Detoxification

Two Bladder Cancer Cures Achieved via Water Fasting

Part 1

In the following, a humourous cancer survivor shares two impressive testimonials, showing the failure of conventional oncology and the power of nature & the human spirit to heal the body while highlighting a spiritual dimension to fasting.

Two Frenchmen, Jean-Claude Gruau and Michel Dagon, both formerly suffering from bladder cancer (stage 2 and stage 3, respectively), healed themselves of their tumors, after allopathic treatment had failed, via simple extended water fasting (a full 39 days in the case of Michel Dagon and a whopping 28 days for Jean-Claude Gruau).

There are few things in my eyes that demonstrate the inbuilt or creator-given self-healing nature of the human body (see Nature Heals) more powerfully, memorably and clearly than healing testimonials such as these.

The persons experiencing the healing relied on nothing external beyond water (and not even any special kind of water or large amounts of it^[1]).

They took no special "healing diet", they took no supplements, they took no particular detoxification measures beyond scraping their tongues and drinking water and they certainly took no medications.

They just allowed their body to rest while doing its self-healing work undisturbed, and simply provided it the apparently only essential input it needed: water!

Additionally, these cure testimonials contain all the "classical" elements:

Conventional cancer treatment had been followed for years in Jean-Claude Gruau’s case (in fact, Jean-Claude’s tumor was treated by the best urologist his country had to offer, all to no avail while his condition progressively declined).

There was also complete disinterest of their former oncologists in the healing that their previous patients eventually achieved on their own, and yes, even the story of how a doctor changed his "diagnosis" on the spot to preserve his preconceived ideas of “what works” (in his mind, allopathy) and “what doesn't” (to his thinking, self-healing via diet and fasting) at the cost of integrity.

These cure testimonials also contain the factors needed to prove that we are looking at true long-term cancer cures which cannot be written off as based on simple misdiagnoses, spontaneous remission and similar things.

In fact they are medically well documented and both witnesses are individuals of above-average education and cancer-free to this day, 7 and 20 years respectively after they healed themselves via fasting, belief and determination.

In addition we find here factors frequently encountered in such DIY cancer healings: nutritional reform (in both cases via the dietary system called macrobiotics), firm determination (to keep one's bladder), belief (nurtured by books such as those written by Dr. Herbert Shelton, the major proponent of Natural Hygiene, on the healing successes achieved via fasting and that of Monique Couderc who recounted her successful self-treatment of uterine cancer, consisting in a twenty-one-day fast, in book form), the trust in the body’s self-healing power, i.e. the conviction that "I know that I can get well", humour and even an element of spiritual healing and a spiritual dimension.

What I found particularly fascinating is the personal and spiritual “side benefits” of fasting experienced by Jean-Claude Gruau such as joy, and the feeling of greater light, aliveness and of oneness with all life.

In spite of all these positive attributes, it is my duty however as a conscientious "reporter" sharing information in the field of holistic healing to point out the observed dangers of fasting, as well as direct the reader to somewhat similar but possibly less dangerous and overall more effective and easy to do healing alternatives for cancer patients. You will find this discussed in the Introductory note on fasting in cancer patients by Healing Cancer Naturally.

As you will read, it is Jean-Claude Gruau’s heartfelt wish to share his and Michel Dagon’s testimonials, as his own healing (and the courage to take it into his own hands in the first place) was decisively assisted by what he had read in healing testimonials given by others.

I’ve digested my (bladder) cancer and learned to live

Gaining confidence in our self-healing capabilities

by Jean-Claude Gruau © 1992 & 2002, originally published at http://jeanclaude.gruau.free.fr/Conf%E9rence1%20en%20anglais.htm, English version edited and published with permission of the author by copyright © September 2008 Healing Cancer Naturally

The following is the manuscript of a speech I gave in Tours, France, around ten years ago. I have added some recent comments (2002) in italics.

The terrain is everything, said Pasteur on his deathbed. I believe that though we are surrounded by billions of microbes, viruses and other harmful elements, they are powerless against an organism that knows how to defend itself.

Like everyone else, I went to the doctor when I was ill. To me, illness was like dirt on a beautifully presented plate of food. I, then, was the culinary creation, the illness was the dirt that didn't belong there. This dirt had to be treated by a dish-washing specialist with a remedy such as Fairy Liquid that would remove all traces of it.

I took my body to the doctor like I'd take my car to the garage. This was until I became convinced that "THE BODY KNOWS BETTER THAN ANYBODY ELSE HOW TO DEFEND ITSELF".

I've been lucky to have had two serious illnesses as they forced me to reconsider my previous attitude.

On September 3, 1980, I consulted a urologist since the theoretical surface a man is able to sprinkle with water (the very trait which for millenia has established man's superiority over woman) tended towards zero in my case. He told me there was a small polyp slumbering in my bladder. One year later, the polyp had grown and I was due for a rude awakening. I was out hiking in the countryside when my urine suddenly turned red, and REALITY IMPOSED ITSELF. I was urinating blood.

Hurrying back to the doctor's, I was about to have my vocabulary enriched by words like hematuria and resect, all new words to me that I had to look up in the dictionary. Resection, I discovered, doesn't mean cutting apart again but cutting out an unhealthy part of an organ to assure the healthy functioning of that organ.

The idea behind the Inquisition suddenly became clearer. By removing or mutilating parts of the living body of the patient, his unhealthy being could be assured of a healthy soul. Dear Listener, when you remove a small damaged piece from a pear, you perform a resection without knowing it.

In October 1981, my surgeon resects by electro-coagulating a huge tumour which, he told me, had grown beyond something or other. I've never quite understood in which way. He also took the opportunity to send a specimen to the Origet laboratory for analysis.

The laboratory concluded that I had a malignant tumour called "Transitional cell (grade 2) papillary carcinoma". As far as I know, the adjective transitional is what differentiates the cells of a benign tumour from those of a cancerous one. I considered all these statements much later. At the time I didn't worry much about it, just saw it as a bit of bad luck, and didn't feel the need to look anything up in the dictionary. If I had, I would have had a small shock as "carcinoma" refers to a cancerous tumour.

But I became rather more concerned some time later. Before my operation they sent me for radiation treatment at Bretonneau (one of the hospitals in Tours). So that "there would be no dissemination", I was told.

The average Frenchman, among whose ranks I have the honour to belong, knows that when they give you radiation treatment it's because there is a cancer somewhere. My urologist, Doctor Besancenez, had talked to me about an enormous polyp. So what, I thought? Who hasn't got his polyps these days?

I have since learnt that when the tumour completely fills the bladder and above all when it becomes invasive, it is too late: you have to remove the entire bladder or the metastases won't be controllable any longer. A few years later, I would arrive at this critical stage, and it would take more than an inoffensive polyp to have me remove my bladder!

In the meantime, I had my first experience of medical specialization. After the operation it was very painful to urinate (I was pissing razor blades as the uncouth would say). I asked my urologist for help and he sent me to my family doctor. Pain, I assume, cannot be cut out.

This reminds me of a comedian who noted that a good specialist has an enormous knowledge of a very narrow subject matter. Taking this to the extreme, the best specialist then knows everything about nothing.

My surgeon was an excellent surgeon (the only reason why he is not a university professor being due to the fact that he had not wanted to, as a university professor told me in private), but he was very busy. He didn't even have the time to read a manuscript where I described my recovery, which is normal, I suppose, as he occupies himself with the ill, and not with the healthy.

In summary, WHEN YOU HAVE CANCER OR WHEN YOUR PARTNER DECEIVES YOU, you are usually the last one to find out. Also, if you read the Latin of a medical dossier, consult a good dictionary or a professor in Latin. The abracadabra often hides horrible truths.

But maybe you'd prefer to remain blissfully ignorant, something which is more common than you might think. Then there really shouldn't be a problem, you just have to let yourself be sent to sleep by the Greco-Latin jargon delivered with one or two neologisms used by the initiated. (Years later, for instance, Michel Dagon [see second speech] is suspected of harbouring a "deep neoplasm". My dear friends, if you have neoplastic disease, you have cancer.)

One month later, my "resector" told me that a part of the tumour was still there. It had either been missed out during the operation, given the size of the enormous tumour, or had grown afterwards. This was also removed, but shortly after (one or two months) another tumour appeared! The surgeon calmly explained to me that he would have to take away part of the bladder.

Now, I started to react. Like an obedient little dog, I had accepted whatever medical treatments and Greek Latin words were thrown at me, but this was about separating me for good from a part of my precious body. It might only be a fraction of a square inch of bladder, but I suddenly became conservative.

But what luck! My wife's brother is a urologist (but he is based in Marseille). Owing to his outstanding academic performance, he was once chosen by the staff of celebrity commandant Cousteau. Thanks to him I would get an appointment with one of the two greatest urologists in France, namely his previous professor, Professor Kuss at the Hospital de la Pitié Salpêtrière in Paris.

Instead of cutting, Professor Kuss would "glitter" this bit of remaining tumour. In the rest of the country they electrocoagule, but in Paris they "glitter" which is exactly the same thing but with more panache. Paris will always be Paris… I told myself that glittered by a glittering professor the tumour would disappear, evaporated by the prestigious professor himself if nothing else!

Two months later, not at all intimidated by the Parisian prestige, the tumour had grown back. The Professor, instead of examining me with his instrument (a kind of magnifying glass which was inserted to reach the location), asked me politely to urinate in a glass, studied the beautiful colour of what I had produced and congratulated me by charging 400 francs. Having seen no trace of red in the urine, I suppose, he deduced that nothing had grown back, that there was no relapse, as they say among urologists!

I returned to Tours, lighter but content, but not for long. I soon got a fever and had to return to Paris in an ambulance. The glitter had mis-fired! Professor Kuss' conclusion was the same as that of Doctor Besancenez in Tours; the place where the tumour kept growing back, and back, and back again, had to be removed. Having waited would cost me half of my left kidney.

When I returned to Paris, this left kidney was completely blocked by the tumour that obstructed the urinary tract that joins the kidney and the bladder. So, not only would they take away a few fractions of a square inch of my bladder, but I would lose half a kidney through not having had confidence in Doctor Besancenez (whom I had never seen verifying by a glance at a glass the existence of any possible relapse).

These periods in the Paris hospital proved very instructive. You are first patient by definition, then by necessity, the only thing left is to be patient by choice which is the beginning of Wisdom.

You are surrounded by white coats. Under these coats there are junior doctors, real doctors, up to the highest level, and finally Professor Kuss himself in a very starched coat. The number of phrases that come out of the top of a coat are inversely proportional to hierarchical position of that coat. Above all, there was a constant flow of very efficient coats: the typically very sympathetic nurses.

Having returned to Tours, I am back to Dr Besancenez. He does what he advised to do from the start, i.e. remove the small part of bladder where the tumour has firmly taken root. A job which he does fabulously, he then has to reattach the urinary tract as the piece of bladder that was removed is located exactly where the urinary canal meets the bladder.

But having myself cut into little pieces, even by a confirmed specialist, does not appeal to me and I TAKE THE DECISION TO KEEP MY BLADDER (at least what is left of it) whatever happens. There is a persistent rumour that we will all die one day and if I anyhow do, I might as well do it in one piece.

I had arrived at a moral stage of "blown it anyway". It's a beneficial stage, because finally being there, I decide to act. My natural tendency, as is that of most people, is to run with the herd, no matter if it's heading straight for the edge of the cliff and everyone will fall into the sea far below.

The most important thing is to not be left behind, not be the last one. Because, what if there would be no place left for me!? What if I would be left out?! The thought is terrifying and all you can think about is how to get there the fastest possible way. It's the only way to be sure you won't miss out. Hurry up, Ladies and Gentlemen, there is not enough for everyone, the advertisers tell us. Get in quickly and buy quickly. Come on, hurry up! Faster! Faster!

When I had my first operation, the surgeon had warned my wife that my carcinoma, given the malignant nature of the tumour I am equipped with, would lead to radical cystectomy (the removal of the whole bladder) within a maximum of ten years.

My surgeon does not believe in rushing things, he speaks with his twenty-five years of experience of tumours, as he tells me later. He announces a precise judgement, scientific and statistical, which my wife did not tell me until much later. Since I had ten years of bladder ahead of me, why worry me in advance? I was lucky to have intuitively felt that I was caught in an inexorable process of having my bladder gradually reduced to nothing.

At this point, I was ready to consider any and all kinds of alternative medicine to get better. So I try the "macrobiotic" diet after having attended a speech in Tours given by Madame Rivière, high priestess of this diet.

I will not subject you to an entire lecture on macrobiotics, there are people more qualified than I to do that. Briefly, this lady recommended to me a diet of various, mainly Japanese, ingredients in vague but rather small quantities (especially as I am a big eater), and prescribed a minimum of liquid intake.

I stuck to the diet for three days! At the end of the three days I was literally on my knees, and had difficulties just to get up a flight of stairs… So, I stopped, telling myself that if a diet could heal one of cancer, everyone would have known about it. My brother-in-law, the former best student of his urology class, had never heard of a diet like this during his entire career. Neither, I suspect, have you who are here tonight. Which, by the way, is the reason I am making this speech.

Two months later I meet Mr Fujisaki (my son's yoga teacher at the time). It was he who had brought Madame Rivière to Tours to lecture on macrobiotics. I explained to him why I'd only managed three days on the diet called Number 7 (for people who are very ill). But, he exclaimed, people have healed themselves in this manner, and gave me a written testimony by an American physician, Dr Satilaro. The book was called Recalled by Life.

This book convinced me and I put an end to my life as a carnivore at a memorable feast to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of one of my colleagues. From then on, it was to be whole-grain rice, seaweed, millet, oats and gruau (French for a particular type of fine wheat flower which is, in fact, my surname) for us. I say "us" because my wife, in an act of solidarity, was to follow the same diet as myself.

After three days I was on my knees once again, but not my wife. This was a significant sign since I'm normally much more resistant than her (for example I can do 300 km on a bicycle in one day while she gets tired after about 100 km). When it came to macrobiotics she proved to be the stronger one. So I continued diet Number 7.

I began to melt away like ice in the sun. Within a month my weight was reduced from around seventy-eight to eighty kilos to approximately sixty kilos. And what about the tumour? In October 1987, I still had one, but it had stopped growing. Before the diet there had been several that kept growing back after every surgery.

For nearly a year, this tumour stayed with me. In the beginning my urologist examined me every two months, in October and December 1987, and in February 1988. There was still only one tumour. In the end I stopped seeing him as where an urologist is concerned, every identified tumour should be removed. But I no longer wanted to be put to sleep, electrocoagulated or submitted to any kind of surgery. I just wanted to awaken every single capacity my body possessed to defend itself.

This year, 1987-1988, would prove to be very pleasant. I was officially on a diet, but in reality I gorged myself on large amounts of cereals, cereals that I had learnt to cook and to appreciate. I no longer ate butter, milk, sugar, nor fruit (which was the more difficult one). Nor did I eat, of course, any meat or cheese. This might seem like a feat to accomplish, but really it wasn't. You get used to it very quickly. Or at least I was lucky enough to get used to it quickly.

Though I might have seemed to be suffering the restraints of a severe diet, I experienced no inconveniences as I was eating plentifully of what pleased me. I remember a buckwheat meal with some tamari that I enjoyed as if it had been a roast of lamb (in terms of pleasure only as there is not the least resemblance).

My first success proved to be completely unexpected. As I told you before, I had two illnesses. In addition to the carcinoma, I had a haemorrhaging recto-colitis, a condition which manifests itself in bouts of illness where the bowels empty themselves in a horrifying blood-mixed mess. Only high doses of cortisone in the form of Betnesol would help against these attacks.

Medical science does not currently know why this illness occurs. Anyway, I had suffered from this for over twenty years. In the beginning, there were only minor daily amounts of blood which would in a few years develop to more and more frequent heavy bouts once or twice a year.

I had just had the beginnings of such a bout when I started my macrobiotic diet, but only took very little Betnesol and then stopped altogether. Since five years (which in 2002 makes 15 years) I no longer suffer from this condition.

This was completely unexpected. I had even had a talk with a professor in gastro-enterology at CHR in Tours who had advised me not to go ahead with the diet. I had told him that it was out of the question for me to take 6 tablets of Salazopirine per day (a special preventative for this condition) as my diet recommended that I drank as little as possible and took a minimum of medicaments.

I did not want to spend my day rinsing down capsules. This ailment being cured had nothing to do with the fast I undertook later. The success was entirely due to macrobiotics.

I will mention in passing that my wife had had an eczema for twenty years which disappeared after three months of macrobiotics. Another complete surprise as Christine only followed the diet to accompany me, and not to heal herself from anything whatsoever! I can also tell you that my wife who has suffered from winter colds since the year dot doesn't get them anymore. These are all little things that do, after all, improve the quality of life…

Consequently, I was totally ecstatic at the time. To remind you, after one year of dieting, the carcinoma is certainly still there, but has the good taste not to spread; I no longer suffer from recto-colitis; and my wife has had many unexpected improvements in her health. The only real sacrifice was giving up desserts since, if you ask me, the right to have desserts should be included in the Charter of Human Rights.

I quickly got used to this tumour, however. Like the people who live next to Etna, the possibility of a volcanic eruption does not stop them, and luckily so, from sleeping at night. But, in November 1988, Etna woke up.

My urine turned red again and that was only the beginning. Enormous clots of blood appeared, so large that seven months later one of them got stuck and obstructed the "plumbing". I felt that my "erection nerve" was just holding on by a thread (this famous nerve often disappears when the bladder is removed, which I think is a considerable reason to keep one’s bladder).

I had of course been told that in macrobiotics, quantity kills quality. I was now ready to follow this advice to the letter. First, I started with a fast which would last for one week between the 19th and 26th November 1988. This was my first medical fast and, what a surprise, it went well! I continued to take my bicycle to school, though later on I'd catch a lift with my colleagues, but more from fear of weakness than any actual weakness.

To break the fast I asked Madame Rivière for advice. She advised five teaspoons of various ingredients, one pinch of gomasio, two cups of liquid, and 120 grams of cereals per day. I felt like asking, before or after the meal? Breaking the fast proved to be hard, above all the thirst. But when I see blood coming out of my body, I am strongly inclined to drink as little as possible as it's as if, with my body in a state of turmoil, the liquids I drink, drain me of blood.

To find out what The Faculty thinks of my bladder, I decide to have a sonogram (ultrasound scan). “But for which doctor?”, asks the secretary at the centre where they do the sonograms. “For Doctor X”, I tell her (X is a letter being used all day long in my job as a maths teacher). The secretary wrote very ornately in the box for prescribing doctor: "Doctor X". Now, I am very pleased with Doctor X, because Dr X that's me. Or, perhaps more so, Christine, as we are medical partners.

We do score some points; on 17 January, exactly two months after the hematuria returned (hematuria being the occurrence of blood in the urine), the hematuria suddenly disappears. I am once again in the fraternity of the clear and yellows.

I cry victory to every member of my family. My brother-in-law informs me that it means nothing, huge tumours do not necessarily cause blood in the urine and vice versa. Well possible, the Doctors X appreciate, but for the time being the tumour is not bleeding. The blood does come back a few weeks later.

It is hard, after all: no vegetables, little to drink, I am dehydrating myself, but at least I spill less blood into the environment. I drink six to seven hundred grams of liquids instead of the daily liter and a half advocated by The Faculty. Sometimes I feel terribly drained of energy. I think twice before walking up a flight of stairs, and taking a spoon from a drawer demands an amazing amount of energy.

My blood pressure is eighty over forty, the nurse at my school tells me. The infirmary has become my headquarters and the days I work both mornings and afternoons I rest there between noon and two o'clock.

I weigh 55 kilos, and I'm beginning to feel really tired. Mr Fujisaki, Shokou to those who know him, gives me shiatsu twice a week. This consists of pressing on different pressure points located along what the Orientals call meridians.

One of these meridians is named the Bladder Meridian and, believe me, I am very familiar with this one. I always know when Mr Fujisaki solicits this meridian by a kind of prickling I feel in the nose, because this meridian also passes through the nasal area. When he is finished, I am completely drained.

The second point scored is much more remarkable. As Doctor X, I had prescribed myself three sonograms, one in December, one in February and one in April. At first, the comparison between the first two was catastrophic. The tumour appeared larger on the second ultrasound and disheartened I felt ready to give it all up. I even allowed myself some diversions from the diet.

The 11th of April 1988, I studied the ultrasound scans again, and saw that I had been mistaken. Instead of reading the statements of the two radiologists I should have read what was written on the scans themselves.

My heart thumping I hurried to my usual radiologist. He looked at the pictures and said: "But Mr Gruau, it's worse than ever!" (Implying, see what happens when you try to treat yourself.) What a joy this "worse than ever" was! "Look at the dates," I told him and he looked at them with great surprise. He soon started to retreat on his previous verdict!

He too had thought for an instant that the worse-looking scan was the most recent. It was obvious that his subconscious could not have envisaged the opposite! The incredible thing was how quickly he toned down his verdict. "Well, the two scans aren't really that different," he told me and I am sure he said it in good faith.

From that moment on, my faith in macrobiotics and fasting has been unshakable. My starvation diet had reduced the carcinoma which had then slightly grown with a more expanded regime.

This sign of hope meant a lot, because April and May proved to be very hard. Blood streamed out of me when I urinated. The 1st of June I had no more than 1.9 million red blood cells. Sometimes, just speaking in a loud voice was difficult. Blood transfusions became necessary.

I had a long telephone conversation with René Levy at the Centre of Food and Health to ask for his advice. Either he would receive me at his place and I would follow his instructions, or I would be operated on again. He told me it would be necessary to face up to things and stop the loss of blood. Filled with dread, I made an appointment with my urologist.

I started eating chocolate and cakes, it was the beginning of a period of alimentary madness! The 21st of June another blood transfusion. My red blood cells went up to 2.24 million (the normal number is around 5 million).

The 26th of June, I hit rock bottom, I can no longer urinate. A blood clot has blocked the passageway completely. (On the 25th I'd been to Grenoble to see spiritual facilitator Maguy Lebrun, I will explain about her later.) I was taken to the hospital in emergency, where instead of being checked I am given a sedative (my urologist wasn't there)! I had a fourth transfusion of three bottles of blood to get me in shape for another operation, and then, from one day to the next, there isn't a single drop of blood in my urine.

My urologist is seriously pushing me into having my bladder taken out. In surgical jargon it is called "excision". What a joy this language is!

My brother-in-law writes me a letter full of drama to appeal to me to do as the urologist says. “You will end up on your knees begging for this ablation”, he wrote.

But I had reached a turning point. Thanks to Shelton's books on fasting, to Monique Couderc, who wrote a book about how she successfully treated her uterine cancer with a twenty-one-day fast, and to the book by Satilaro who was cured of advanced cancer through macrobiotics, I know that I can get well.

Continue to Part 2

... and for the best, easiest, and least expensive ways I know to heal cancer

after studying the subject for some twenty years, click here.

Footnotes

1 I asked Jean-Claude what kind of water he used for his fasts and the fast of Michel that he supervised. He said that during his first fast, he drank filtered water and later mineral water, and he took good care to make sure that Michel didn’t ingest tap water either. For those who speak French, an interview with Jean-Luc can be seen on www.dailymotion.com/video/xlycrq .

Related section

Detoxification