Gill Penny is setting up her own brewing business - for tea! With 20 years of experience in natural medicine, she is utterly convinced of the benefits of Kombucha tea and plans to start to brew it in large quantities in Haworth in the New Year. Her willpower has seen her through times of illness and that determination is now helping as she sets up her brewing business from scratch. Jan Winter met her.

Gill Penny has a dream that her Kombucha tea will one day be available from vending machines.

Battling against the problems of setting up a small business, she has already achieved a lot, and will start brewing the so-called natural antibiotic in large quantities in Haworth next month.

As a child she spent many summers with her grandmother, who knew a lot about the healing uses of plants and herbs. Gill then worked in marketing for many years, all the time studying more about herbal medicines.

At the age of 21, Gill was told she had cervical cancer. She had had a smear test only a year earlier and went along for another to keep a colleague company. Ironically, Gill's was the only abnormal smear among all the company's women staff.

"I was whipped into hospital ten days later and the operation they did went wrong. I walked into the hospital and to the operating theatre - I then couldn't walk afterwards for three months. They used a laser and it destroyed a lot of tissue it shouldn't have," she says.

Although clear of the cancer, she was told she would not be able to have children. "I reached 30 as a career girl thinking I couldn't have children. Then I thought I wanted children and at 31 I managed to conceive. My wish was for a girl and a boy."

Gill now has eight-year-old Emma and Jamie, who is six. "They're very, very precious. I could have carried on and never even tried to have children."

And she was so determined to resist medical intervention that she travelled to north Africa during her pregnancies and both children were born there. "With my medical history I just knew if I wanted a natural birth I would have to go abroad. I stayed in hospital for a few hours when I had them and didn't need any stitches."

Gill, who is now 40, practised herbal medicine while she was in Africa, buying new herbs from the souks and local markets.

She returned to England and now, from her Stanbury home near Haworth, she bottles and sells Kombucha tea as well as practising aromatherapy, spiritual healing and herbal medicine and developing the business, helped by expertise from her neighbour, scientist Professor Robert Stanton.

Kombucha tea is grown from a culture, which looks like a pancake floating in a bowl. This gives rise to a new baby culture and the sweet liquid is used to make the tea. The culture itself can also be cut up and eaten.

Gill calls it a Pro-biotic, not an antibiotic, because it encourages the body's own natural bacteria and defences to repair and heal. She says it is particularly useful for disorders such as blood pressure problems, inflammatory conditions such as arthritis, diabetes (for which there is a sugar-free version of the tea), women's hormonal problems, problems with the immune system, and mental health illnesses such as depression.

It has been in use for thousands of years in eastern countries, says Gill, and was rediscovered in the 1950s during a world-wide survey on the incidence of cancer, which found a pocket in Russia where the disease was non-existent and where the people drank Kombucha daily.

The Kombucha culture was taken to America and it found its way into the California alternative health scene and then worldwide.

Gill is convinced of the benefits experienced by people who have come to her for help, and she believes the alternative, holistic approach to health is crucial. She is a member of the Parliamentary group for alternative and complementary medicine, where she can lobby for that method of helping people.

She will have planning permission to brew Kombucha tea in 1,000 and 2,000-litre vats at a dairy farm in Haworth from next month, and hopes to convert a former garage to permanent premises.

Gill has been shocked to find there is no grant aid or help for people trying to establish small businesses - and appeals for anyone with expertise in vending machines or who would like to invest in her business to contact her. She also plans to set up a franchise operation with the Kombucha tea in a year's time.

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