The Budwig Protocol

My friend Marius recommends that I check out the Budwig Protocol.

Marius has recently come crawling back from a two-week Crystal Meth binge so obviously he is my oracle for all things pertaining to good health and well-being.

I google ‘Budwig Protocol’. Oh dear, here we go again. Amongst people who put together alternative cancer therapy websites there seems to be a conspiracy to make the information as dizzyingly convoluted and difficult to read as is possible. I am willing to give them a try. I am wanting to give them a try. But honestly, I find it difficult to ascribe scientific credibility to theories expounded on a website, the authors of which can neither spell nor punctuate.

Anyway, the idea behind the Budwig Protocol, and please correct me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, is to increase the ability of one’s cells to uptake oxygen by eating Omega-3 acids that have been bound to sulphurated amino acids. What that means to the likes of you and me is that we have to get cold-pressed flaxseed oil and whizz it up with quark. No, not the tiny sub-atomic particle but the German yoghurty-cheese stuff. A Large Hadron Collider is not required, you can use a hand-held blender. Cottage cheese will suffice if you can’t get hold of quark. This is to be eaten three times a day. Of course this protocol flies in the face of previous alternative cancer cures that I have been half-heartedly experimenting with. Those expressly forbid dairy products because of all the added hormones. I wonder about the possibility of getting hold of organic goat’s milk quark, but that seems likely to be an alternative step too far.

I foresee that in a short space of time this cure could make one enormously fat but apart from that it seems harmless enough. I am quite skinny at the moment so I’ve resolved to give it a try. Marius already outlined the basics to me so I have bought some flaxseed oil and cottage cheese (cow’s milk, not organic) on the way home. It seems simple enough to add an inoffensive mayonnaisey dressing to my meals.

I delve further into the website. Things to avoid whilst on the Budwig Protocol: sugar (that’s a given on all these regimes); hydrogenated fats (margarine etc. – no problem); animal fats (what, including fish?); white flour (universally shunned); preservatives; chemicals (which ones?); processed foods; supplements (should I bin the vast array of expensive capsules currently sitting in jars on my windowsill?); stress; painkillers; drugs and medications; electromagnetic fields and ‘elctrosmog’ (mobile phones, computers, mobile phone masts etc. - one can only assume that the writer of the website is uploading it via carrier pigeon); chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

I’m not sure that I am yet convinced enough of the efficacy of this cure to abort the chemo halfway through and go all out on the quark.

Finally, I read that the protocol must be followed for a minimum of five years, otherwise the tumours may return and grow more vigorously than before. Suddenly it feels like one of those chain emails where one reads that great good fortune is about to come one’s way but if one doesn’t forward the email to twelve of one's closest friends within five minutes a dire misfortune awaits. One then has to immediately decide between losing twelve of one’s closest friends and being struck down with some hideous affliction, probably cancer.

Obviously, I never did forward those emails.