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| Original book by Dr. Gerson |
I watch a lot of films while I work, which I guess my posts demonstrate, but I consider it a great privilege of our time that so many important films are available, many virtually for free. Thanks to the rapid evolution of video technology, people can make professional and effective documentaries, whereas 20 or 30 years ago this was not possible. It's an incredible resource, and great generosity on the part of those who allow their work to be shared. We are fortunate indeed to live in a time so much profound information is available, literally at our fingertips.
In 1975, I ran across a book by Dr. Paavo Airola, a famous naturopathic doctor, and after reading it spent most of my tax return on a Challenger juicer (which I still have). Airola and Gerson were contemporaries.
Dr. Gerson emigrated to the U.S. in the late 30's, fleeing the rise of Nazism in Germany. He developed a treatment, over many years, for cancer and other degenerative diseases, using nutritional therapy, supplements, and detoxification. He had many amazing successes with his protocol, including Albert Schwitzer (who praised him highly), and his own daughter, who recovered from tuberculosis and runs the Gerson Institute to this day at the age of 84. What is equally amazing is that in this country he is routinely discredited, dismissed as a quack, and Gerson Therapy is not even allowed to be practiced as medicine in the U.S.A. (The Gerson Clinic is in Mexico, not far from San Diego). Wikipedia's page for Dr. Gerson is dismissive and discredits his work.........which makes the movie below all the more important to watch. As the film points out, the "establishment" can be very narrow minded, and cancer is very big business.
I've lost friends to cancer, including my dear friend Felicia to breast cancer in 2010.
Dr. Gerson died in 1959 under mysterious circumstances - he had finished his manuscript for the book above, and became ill. While recovering, the manuscript disappeared. When he was well again he wrote the entire book once more from only his notes. Shortly after it was published he became ill again, and having himself tested, learned that he had been poisoned with arsenic. If he had not recovered from his first illness, there would have been no book about his work.
What I understand from both Airola and Gerson is that in treating disease the best way to recruit the healing abilities of our bodies is to 1) provide maximum, easily absorbed nutrition, in particular, from green vegetables, and living foods that have lots of enzymes which are absolutely vital in healing and detoxification. 2) Juicing allows us to absorb very high quality organic nutrition, but doesn't demand the amount of energy that eating solid foods does, allowing the body to devote more of its resources to healing and detoxing, which it does when fasting. And 3) to facilitate detoxification in all ways.
Gerson's diet for people who are critically ill is very limited: no meat, no dairy, no corn, no legumes, no grains, no soy, no nuts or seeds, no oils (including avocado), no alchohol, and certain foods, such as berries, bananas, and yams, are also excluded. The diet is readily available in books published by the Gerson Insitutute or just online, including explanations of why certain foods are, for the course of healing therapy, to be avoided. They make no secret of the protocol.
I hope a day will come when conventional medicine will work hand in hand with Gerson's therapy, and believe that, thanks to the internet and sites like TOPDOCUMENTARYFILMS.COM, or even Netflix, this will happen. Another recent film that demonstrates the healing power of juicing is the wonderful (and very funny) film by Joe Cross Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead( http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/) in which he, and then a friend he made along the way to filming his project, fasted for 60 days on juice. Joe has a great website, with lots of testimonials from people who've taken inspiration from his film and gone on to "reboot their lives".
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dying-to-have-known/
In Dying To Have Known, filmmaker Steve Kroschel went on a 52-day journey to find evidence to the effectiveness of the Gerson Therapy – a long-suppressed natural cancer cure.
"His travels take him across both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, from upstate New York to San Diego to Alaska, from Japan and Holland to Spain and Mexico.
You will hear from a Japanese medical school professor who cured himself of liver cancer over 15 years ago, a lymphoma patient who was diagnosed as terminal over 50 years ago as well as noted critics of this world-renowned healing method who dismiss it out of hand as pure quackery.
So the question that remains is, Why is this powerful curative therapy still suppressed, more than 75 years after it was clearly proven to cure degenerative disease? The viewers are left to decide for themselves."
The Gerson Institute has workshops, and also offers the workshops via the internet, for those interested: http://gerson.org/gerpress/gerson-basics-workshop/
