The Gerson Therapy
The Gerson therapy’s aim is to deal with the cause of disease, not with its symptoms, and its focus is on what it sees as the two major enemies of health, namely toxicity and deficiency. Both are the result of today’s de-natured, artificial lifestyle.
Once the underlying problems are recognized, they can be treated: the deficiency is eliminated with hyper-alimentation, the toxicity with systematic detoxification. Despite their vital importance these methods are simple, straightforward and transparent. Above all, they make sense.
Hyper-alimentation
The answer to deficiency is to give the body maximum amounts of the best possible foodstuffs. However, seriously ill patients are usually unable to eat much. Their appetite and digestion are poor, and their elimination is inadequate. The way forward is juicing, since almost every patient is able to drink a freshly prepared glass of organic juice every hour. Once that routine is established, the nutrients the body so desperately needs are in constant supply.
Detoxification
As soon as the body is being flooded with live nutrients, these are rapidly absorbed and force accumulated toxins from the cells into the blood stream, which in turn transports them to the liver, the body’s chief organ of detoxification. After a lifetime of living on a so-called normal modern diet many patients have already accumulated considerable amounts of food additives, residues of pesticides. As a result the liver is unable to deal with the newly arriving toxins, driven from the tissues by the live nutrients.
Unless quickly shifted, these released toxins could lead to life-threatening self intoxication and liver coma; hence the vital role of the rapidly detoxifying frequent coffee enemas which are a cornerstone of the Gerson Therapy.
The Gerson Therapy Schedule
With today’s more toxic environment most patients need to be on the therapy for at least two years, and in many cases three. Non-malignant diseases such as arthritis and Lupus fall on the shorter end of that scale, while advanced cases of cancer fall closer to the three year range.
The full Gerson Therapy is prescribed for general cancer patients who are not severely weakened and have not been pre-treated with chemotherapy. This schedule covers the first 3-4 weeks of the treatment.
Later the schedule changes eases somewhat, but the basics remain the same.
Hourly Schedule
|
Time 6:00 8:00 9:30 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00 22:00 |
Enema Coffee Coffee Coffee Coffee |
Juice Orange Carrot/Apple Carrot/Apple Carrot Green Carrot/Apple Green Carrot Carrot Carrot/Apple Green Carrot/Apple |
Gerson Therapy - Forbidden Foods
- All processed foods
- Alcohol
- Avocados
- Berries (except currants)
- Bicarbonate of soda in foods, toothpaste and gargle
- Bottled and canned commercial beverages (soft drinks)
- Cake, candy, chocolate, all kinds of sweets (high sugar and fats, no nutritional value)
- Cheese
- Cocoa
- Coffee for drinking (except as used in the castor oil treatment)
- Cosmetics, hair dyes, permanents
- Cream
- Cucumber (poorly digestible)
- Dried fruit if sulphured or glazed with oil
- Drinking water
- Epsom salts (also for foot baths)
- Fats and oils (sole exception: Flax Seed Oil)
- Flour (white, wholemeal, also flour products, e.g. pasta)
- Fluoride, in water and toothpaste
- Ice cream, sherbet (artificial flavours, sweeteners, cream)
- Legumes (only occasional use in latter part of therapy)
- Milk (also defatted or low fat)
- Mushrooms (fungi, not vegetable)
- Nuts (high in fats, wrong configuration of proteins)
- Orange and lemon rind (contain aromatic oils)
- Pickles
- Pineapples (high in aromatics)
- Salt and all salt substitutes
- Soy and all soy products—tofu, soy milk, flour, etc.
- Spices (high in aromatics)
- Sugar (refined white)
- Tea (black and green if containing caffeine; black tea is high in natural fluoride)
Gerson Diet Basics
The Gerson diet strikes a fine balance between raw and cooked foods. Meals begin with huge helpings of raw salad and end with raw fruit, and the daily ration of 13 glasses of freshly made juice is as raw as can be. Cooked foods are necessary: Dr. Gerson’s experience showed that patients do not digest well if given only raw foods along with the juices. In fact, cooked foods provide additional variety and enable patients to eat more than they would on an exclusively raw diet. They also supply soft bulk, which promotes the digestion of the raw foods and juices.
The most popular item on the list of cooked foods is the “Special Soup” or Hippocrates Soup that helps to detoxify the kidneys and is highly comforting, especially in cold weather. Even so, cooked foods only account for some 3 to 4 pounds of the patient’s daily consumption, while raw foods, mostly made into juices, represent some 17 pounds.
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