

satisfied that, in prescribing Dr Tiwari's herbal mix, she has something of

potential benefit to patients.

 

a.. Dr Rosy Daniel can be contacted at the Bristol Clinic, 0117 949

3366 or on 020 7299 9428

2 April 2002: Doctor's diary [on alternative cures for cancer]

4 January 2002: Can this man cure all our ills? [an intergrated

approach to healthcare]

3 August 2001: Can we prevent cancer?

5 December 2000: We need an integrated approach

 

External links

 

Bristol Cancer Help Centre

 

Healthy Bristol Integrated Medicine Project [by Rosy Daniel] -

Positive Health

 

Carctol - Anticancerherb.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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