Max Gerson - Gerson Therapy

Gerson Therapy

Initially, Gerson used his therapy as a treatment for migraine headaches and tuberculosis. In 1928, he began to use it as a treatment for cancer, its best known application.

Gerson Therapy is based on the belief that disease is caused by the accumulation of unspecified toxins, and attempts to treat the disease by having patients consume a predominantly vegetarian diet including hourly glasses of organic juice and various dietary supplements. Animal proteins are excluded from the diet under the unproved premise that tumors develop as a result of pancreatic enzyme deficiency. In addition, patients receive enemas of coffee, castor oil and sometimes hydrogen peroxide or ozone.

After Gerson's death, his daughter Charlotte Gerson continued to promote the therapy, founding the "Gerson Institute" in 1977. The original protocol also included raw calf's liver taken orally, but this practice was discontinued in the 1980s after ten patients were hospitalized (five of them comatose) from Jan, 1979 to March, 1981 in San Diego, California area hospitals, following an outbreak of rare Campylobacter fetus infection and sepsis which was seen only in those following Gerson-type therapy with raw liver (no other cases of patients having sepsis with this microbe, a pathogen in cattle, had been reported to CDC in the previous two years). Nine of ten hospitalized patients had been treated in Tijuana, Mexico; the tenth followed Gerson therapy at home. One of these patients who had metastatic melatoma died within a week of his septic episode. Many of the patients had low sodium levels, thought to be associated with the very low sodium Gerson diet.