Annabel Croft has said she believes her husband Mel Coleman would have survived longer if he had changed his diet.
The 58-year-old former tennis player and Strictly Come Dancing star lost her husband, Mel Coleman, to cancer in May 2023, 16 weeks after he was diagnosed. The banker died of sepsis caused by a perforated tumour.
She used the show as a way to process the grief, with the support of her dance partner Johannes Radebe. Coleman and Croft first met in 1987 when he taught her to sail for a TV programme. They were married in 1993 and shared three children together.
While the deterioration of Coleman’s health was rapid, Croft now believes that continuing to eat carbohydrates and sugar while he was sick shortened his life.
“People don’t realise this, he had stage four cancer,” she said on The Mid Point podcast, in quotes obtained by Daily Mail. “It started with colon cancer, but it could have been across everywhere at the same time. But it spread into the liver, it was spread into the kidneys, even possibly into the brain as well.
“But what he actually died of was sepsis and there was a perforation from one of the tumours. We’d gone on this flight to Portugal thinking he was going to get some sunshine and some respite from all of his treatment. I think maybe on that flight, it may have just swollen something and perforated one of the tumours.”
Croft said that she has since learned Coleman’s treatment might have been aided by some lifestyle changes.
“I will just say this because I think it’s important to pass on this information from what I’ve learned from the cancer specialist Dr Isabelle Cooper who treated him.
“I’ve since learned that if you have cancer you absolutely must not put any sugar in your body at all, and that includes carbohydrates.”
However, Croft said there is a lack of awareness of diet among members of the medical profession.
“But when he had just had this news delivered he said to the surgeon ‘If I’m going to have to have lots of operations, what should I eat?’” she said Coleman had asked.
“And he said ‘Oh, I have no idea about nutrition, I’ve never studied it – if you feel like some chocolate why don’t you have some chocolate’. And of course in hindsight, now knowing what I know about cancer treatment and through a specialist who deals with it and studies it all day long, that any sugar, glucose that goes into the body will divide that cell and spread it.”
She added: “He went on ketogenic metabolic therapy and that is basically fuelling your body on fat and meat. On the last scans just before Mel died, it was showing a massive retraction of the cancer cells.
“So the work that they were doing was working and it’s just so tragic that he died of sepsis. The only thing I would say is he died with complete hope as to what he was doing.”
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