Chris Woollams: Cancer researcher, Britain’s leading writer on cancer, Editor icon magazine, Founder CANCERactive. Wellness and Holistic Health Presenter, Chris Woollams' Sunday Show; and has "put Complementary and Integrative Oncology on the map almost single-handedly in the UK" according to several Doctors and oncologists.
Chris has had two halves to his adult life - a highly successful advertising career - and now a highly helpful health career.
’Are you the Cancer Guru who helped Geoffrey Boycott beat his cancer?’
Thus started an e-mail from a Doctor to Chris in 2007. Chris does not think of himself in these terms. He is a cancer researcher on a mission to bring people the Truth so they can increase their personal odds of survival.
Every day he receives mailings from cancer centres all over the world and he takes the most relevant and most patient-usable and writes news items; later these are added to articles that he writes or updates on the CANCERactive Website. He then puts them out to his extensive social media following, and includes them in his own e-newsletter to over 50,000 followers. Twice a year he writes, cajoles others into writing, and edits the highly successful icon magazine which goes into 640 cancer centers, hospitals and health sections of libraries and is loved by cancer patients and nurses alike.
Chris is also a highly successful author - 'The Rainbow Diet', 'Heal your Gut - Heal your Body', and 'Everything you need to know to help you beat cancer' are just three of his big sellers.
In 2020, he was asked to host Worldwide Sunday Shows, where either he interviews an expert of note, or he is interviewed on one of his pet topics. These are recoded on Zoom and played out on Vimeo (or are free to members of The CANCERactive Community) and have a attracted a significant following. In the UK alone, a recent show where his son, Ben, interviewed him on the Truth about Vitamin D, had over 2,600 viewers on the day and 20,000 subsequently.
The Website, his Sunday Shows and his e-newsletters are all run from his Thai company BDP in Hua Hin Thailand and he does all this and more without any remuneration from CANCERactive; if fact, not only does he do all this in his 'spare time' for nothing, he still makes personal donations and pays for staff.
Chris Woollams - A knowledge 'Second to none'
’What Chris doesn’t know about cancer, just isn’t worth knowing. I’d love to see him on TV with a panel of oncologists he’d run rings round them. His knowledge and understanding of cancer and his memory of research and facts are second to none’. This is the view of co-founder of CANCERactive, Lindsey Fealey. But many people who know Chris would agree.
He regularly receives e-mails from people who used the resources he provides and/or spoke to him personally. And they invariably tell him they are only alive today because of all this input.
"Frankly I get angry when doctors or nurses say there is no research on complementary or alternative therapies. They are just too lazy to look, or they are closed-minded bigots. Either way, they can come between a cancer patient in need and a good solid research study that could increase their personal odds of survival. And that is just plain Quackery. These ’Nay sayers’ are dangerous. They put lives at risk", says Chris.
One of his patients a few years ago after he'd helped her go from 'terminal' to 'cured' told him that she'd worked him out: 'You don't treat cancer - you treat people,' she said. Another said that her oncologist was 'stuck in the illness business', while Chris was 'Clearly in the Wellness business' and that had been a revelation for her. Another said that Chris was 'The only real Scientist he'd come across in 8 years of dealing with hospitals such as the Royal Marsden'; while another said that the crucial difference with Chris is "He understands what Holistic Health really means".
Chris almost single-handedly put Complementary and Integrative Medicine on the map in the UK
Chris openly says that he believes programmes beat cancer, and that it is naive to believe any single treatment - drug or therapy - could possibly cure a cancer. He is also critical of poor bedside manners. 'Telling people they are 'terminal' or have three months to live is appalling. How could an oncologist possibly think saying this could help a patient'. Put this into context. The first three people Chris ever helped were Geoffrey Boycott, who told everyone on the Sunday Show that his Doctors gave him 12 weeks to live and he cried for 3 days, Galina Dean, who was told she had 3 months to live and to go and write her will, and Mrs Omar who spoke to him on a BBC broadcast about her Grade 4 Breast cancer! 20 years later, they are all alive and well. Chris encourages every patient to be at optimum healthy levels, from vitamin D, to gut health, and stress management. "There's quality research on all of this", he adds. Dr Kate James is clear: Chris has put Complementary and Integrative oncology on the map almost single-handedly in the UK".
Chris Woollams - Worldwide Speaker
Chris is also in high demand - he has spoken at the NHS Conference, the annual Brain Tumour Conference, The International 'Children with cancer conference', and in the USA, Australia, the UK, Russia, Germany and Japan (to 28,000 people). He also helps people build programmes to fight cancer in his spare time, for which he charges, although he pays for staff and makes donations to CANCERactive from that!
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Here is his formal CV. If you want to know more about his work, click here. If you want to read an interview with him, click here.
After leaving Watford Grammar School, where he was head boy, Chris went to Oxford University and read Biochemistry for 4 years, specialising in cancer research and virology.
He then took a 22 year ’sabbatical’ in the world of advertising, rising to MD of Publicis in London when he was just 31. He became the youngest ever Chairman of a multi-national communication and advertising group at Ted Bates 3 years later. He was promoted first to the European, then the Worldwide board - at the time, Ted Bates was the third largest Advertising agency in the world. Whilst creative director of Ted Bates his group created the ’Ain’t no Mountain high enough’ campaign for DHL. It ran, worldwide, for 16 years. It often runs even now! His name is on more than 20 creative awards, but it was as a businessman he excelled.
In 1986 Saatchi and Saatchi bought Ted Bates and asked Chris to run their company as joint chairman, but instead he set up his own. In 1995, with 9 companies and 74 clients (from Virgin to BMW, Citroen to Freemans, the L&G, Pirelli, the RAC and Fedex) he put the company onto the stock market and a year later retired claiming he was ’past his sell-by date’. He had helped launch new companies like Norwich Union Healthcare and Mercury One-to-One, even joining their boards.
From 1995 until 2001, he worked as a Management consultant with a diverse group of companies such as Norwich Union, Sony, BAT, Virgin Active Health Clubs, Kettle Chips UK, and others. In parallel, he pursued his personal interest in health, studying nutrition, health and fitness and body energy systems. He had learned to fly planes, and had even set up a wine cellar company, Spiral Cellars, in the UK.
In 2001 his daughter Catherine (then 22) was diagnosed with a grade 4 malignant brain tumour (GBM) and given 5- 6 months to live. Chris next devoted his life to try and save hers. In so doing accidentally built a new life for himself! From the very outset, he was on a mission to bring ordinary people the 'Truth about cancer', without the vested interest, propaganda or the medical mythology that abounds in the Western world.
Chris now speaks all over the world on cancer and cancer prevention. For example, he has spoken in the USA, Australia, Germany, Russia, Israel and Japan (to 28,000 people, no less) and at the NHS Conference on Primary Care, the worldwide Children with Cancer Conference, the British Brain Cancer Conference, the UK National Cancer Prevention Conference and in schools to both children and Mums.
Chris is still involved in the business world and is listed in Debrett’s People of Today and International business’ Who’s Who’.
He plays sport, golf and chess when he has a free moment! Chris lives in Hua Hin, Thailand - and he has started to build an organic farm - Rainbow Valley Organics. He jokes that his third 'life' is now starting.
CANCERactive is a UK, but virtual, cancer charity.
He has a wife, Min, and four children, Georgina (37), Stephanie (34), Ben (25) and his last fling, Harry (12), plus a step-daughter, Pias. He is proud of them all. He remains a member of the RAC club in the UK, a member of Royal Mougins Golf and country club in Cannes, France, and Springfield Royal Golf resort, Hua Hin, Thailand. He is also a member of the Confrerie de Tastevin in Burgundy.
He was made a Freeman of the City of London in 2008. (For interest and fun - other Freeman have included Lord Nelson, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking and Sir Tim Berners-Lee.)
Chris is a philanthropist too - he has donated considerable sums of money to charity plus profits from his highly successful books. He sits on other group boards in the Far East and has been involved in the UK Government steering group on EMFs, and is a patron of several charities seeking to protect children from toxins and EMFs.
Go to: The Butterfly - Catherine Woollams