Cardinal Rule of Gerson Therapy

About two weeks back, I reported a case about Ms S and last week she was admitted to hospital. I was made to understand that she had a fall that lead to the seriousness of her case. It is with great sadness I learned that she has been called home to be with the Lord sometime last week. May she rest in peace.

Her case really deteriorated very fast (from able body to bed ridden), all about in 3 months. For those of you who just following my blog, although you may noticed that my condition is now stable, my doctors describes my condition as not serious but really serious. This is because I just have too many tumors in my lungs (over 43+). Gerson therapy has been good to bring my condition under control for now but this condition may change anytime. This is why I am relentlessly looking for some potent adjunct therapies to help myself.

From my own experience, I think one of the difficult tasks for caregivers following the Gerson therapy are what to do in the event of something unexpected happens to the patient. For Gerson therapy, not all healing reactions are documented and when I was at the Gerson Clinic in Mexico, even the resident doctor who has 20 years of Gerson experience, there are some things he cannot give me a straight answer. Sometime last July 2010, I met a stage 4 colon cancer patient called KC in Clementi, Singapore. We met through my blog and when I was in Singapore I paid him a visit because he was following the Gerson Therapy under a qualified Gerson therapist. I was eager to find out what differences, if any, there are between his protocol and my own protocol. The main difference that I found out was that he was given B12+Liver injection while I did not have access to this injection and two other supplements. But there is something he keep complaining about and asked me if I had similar reaction. His therapist was not able to help. He said he felt very weak after going on Gerson protocol. He feels hungry and lacks energy. He is quite skinny, I think not more than 50kgs. We are about the same height but I was weighing 64kgs then, so it would seems I should be the one complaining lack of energy rather than him. Through my conversation I found the following:

1. He dislike the diet and as such did not eat that much
2. Had stomach gases and just could not eat
3. He lacks energy.
The next two items was not disclosed by KC but for completeness, I am including it here:
4. Patient may get backache.
5. Patient not willing or don't know how to start coffee enema.

The above problems may look trivial but I know many of those cancer patients that I introduced Gerson therapy gave up the therapy because of it. It is rather unfortunate that Gerson therapist was not be able to help in KC's case too. As time passed, he abandoned Gerson therapy all together, when went back to a normal diet and then went for chemotherapy. I last wrote to him in November 2010 but he did not reply me. I can only hope he is in good health.

Gerson therapy is a diet (of no meat, protein, salt, sugar and oil) therapy which is not the easiest to follow. A Gerson lunch/dinner menu typically consists of a bowl Hippocrates soup, salads, cooked vegetables and baked potatoes (or brown rice). No matter how many variations you can make, you can imagine if you eat like this day in and day out, you will soon run out of variations. Want to know how it feels, just for one meal, steam your brocoli, cabbage and spinach or any other combination of vegetables (no sugar, no oil, no salt and no spices but can add apple cider or lemon juice) and eat for lunch and dinner and let me know if you if you can continue to eat like this for the next 24 months?

My suggestions are practical. It helped me tie over this difficult period and I hope it will help those who want to go on this therapy too. One of the problem with steam vegetables is that it taste flat, like eating grass. What we can do is to add a little flavor by squeezing some fruits juice like lemon, lime and orange. Adding a little apple cider might also help. On days I don't add juices, I would also cut an apple, guava or other fruits that are not too sweet into smaller pieces and mixed them with the vegetables and eat them together. Later I learned in Gerson Clinic, they actually add a little raisins in the cooking to make the vegetables taste sweeter but NEVER use any artificial sweetener. Of late, I have made Dhal curry (no oil and salt of course) to enhance the flavor but this recipe is for those who have been on the therapy for at least a year. For baked potatoes, you can mixed squeeze lime juice with minced garlic. If you have help, you can try the Gerson recipes as well but I find it's a lot of work to do it on my own.

Not eating enough is one of the reason why the patient feels hungry and lacks energy. An ordinary person requires 2,000 calories a day and if one follows the Gerson therapy to the fullest, the calories intake is about 2,900 calories. The other reason is that the patient does not drink enough juices. Recommendation is 13 juices and I think at minimum, a patient should take at least 10 juices. Some patients drink with pulp and I think this is not recommended. The patient already have sufficient fiber in the lunch and dinner and drinking juices with pulp would mean the patient drink less juices and hence not enough nutrients and calories. It leads to loss of energy. There are times when the patient may not be able to drink 8oz (or 250ml) of juices hourly. In such a case, allow the patient to drink 4oz (1/2 cup) at 1/2 hourly intervals or to drink as much as possible at each go. In my first year of therapy, I eat every waking hour in between juices. I would eat fruits and/or with oatmeal whether hungry or not. Sometimes I would make rye bread and eat rye bread (with a little honey or apple sauce) as well.

For some people, especially women, continuous drinking of juices would lead to backache and weakness in the legs. In TCM, vegetables has a cooling effect and this may lead to backache. So some patients may not want to drink so much vegetables and fruit juices. One way to overcome this problem is to add a little ginger into the juices. This would neutralise the cooling effect and hence the backache. The other thing is to build up the number of juices slowly to allow the body to adjust. Combining vegetables in juices also leads to stomach gases. Bubbles are formed during juicing and I would normally scrape away the top bubbles layer before drinking. If stomach bloating continues, I found that taking more cooked vegetables (less raw) helps. Finally if it still continues, I would go for something like magnesium trisilicate to ease the gases. I don't like to take any medication if possible but it's more important to eat .

Asking people to do coffee enema is like asking someone to extend the hand into the toilet bowl to pick up the handphone. People are just uncomfortable and may take time. So some patients rather not do it. But it does not have to be this way. One of the fears is inserting the tube into the anus. Even if this step can be overcome, the next fear is that if you inject fluid into the anus, it will eject in seconds. Cleaning up then is a mess. Well, inserting the little tube into the anus is not difficult and can be made easy if the patient calms down and apply a little KY gel on the tip of the tube.

While in Mexico, I learned that they use another connecting tube (see picture, even smaller size) to make the insertion very easy. For beginners, I do not recommend full strength coffee (i.e. 32 oz or 1 liter). Start of with half strength coffee (16 oz of coffee solution and 16oz of water or better still camomile tea). Then add two tablespoons of potassium solution into the the enema. Find a comfortable padded place near the toilet to do the enema. If your are still afraid the solution would come out, find a big plastic bag and cover the butt to collect any droppings. Overtime, reduce the potassium solution and also increase the coffee strength. Possibly within a week, doing coffee enema becomes second nature.

One of the weakness of coffee enema is that it does not discriminate between toxins and nutrients in the gut. Everything is expelled. Hence the standard guide is that every coffee enema taken must be supplemented with 3 cups of juices. Some women have reported weakness of the legs and loss of energy after an enema. In such a case, talk to the therapist with a view of reducing the number of enemas. Slowly build up over time. It is important the patient continues to eat and take juices in the meantime. I would also propose the patient take zeolite detox in such cases to replace some of the enemas (eg. two or three enemas + zeolite detox). Of course, talk to the therapist first because zeolite detox is not part of the Gerson therapy. I borrowed it from the Budwig protocol.

This is my realisation on the cardinal rule of Gerson therapy:
Eat permitted foods and drink juices every waking hour to nourish the body and prevent the body from deteriorating.