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I get many calls from patients who are on the Gerson Therapy seeking help with monitoring. A quick appraisal of what they are doing often tells me that they are only following bits of the therapy, the bits that they feel are the most important.

However, the Gerson Therapy is like a recipe, if you miss one ingredient out then it may not work. Imagine skipping the part in a bread recipe where you need to activate the yeast with sugar. You may look at the recipe and think "Well, I haven't got any sugar and it's such a small amount, it's bound not to matter" - wrong. If you leave out the sugar then the yeast won't activate and you can't prove the bread; the bread won't rise and you'll have a solid lump of indigestible flour and water.

Detoxification versus restoration

A fundamental mistake that patient's make is to do the juicing and enemas, but skip the bulk of the foods on the menu on the basis that they are too full to eat after they have taken all the juices. While it is true that the juice and enema regime is the detoxification aspect of the program, and it is possible for people to detoxify on juicing and enemas, is this tantamount to healing? Imagine your body like a thick, rough piece of brown paper. Your aim is to get a strong, smooth white piece of paper. Invariably, with the thrust of a dietary program that leans too far towards detoxification you will end up with a piece of thin, opaque tissue paper that has no integrity and no resistance. Dr. Gerson was very clear in that restoration was a fundamental requirement for cure, and indeed, long after the tumours were gone the patient had to attend to the protocol until the body was sufficiently restored, as stopping the program too soon saw a recurrence of the cancer.

So the Gerson therapy is a diet therapy, the food is the medicine which means that the quantity, the quality and its digestibility are paramount to cure. This also means that you can't afford to become protein deficient. If you miss certain dietary items, such as the low fat yoghurt or some of the grain allowances (oats, rye bread) for too long a period of time, then your immune system will suffer and you will also fail to restore the body.

Restoring the energy-capacity of the cell

Next I might run a check the supplements. Patients may be taking some or substituting with those they can get locally, but very rarely will I see a patient who is taking the exact medications in the exact amounts required. The whole purpose of the therapy was to restore what Dr. Gerson called the "energy capacity" of the cell or to restore the dynamic forces within the cell. In modern terms this means restoring oxidative potential, or the capacity by the cell to use oxygen to burn fuel and make energy. Sick tissues lose their capacity for optimal function and will sink into a fermentative production of energy to varying degrees. Restoring oxidation requires high amounts of potassium, in a specific combination added to the juices and administered on an hourly basis; requires high amounts of niacin in its active form, which is vital for the flux of nutrients into the oxidative cycle; and requires a combination of thyroid hormone and Lugol's solution to increase mitochondrial capacity (the factories where the fuel is burned to produce energy) within the cell. Taken together and at high doses at the beginning of the therapy starts the reactivation of the cells. They require that push or that drive to get the metabolism going.

Reactivation is an important concept here, as we are not talking about healthy cells, we are talking about sick cells. Sodium added to the program, or even taken as small amounts as sodium bicarbonate in toothpaste, will be sufficient to keep the sick cells from reactivating, in fact Dr. Gerson  talks of sodium being a poison to sick cells.  So the idea that just a little bit here and there won't matter, is not true while you are trying to reactivate the cell. For a patient who is not fighting cancer, then breaking the rules here and there may not be as deleterious as for the cancer patient, but even so, for all the efforts that one is making it would be a shame if what you are giving on the one hand is being taken away by the other.

Similarly, taking any fats, other than the small amount of flaxseed oil, will also upset the process. Whilst our knowledge of potassium and its relationship to energy production and cellular cleansing is now more advanced, the impact of dietary fats on cellular metabolism is only just beginning. But simply speaking, fat accumulation within the cell due to modern dietary habits will dampen oxidative potential and is a major cause of the metabolic syndrome leading to diabetes. In fact if you substantially restrict the calorie intake of a diabetic (and this will mean fats) it is possible to reverse their diabetes.

So the Gerson therapy is primarily about restoring oxidative potential (high potassium/low sodium program with specific supplements), which will cause a shift of toxins from the cells that enter the circulation to be cleared by the liver (assisted by the coffee enema). You can appreciate that if you don't get the cell going, then nothing may happen for all your efforts. So you may be busy helping the liver without even releasing the toxins from the cells. The Gerson therapy is not about liver cleansing, it is not about kidney or bowel cleansing, it is about cleansing at cell level and then facilitating the removal of those released toxins. It is also about the simultaneous restoration of the tissues which enables cure.

So remember, it's all the ingredients in the recipe that are important, not just the ones you think are important.

See Kathryn speak on Youtube on the influence of the Gerson Therapy on her work