“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.” – Hippocrates

Even as doctors take the traditional oath in his name, the wisdom of Hippocrates, who lived in the fourth century BC, is all but lost in modern medicine. Taking the place of the healing plants of the earth are pharmaceutical drugs that treat symptoms, rather than the causes of disease, while lining pockets and perpetuating illness. Lost in this seemingly endless cycle is the average American as chronic and degenerative diseases become rampant in our society.

But times are changing. People are discovering their innate ability to heal themselves.

One alternative known as the Gerson Therapy has healed thousands of people afflicted with illnesses that the world of conventional medicine has deemed incurable-even cancer and heart disease. Discovered by Dr. Max Gerson, who lived from 1881 to 1959, the Gerson Therapy activates the body’s healing mechanism through the simple consumption of organic vegetarian foods and juices, detoxification and natural supplements. In 1977, Dr. Gerson’s daughter, Charlotte Gerson, founded The Gerson Institute, a non-profit organization that has been teaching people all over the world how to take charge of their own health. Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Charlotte Gerson about her work in helping people learn to heal themselves. 

Vision Magazine: How does the Gerson Therapy cause regeneration in the body?

Charlotte Gerson: The Gerson Therapy is a total approach for all of the body’s systems to heal and regenerate so that in the first place, people are able to overcome disease but in the long run, the systems can defend the body so that the person can live in good health without any possible recurrence of disease. In order to do that, we have to first insist on organic food that’s grown from good soil without the use of chemicals, pesticides, and fungicides. This way, the food is truly rich in nutrients and is able to help restore the body. The next thing is we have to make sure that no toxins, additives or poisons are contained in those foods, such as emulsifiers, dyes, colorings, and preservatives. The Food and Drug Administration has passed something like 10,000 food additives as safe but none of them are safe. People ingest a tremendous amount of toxins. And to the surprise of a lot of people, that includes salt. Most people are aware of how damaging and dangerous sugar is. But salt is many times worse than sugar. It doesn’t matter if you call it Celtic salt, sodium chloride, or sea salt. Why didn’t sailors who were stuck out in the ocean drink sea water? Because salt is poison and it damages the body’s systems. When there is salt involved, there is damage. Cancer cannot grow without salt. Salt stimulates tumor growth as well.

With the Gerson Therapy, we have to not only see to it that people do not ingest any further toxins, but we have to detoxify them as well. This is extremely important to help the body to get rid of long term accumulated poisons.

VM: How do people detoxify with the Gerson Therapy?

CG: Dr. Gerson found this more or less accidentally, if you believe in accidents, that is. During World War I, when soldiers were brought to the hospital with injuries, doctors had to work around the clock, so there was usually coffee available to them. The nurses didn’t know what to do because there wasn’t much morphine to relieve the soldiers’ pain. Occasionally, surgeons ordered enemas. They saw that coffee was doing the surgeons good and thought to pour coffee into the soldiers’ enema buckets. It turned out that the soldiers reported pain relief. To date, we find that coffee enemas are the best pain relieving agents when patients come for the Gerson Therapy. After only a couple of days with organic food, fresh juicing, and coffee enemas, the pain disappears.

Full Story: http://www.visionmagazine.com/archives/0901/feature_Gerson.html