The Story of James McCraw

19 July 2020 33 By Roberto Pugliese

Here is the story of James McCraw, a 7-year survivor of a glioblastoma. It all started in July 2013. It was a strange Monday, in the evening James goes out for dinner and as soon as he has ordered he feels strange, his head continues to stretch to the right and he cannot speak. He had never felt this way. A waitress noticed that he was having an epileptic attack. Then the attack passed. James got in the car but decided together with his girlfriend to go to the hospital and as soon as he entered the emergency room he had another seizure. So they decided to do a resonance that revealed the presence of a brain tumor.

The surgery was scheduled for August 13th. The operation was conducted with the semi awake patient. James was released on August 16th. Rehabilitation began in September. The oncologist informed James that he would be lucky to live 9 months after the diagnosis.

On 12 September chemotherapy with Temodar began and on 18th radiotherapy. The whole thing lasted for 45 days. Soon James failed in financial problems due to the high treatment costs and then he issue the request for the recognition of his disability and Obamacare.

James had to learn to speak again. Even memory had some problems and also the concept of time and mathematics. With language, the biggest problem was finding words. Some problems still persist today.

Prior to glioblastoma, James had a normal life, a transportation company, and earned around $ 100,000 a year. By chance James entered a site that talked about using garlic to fight glioblastoma. In fact, it appears that the garlic is able to pass the blood brain barrier and to fight the stem cells of the tumor. James then begins to take two cloves of raw garlic a day after peeling it and leaving it in the air for a few minutes. James remained tumor-free until December 2015 when the tumor returned.

James’s oncologist was thinking about a new surgery and chemotherapy but decided to consult a specialist who decided to wait another three months before making a new resonance. James attributes the cause of the recurrence to the fact that he had gone from raw garlic to garlic in tablets for a few months so he decided to return to raw garlic and started looking for other natural methods to combat glioblastoma. He added Curcumin, Ginger, Cayenne pepper, Boswelia, Black Seed Oil to his diet. Every day James took 8g to 12g of curcumin (about 3 tbsp. Tea) with a pinch of black pepper so that curcumin can get through the liver. Curcumin also appears to pass the blood brain barrier and to be capable of attacking the stems of glioblastoma.

After 3 months the tumor was gone.

Since James had not done any treatment other than this diet he attributed the result to the diet. Normally glioblastoma, especially if it is a recurrence does not go away on its own, on the contrary, it is normally much more aggressive.

Having heard that sugar and carbohydrates feed the tumor, James decided to remove these from his diet. James’s diet also abounds in broccoli, black beans, avocado, ginger, cayenne pepper, almond milk, and other foods that are supposed to exercise an anti-cancer function.

A full 7 years have passed and James is fine. Resonances show no signs of his tumor. We don’t know exactly why: James may have been just lucky, he may have to survive anyway. What we know is that he had a grade IV glioblastoma multiforme and that together with traditional therapy i.e. the Stupp protocol he took and continues to take a spices based diet every day, in particular he takes raw garlic, curcumin (3% of turmeric), ginger, boswelia and black seed oil. The important thing though is that James managed to defeat the Terminator!

James maintains a blog (GBM13) and has written the book Killing Cancer With Spices – Revised: Inflammation – Cancer Stem Cells.

Some references related to the approach followed by James can be found here: