“There are two types of treatments for a tumor, Signor Battistini: conventional oncological treatments and those that are referred to as ‘alternative’ treatments, a word I don’t particularly like. . . . Alternative to what? I prefer to call them natural treatments, because they follow the course of nature.”
I listen without interrupting Dr. Zanella, a naturopath in her early fifties, practically the spitting image of Madonna.
“The first type of treatment chiefly concerns the sickness,” the pop star tells me, “while the second type follows a holistic approach, which is to say, it treats the person as a whole.”
I still can’t say whether I’m in the presence of a charlatan, a genuine Madonna, or an enlightened guru of deeper understanding.
“The conventional approach,” she continues, “attempts to restore a state of health with pharmaceuticals, pills, drugs, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, and focuses little or not at all on the patient’s lifestyle and diet. How do they think they’re going to save a sick person by stuffing his body with chemicals? By continuing to poison him? The word pharmaceutical comes from the ancient Greek word pharmakon, and it’s no accident that it means ‘poison.’”
If I’d been listening when we studied ancient Greek at school, I never would have set foot in a pharmacy.
“A tumor almost always consists of a proliferation of cells due to a discharge of internal poisons, such as polluted air, alcohol, tobacco smoke, unhealthy foods, foods contaminated with pesticides, and other foods that are bad for the human body, such as dairy products, meat, refined sugars, and so on.”
“Wait, I don’t understand . . . dairy products, meat, and sugars . . . are bad for you?”
“Very bad for you, for various reasons. What do you usually eat, on an everyday basis?”
“I eat normally. Mediterranean diet . . . pasta, tomatoes, steaks, cheeses.”
“That’s terrible. What about breakfast?”
I hesitate.
“For breakfast I usually have a . . . a doughnut.”
“Deep-fried?”
“Sure, deep-fried, the classic sugar doughnut. My father-in-law is a pastry chef.”
The singer looks at me as if I’d just told her I eat roast babies every morning.
“Let me explain, Signor Battistini. A doughnut is made of superfine baking flour that has been refined so that there are no vitamins in it, because it has been bleached and industrially processed. Superfine baking flour—like all refined food products—causes an increase in your glycemic levels and a resulting rise in insulin, and therefore a general weakening of the organism, which thus becomes increasingly subject to disease and tumors.”
I can’t figure out whether she’s serious or is just kidding me. She insists on dismantling all the foundations of my daily diet—from eggs, which, she informs me, come from farm-raised, antibiotic-fed hens; to milk, which has too much casein, creates inflammation, and deprives the body of calcium; to sugar, which is simply malevolent; to heated oil, which is cancerogenous.
“Can-cer-og-e-nous,” She repeats the word with a perverse satisfaction. “Your morning doughnut is your worst enemy!”
I’m in shock. This may be the biggest shock of my life since my parents abandoned me and Italy was defeated in the 1994 World Cup. Doughnuts are bad for your health. I ask if I can go to the bathroom. Actually, I’m just hiding out so I can do some quick online research with my smart phone. I need to know. I’m thirsty for knowledge.
My good friend Google helps out as usual. The naturopath is perfectly right. Everything she says has a solid basis in scientific fact.
I return to Dr. Zanella’s office and decide to dig a little deeper. The main question is, as always, straightforward: “Am I too late to do anything?”
“Perhaps not. A body falls ill because it’s been poisoned over the course of time. With toxic foods, pharmaceuticals, drugs, alcohol, and repressed emotions.”
“I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I don’t take drugs, except for maybe a joint twice a year.”
“But you eat doughnuts. And who knows what other crap.”
I feel like an elementary school student sent to stand in the corner.
“You see, to treat cancer, you need to change the way you eat and live, and that means raw foods, vegetable drinks, plenty of sunlight, yoga breathing exercises, and the total abandonment of carcinogenic foods, medicines, and other products. If the tumor isn’t too far advanced, then it’s possible to limit it or even put it into remission.”
“What can I do?”
“Let’s start with two days of total fasting. Cancer is a parasite that lives inside you. If you don’t eat, it doesn’t eat either. But you have stores of energy that will let you live longer.”
A question seems quite natural.
“Why doesn’t everyone do it?”
“Pharmaceutical houses. Is that a sufficient answer? If people knew that the most purifying substance there is is nettle extract, what would pharmacists sell?”
“So two days of diet?” I ask, in sheer terror.
“Not diet, fasting. After the first two days of digestive rest, I’d start the diet proper. A food regimen designed to cause the tumor to regress is a partial fast on the basis of raw, organic, fresh vegetables.”
She goes on drawing up a list of things that I can and cannot eat. Practically speaking, it’s a vegan diet.
“At night, before going to bed, I’d recommend a plaster of cabbage leaves and spa mud, applied to the liver and the torso in correspondence to the lungs.”
I interrupt her. “What are my chances of recovery?”
“I want to be straight with you. If you’d come to me a year ago, with a tumor in an embryonic state, without ever having had chemotherapy, I would have told you that the odds in your favor were ninety-nine percent. But at your present state of development of this disease, your chances are slim. Still, you do have a chance to improve the quality of life in the time remaining to you, to feel more energetic . . . and after all, you never know. The human organism is an unpredictable and complicated machine, preprogrammed to heal. It can always surprise us.”
The last couple of lines seem to have been inserted just to keep me from getting depressed.
“Are you going to give it a try?” asks Madonna, finally flashing me a smile.