The Gerson Therapy offers a radical diet and detox regime to combat cancer and other diseases. But oncologists remain sceptical, reports Sylvia Thompson.
Irene Frisby (38) was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2000. Two months later, she had surgery which involved the removal of breast tissue and 26 lymph nodes, 20 of which were found to be diseased.
In the time between her diagnosis and surgery, Frisby trawled the Internet for information about breast cancer, moving from website to website searching for evidence of alternative treatment approaches. In January 2001, rather than go for chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Frisby decided she would opt for the Gerson Therapy, a nutritional programme for cancer and other degenerative diseases.
"I had always treated my two children with alternative remedies, so it wasn't a difficult choice not to have chemotherapy - although I was told I wouldn't have much of a chance without it. But my father was behind me and he paid for my trip to the Gerson Therapy Hospital in Tijuana, Mexico to learn how to follow the Gerson nutritional programme," explains Frisby, who is separated from her husband and lives in south Co Dublin.
The Gerson Therapy was developed by German-born medical doctor Max Gerson in the 1930s and 1940s, initially as an attempt to find a nutritional cure for his migraine. He later suggested the diet to patients with tuberculosis, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis and skin disorders, and found it worked for them too.
His daughter, Charlotte Gerson, who is in her 80s, travels the world giving workshops and talks on the therapy.
"My father was working as an orthodox doctor, trained to believe that for each disease there is one treatment, until he realised that his 'migraine diet' also cured patients with other diseases," she told The Irish Times on a recent visit to Ireland.
The Gerson Therapy is based on the belief that phytochemicals (compounds of plant origin) can boost the production of certain body enzymes which fight off procarcinogens, the precursors of cancer. Therefore, by following a strict vegan diet - organically grown fresh fruit and vegetables, up to 13 glasses of freshly squeezed juices per day taken at hourly intervals, and no meat, fish, dairy foods or salt - and using self- administered coffee enemas to detoxify the liver, Gerson patients undergo a programme of hypernutrition and detoxification.
Followed in full, the Gerson Therapy also tries to eliminate all other known toxins from a patient's environment. Cosmetics, perfumes, flavourings, dyes, fluoride, chloride and cleaning agents will not be used in their homes.
"It's a whole new lifestyle and education about cancer. Cancer no longer means death when you re-educate your mind about how cancer grows and what starves it," says Frisby.
"It's a very labour-intensive therapy. For the first couple of months, I was stepping over carrots and landing in lettuce. I stopped eating meat, fish, dairy, eggs and soya. A lot of people thought I was crazy, but I just let them have their say and got on with it."
According to Charlotte Gerson, cancer is the ultimate breakdown of the body's defence system.
"It is the breakdown of the immune system, the malfunction of minerals and enzymes in the body and essential organs such as the liver," she says. "When these defences break down, malignancy can establish and grow. Drugs don't change the environment. They try to kill tumour tissue faster than normal body tissue, but you can't cure cancer with a poison.
"The aim of the Gerson Therapy is to re-establish an optimum body chemistry so that the body can then heal itself."
From a hospital in Tijuana and through support teams in various centres around the world, the Gerson Therapy offers hope to hundreds of patients from North America, Europe and elsewhere.
"We are seeing 25 to 30 per cent of those coming with terminal cancers cured," says Gerson.
In her book, The Gerson Therapy - the Amazing Nutritional Programme for Cancer and Other Illnesses, Gerson includes a chapter on modified Gerson therapy for non-cancer patients. The illnesses included are diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, hepatitis A, B and C and multiple sclerosis.
Self-administered coffee enemas are a key part of the therapy. Max Gerson believed that cancer patients who followed the diet but didn't survive died not from the disease itself but from the liver's inability to eliminate the toxic products of dissolving tumour masses, generated by the effects of the Gerson Therapy or by the healing reactions of formerly dysfunctional cells.
Caffeine taken rectally, according to the Gerson Therapy's supporters, stimulates the liver's action, increases bile flow and opens bile ducts so that the liver can excrete the toxic products of metabolic improvement more easily.
ONE and a half years later, Frisby is still following the Gerson Therapy while also being monitored by her doctors in Ireland.
"I send blood-test results every six weeks to the Gerson hospital in Mexico and I have brain and bone scans annually and blood tests here every six weeks," she says. "I have a feeling of wellness and a sense of healing myself with the right foods, which helps you come out of the blackness of despair.
"However, I was very sick for a lot of last year as I was reacting to the toxins flushing out of my system. I often felt very nauseous, shaky and weak, with flu-like symptoms and headaches.
"But I will continue with the therapy for two years or until the time when the doctors in Mexico tell me I'm at a stage that they are happy with."
The Gerson Institute can be contacted at Post Office Box 430, Bonita, California 91908-0130.
E-mail: mail@gerson.org
Website: www.gerson.org
The Gerson Therapy - the Amazing Nutritional Programme for Cancer and Other Illnesses by Charlotte Gerson is published by Kensington Publishing, New York.
Doctors 'unimpressed with results'
Most Irish oncologists remain sceptical of the Gerson Therapy. Dr Michael Moriarty, consultant oncologist at St Luke's Hospital, Dublin says: "In general terms, we are very cautious about this therapy. I don't understand the scientific basis for it and am nervous about using it. I haven't been very impressed with the results and I wouldn't advocate it as a therapy."