Max Gerson#Gerson Therapy
The Gerson Therapy is one of the German physician Max Gerson (1881-1959), originally developed for the treatment of tuberculosis therapy. After Gerson was in 1933 emigrated to the United States, he turned his attention to the relationship between diet and cancer.
The Gerson Therapy has, according to its proponents, a wide range of applications up to cancer therapy. However, this is very controversial and is not supported by scientific medicine, especially as present no independent studies that would prove a healing or health-promoting effects.
Diets
Generally
The Gerson diet is based both on the consumption of certain foods with simultaneous prohibition of certain other foods and cooking methods. According to his diet recommendation, the food should be fat-free, salt-free and vegetarian. Not allowed are: avocados, berries, not even prepared drinks, pickles, nuts, mushrooms, pineapple, pepper, and soy beans. Gerson prohibits one hand, expressly coffee and tea, but recommends enemas with coffee additive. Recommended freshly squeezed fruit and vegetable juices. These Gerson recommended daily 56 mg iodine ( as Lugol's iodine ), dried thyroid extracts and vitamin B12 gifts. The plant food should come from organic agriculture. His diet should support the liver in its detoxification function. To this end, he saw the enemas with coffee to be suitable. Prohibitions relate in addition to fluoride in toothpaste and gargle, the hair dyeing ( and the perm ), vapor pressure cookers, juice extractors, centrifuges or blender. Guests were supposed to patients with migraine, tuberculosis, cancer, fibromyalgia, arthritis, and diabetes mellitus ( sugar diabetes ). In addition to the Gerson diet, some include him based therapy concepts and injections with calf liver extracts, which led to complications in part.
Gerson had many prominent patients to these was the family friends of Albert Schweitzer. After the death of Max Gerson 's daughter, Charlotte Gerson, founded in 1978 in Mexico a Gerson Institute to continue their father's work.
Migraine Diet
Gerson suffered from migraine early and tried on the other hand to find an effective therapy. He was of the opinion that the food had an impact on this disease and observed in compliance with a specific diet he developed a resolution of his headaches. His migraine diet was primarily based on the waiver of certain foods.
Tuberculosis Diet
One of his patients told him about the disappearance of his skin tuberculosis after following his diet recommendation against migraine. Gerson concluded on a diet its effectiveness against tuberculosis and reported on therapeutic results in further patients.
The surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch heard of Gerson's treatment successes and was willing to try in his Munich clinic this diet on his patients. After becoming aware of treatment success in Sauerbruch himself Gerson diet quickly spread across national borders.
Gerson took care of in the subsequent period to several European clinics which utilized his diet for the treatment of tuberculosis. Gerson published this article in various medical journals.
Cancer diet
A patient who was suffering from stomach cancer, asked him in 1928 to treat his tuberculosis and migraine diet. According to his reports, he was able to cure the cancer of patients successfully. To cure cancer through his diet His attempts, he continued after his emigration.
Criticism
At Gerson diet recommendations criticism was often practiced. So, he was accused of having no exact statistics of its treatments. Furthermore, the accusation was voiced that he had just published his treatment successes and failures not mentioned here.
His Gerson clinic in Mexico high treatment costs and a purely commercial approach were accused.
1947 examined a Commission of the New York County Medical Society medical records of 86 of his patients, examined ten of them and came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of effectiveness of the Gerson diet for cancer.
A scientific study reported that between 1980 and 1986 had at least 13 patients who had previously received a Gerson Therapy, in area hospitals to be treated for San Diego because of sepsis. Sepsis cases were attributed to injection into the liver. None of the patients was free of cancer, and one of them died of cancer a week after recording. Furthermore, five of the patients were comatose due to low sodium levels that were on the recommendation to waive saline returned. Further studies on the Gerson Therapy came to the conclusion that a treatment for cancer is not recommended.