Gerson Therapy

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The Gerson Therapy is one of the German physician Max Gerson (1881-1959) originally used to treat tuberculosis developed therapy . After Gerson emigrated to the United States in 1936, he turned his attention to the relationship between diet and cancer.

The Gerson Therapy has, according to its proponents, a wide range of applications through to cancer therapy . The clinical studies mainly consist of case descriptions and qualitative interviews (= patient surveys).

Diets

General

The Gerson diet is based on the one hand on the consumption of certain foods while prohibiting other foods and certain preparation methods. According to his dietary recommendation, the food should be fat-free, salt-free and vegetarian. The following are not allowed: Avocados , berries , drinks you have not prepared yourself, cucumbers , nuts , mushrooms , pineapple , pepper and soybeans . On the one hand, Gerson expressly forbids coffee and tea , but recommends enemas with added coffee. Freshly squeezed fruit and vegetable juices are recommended. To this end, Gerson recommended 56 mg iodine (as Lugol's solution ), dried thyroid extracts and vitamin B 12 supplements daily. The vegetable food should come from organic farming. His diet should support the liver in its detoxification function. For this he saw the enemas with coffee as suitable. Bans also relate to fluoride in toothpaste and gargle water, hair coloring (and perming ), pressure cookers , juicers, centrifuges or blenders . Allegedly patients with migraines , tuberculosis , cancer , fibromyalgia , arthritis and diabetes mellitus should benefit . In addition to the Gerson diet, some therapy concepts related to him also include injections with calf liver extracts, which sometimes led to complications.

Gerson had many prominent patients, including Albert Schweitzer's family friends . After Max Gerson's death, his daughter Charlotte Gerson founded a Gerson Institute in Mexico in 1978 to continue her father's work.

Migraine Diet

Gerson suffered from migraines at an early age and tried to find an effective therapy for it. He was of the opinion that food had an influence on this disease and observed that his headaches disappeared when he followed a certain diet he had developed . His migraine diet was based primarily on avoiding certain foods.

Tuberculosis diet

One of his patients told him that his skin tuberculosis disappeared after following his recommended diet for migraines. Gerson concluded from this that his diet was effective against tuberculosis and reported on therapeutic successes in other patients.

The surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch heard about Gerson's treatment successes and was ready to try this diet on his patients in his Munich clinic. After the success of treatment for Sauerbruch became known, Gerson's diet quickly spread across national borders.

In the period that followed, Gerson took care of several European clinics that used his diet to treat tuberculosis. Gerson has published articles on this in various medical journals.

Cancer diet

In 1928 a patient suffering from stomach cancer asked him to treat her with his tuberculosis and migraine diet. According to his reports, he was able to successfully cure patients' cancer in this way. He continued his attempts to cure cancer through his diet after his emigration.

criticism

Gerson's diet recommendations were often criticized. He was accused of not having given exact statistical information about his treatments. Furthermore, the accusation was made that he had only published his treatment successes and did not mention any failures.

The Gerson clinic in Mexico was accused of high treatment costs and a purely commercial approach.

In 1947, a commission from the New York County Medical Society examined the medical records of 86 of his patients, examined ten of them, and concluded that there was no evidence that the Gerson Diet was effective against cancer.

A scientific study reports that between 1980 and 1986 at least 13 patients who had previously received Gerson therapy had to be treated for sepsis in hospitals in the San Diego area . The sepsis cases were attributed to injections into the liver . None of the patients were cancer free and one of them died of cancer one week after admission. Furthermore, five of the patients were comatose due to insufficient sodium levels, which were attributed to the recommendation to avoid table salt. Further studies on Gerson therapy came to the conclusion that treatment for cancer is not recommended.

References

  1. ↑ Howard Strauss: Dr. Max Gerson: Healing the Hopeless . Quarry Health Books, Kingston, Ontario (Canada) 2002, ISBN 1-55082-290-X (English).
  2. ^ Q&A National Cancer Institute USA
  3. ^ Ginsberg MM. Campylobacter sepsis associated with "nutritional therapy". MMWR 30: 294-295, 1981
  4. ↑ Questionable practices in cancer and other tijuana mexican border clinics. In: CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians , Volume 41, Issue 5 (1991), pp. 310-319. ( Abstract and download option )
  5. ↑ Questionable methods of cancer management: 'Nutritional' therapies. In: CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians , Volume 43, Issue 5 (1993), pp. 309-319. ( Abstract and download option )
  6. ^ Green SA critique of the rationale for cancer treatment with coffee enemas and diet. JAMA 268: 3224-3227, 1992
  7. ↑ American Cancer Society. Unproven methods of cancer management: Gerson method. A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 40: 252-256, 1990

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