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In this episode, you will learn about Gerson Therapy.
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About My Guest
My guest for this episode is Dr. Patrick Vickers. Patrick Vickers, DC is a graduate of New York Chiropractic College, representing the face of the Gerson Therapy worldwide. Dr. Vickers is featured in the epic documentary series The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest. His patient is also chronicled in the classic documentary The Beautiful Truth. Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer called Dr. Max Gerson, "The most eminent genius in medical history" as The Gerson Therapy has the most storied reputation, to date, for its ability to reverse advanced cancer and degenerative diseases. With seven movies chronicling Dr. Gerson's work, no other therapy has received such recognition on an international scale. Personally trained by Dr. Gerson's family and one of the few people to have studied Dr. Gerson's handwritten files, Dr. Patrick Vickers continues to carry on Dr. Gerson's legacy through his premier Advanced Gerson Clinic in Rosarito, Mexico. Dr. Vickers lectures on various platforms around the world on the indisputable, cellular science behind health, disease, and the Gerson Therapy.
Key Takeaways
- What is the history of Gerson Therapy?
- What role does metabolism play in creating the right metabolism for cancer?
- How does the Gerson program heal the metabolic system?
- What ingredients are included in their juices?
- How does salt create a "cellular edema"?
- What is the impact of chloride on the thyroid?
- What role do healthy fats play in cell membrane potential?
- Which fats are health-promoting vs. health-negating?
- What role do hydrogen and pH play?
- Does sugar feed cancer?
- What are the mechanisms of coffee enemas?
- Do coffee enemas help bile flow?
- How should coffee enemas be performed?
- Are there any contraindications for coffee enemas?
- How might castor oil be used in a healing program?
- Did Dr. Max Gerson consider the role of mental and emotional health?
Connect With My Guest
Interview Date
June 7, 2022
Transcript
Transcript Disclaimer: Transcripts are intended to provide optimized access to information contained in the podcast. They are not a full replacement for the discussion. Timestamps are provided to facilitate finding portions of the conversation. Errors and omissions may be present as the transcript is not created by someone familiar with the topics being discussed. Please Contact Me with any corrections.
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:01] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to BetterHealthGuy Blogcasts, empowering your better health. And now, here's Scott, your Better Health Guy.
The content of this show is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any illness or medical condition. Nothing in today's discussion is meant to serve as medical advice or as information to facilitate self-treatment. As always, please discuss any potential health related decisions with your own personal medical authority.
[00:00:35] SCOTT: Hello, everyone. And welcome to episode number 167 of the BetterHealthGuy Blogcasts Series. Today's guest is Dr. Patrick Vickers. And the topic of the show is Gerson Therapy. Dr. Patrick Vickers is a graduate of New York Chiropractic College, representing the face of Gerson Therapy worldwide. Dr. Vickers is featured in the epic documentary series The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest. His patient is also chronicled in the classic documentary The Beautiful Truth.
Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, called Dr. Max Gerson the most eminent genius in medical history, as the Gerson therapy has the most storied reputation to date for its ability to reverse advanced cancer and degenerative diseases.
With seven movies chronicling Dr. Gerson's work, no other therapy has received such recognition on an international scale. Personally trained by Dr. Gerson's family and one of the few people to have studied Dr. Gerson's handwritten files, Dr. Vickers continues to carry on Dr. Gerson's legacy through his premier Advanced Gerson Clinic in Rosarito, Mexico. Dr. Vickers lectures on various platforms around the world on the indisputable cellular science behind health, disease, and the Gerson therapy.
And now, my interview with Dr. Patrick Vickers.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:59] SCOTT: Anyone that has listened to my podcast knows that coffee enemas were one of the biggest healing tools that I found personally in my chronic Lyme disease and mold illness journey, and still a tool that I use today to combat many of the environmental toxicants that we're all exposed to. I’m excited today to have the world's leading living expert on Gerson therapy here with us today. Thanks for being here, Dr. Vickers.
[00:02:23] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, hi. Thank you. Really appreciate you inviting me. And it's always an honor to talk about Dr. Gerson's work.
[00:02:29] SCOTT: What is the history of Gerson therapy. How did Max Gerson begin to create this program, which I’m guessing was not for cancer initially given that there were far fewer cancers back then? What were some of the conditions that this was used for in the early 1900s?
[00:02:46] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, that's a great question. The way he stumbled upon his therapy when he was studying medicine at the University of Freiburg, he was suffering from severe debilitating migraine headaches. So much so that he'd have to lock himself in a room for a day or two, a dark room, and would not leave the room just to get over his headache.
Well, back at that time, Germany was the place you went if you wanted a superior medical education. He had the top medical doctors and professors in the world allegedly that were there to potentially help him. And they couldn't help him. They didn't know what to do for him.
He set out to cure himself, and he radically changed his lifestyle and his diet. He cut out all the fat, all the salts, all the processed foods of the standard German diet of that time, which is essentially the standard world and, certainly, American diet of today. And he completely cured himself of his migraine headaches.
He graduates from the University of Freiburg. He goes and opens practice in Bielefeld, Germany, when one of his patients – He starts treating his patients with this migraine diet. When one comes back completely cured of their skin tuberculosis.
Now, this was a big deal back then, because tuberculosis had killed over a million people at this time in Europe. And so, he started trying his diet out on all these other different conditions, but most particularly tuberculosis. And he was reversing advanced terminal tuberculosis. For example, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Albert Schweitzer. His wife Helena had terminal tuberculosis. Dr. Gerson completely cured her.
And so, here we are back in 19 – This would have been around 1905, 1910, somewhere in that time range, and he started reversing advanced tuberculosis. I mean, virtually, every single case. I don't know if you're aware, but a guy by the name of Ferdinand Sauerbruch had approached Dr. Gerson having heard that Dr. Gerson was reversing advanced tuberculosis. Now, Ferdinand Sauerbruch was the leading thoracic surgeon in Europe at that time. He was the one operating on all these TB patients. Well, he gets word that this guy is curing advanced tuberculosis. And he asked Dr. Gerson to embark on a study of 460 tuberculosis patients. And he said, "If you can care about one of these patients, I’ll believe every single word you have to say." And Dr. Gerson cured 450 out of 460 of those TB patients. I mean, that's just outrageous.
And so, we are not just reversing obviously tuberculosis. But we're reversing virtually every single degenerative disease. But most notably, as you mentioned, it's more synonymous with cancer, because the eight movies that have chronicled our work unfortunately have been done only on cancer. But the reality is we're reversing virtually every single degenerative disease.
[00:05:44] SCOTT: I think we have a lot to be thankful for coming from Freiburg. My primary mentor personally has been Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt for many years, also from Freiburg. Lots of lots of good things that have come out of Germany.
Did you have the opportunity to ever meet Max Gerson? Did you know Charlotte Gerson? Talk to us about how you personally became interested in the Gerson therapy. And what drove your passion to do what you do today?
[00:06:08] DR. VICKERS: Well, I’ll tell you. Had I had the chance to meet Dr. Gerson, I would have fell on my knees. Unfortunately, he died in 1959. But I was able to actually live with Charlotte Gerson, who is iconic, not just in the Gerson therapy, but in all of natural medicine. Charlotte Gerson is an American icon. She was Dr. Gerson's last living daughter who, by the way, up until her death three years ago, was the longest living Gerson survivor. Dr. Gerson cured her of tuberculosis when she was 12 years old. And so, that is where my passion ultimately began.
I wanted to be a chiropractor ever since I was 11-years-old. A friend of our family's was a chiropractor, and they were staying at our home for the weekend when their five-year-old boy who was sleeping with me one night. Woke up in the middle of the night with a cough that would not stop. He coughed for like 20 minutes straight.
Finally, his father heard him. It's like three in the morning, his father finally hears him. Comes up, lies him on the end of my bed, adjusts his neck both ways, and the boy stopped coughing immediately. And he didn't cough the rest of the night. And so, it was at that moment that I said, "That's what I’m going to do for a living."
And so, here I am a year away from graduating chiropractic school when a woman by the name of Charlotte Gerson was invited to come and speak at our school, New York Chiropractic College in Upstate New York in Seneca Falls. And that was it. As soon as she opened her mouth, I knew that that's what I would spend the rest of my life doing.
And so, she recognized that passion in me for her father and for his work. And she invited me to come live with her at her home for two months in San Diego where she had all her father's handwritten files between 1910 and 1959 when he died. And I’m one of a handful of people who've ever been able to go through and study those handwritten files. It is truly the greatest honor in my life to this point.
[00:08:19] SCOTT: Excellent. Yeah, I love that. That's amazing. And I am also a big fan of chiropractic. I get my adjustments every three weeks whether I need it or not and think it's an important part of my self-care.
We know that the Gerson therapy is kind of known for cancer. But there's lots of conditions that you work with at your clinic. Let's start, though, with cancer. Why, from your perspective, does cancer occur? Are there specific cancers that respond better or maybe don't respond as well to the Gerson program? Lots of people listening dealing with chronic Lyme disease, mold illness, autoimmune conditions, neurodegenerative conditions. Also interested in what you've seen. Let's touch on the cancer piece first. But then what you've seen with some of these other conditions? Does this have application in those scenarios as well?
[00:09:08] DR. VICKERS: Yeah. Well, look, the human body isn't specific in what it's going to heal. It's going to heal everything. You give the body what it needs, it's naturally going to heal everything. But let's talk about cancer. I mean, for lack of a better word, cancer, it's pandemic, right? I mean, it's pandemic at this point. And so, why? I mean, it's just exploded.
I remember when I was in high school, I don't remember many people at all having cancer compared to now. And if you go back to 1900, they say one out of every 60, closer to probably one out of every 100 some say, came down with cancer. Well, now we're down to one out of every three, going on one out of every two are going to be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lifetime. Well, if you believe in genetics and evolution, we know that it takes millions of years for genetics to play that kind of a role to have such a massive expansion of a disease if it's genetically related. What's happened between 1900 and now? Well, it's simple. You've just had a massive expansion of the industrial revolution that has belched every poison into our air, our water, our food, the stress in our lives. Our relationships have been destroyed from whatever all these things that we've created in our lives. And so, all of these things have factored into this massive explosion of not just cancer, but all degenerative diseases as well, right?
And so, I always tell people, people come into my clinic, they're like, "I just don't know how I got this. I mean, I live a healthy life, or I thought I lived a healthy life." And the reality is there's never a mystery to disease. That is one thing I tell everybody. There are no mysteries. And then when you start asking them questions, "Are you doing this? Are you doing this? Are you doing this?" All of a sudden – And you start educating them properly. And they're like, "Oh my God! I didn't know that was bad for me. I thought it was good for me.
All of these things that we're doing to ourselves today, it's just causing this massive explosion in the cases of disease around the world. But not just cancer. But like you said, all these other conditions as well, right? We can talk about heart disease. If someone's scheduled for triple or quadruple bypass surgery, we're canceling their surgeries in four to six weeks. I mean, it's that simple.
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Albert Schweitzer, again, who I mentioned his wife was cured of tuberculosis. Eight years before he won the Nobel Prize, he had severely advanced diabetes. Dr. Gerson cured him in six weeks. That's standard for us. You give us someone with advanced diabetes, particularly stage two, or type two, and a specific type of type one, and we can reverse that very, very quickly.
High blood pressure, two to three weeks we have people off their medications. It's outrageous. And if you think about the economic impact that would cause to the pharmaceutical and medical industry, you can understand why we're censored and why we're kicked out of the country in Mexico.
Now, to answer one more question, are there any cancers that respond better to the Gerson therapy and some that don't? Well, lymphoma and melanoma, they are our greatest successes. And particularly lymphoma. Lymphoma and melanoma, they don't have the ability to hide from the immune system like a majority of your other cancers. Your other cancers have the ability to put like a biofilm or an envelope around themselves to make them undetectable to the immune system.
Well, lymphoma and melanoma, they don't have that capacity. As soon as you start boosting up the immune system, which that's where the Gerson therapy reigns supreme among all therapies, is its ability to boost the human immune system. And so, readily, lymphoma and melanoma are destroyed when you put someone on the Gerson therapy.
Now, the cancers that we don't have great success with – And they're actually misnomers. They're not cancers. And let's talk about the blood cancers, leukemia, multiple myeloma. Those really aren't blood cancers. Those are blood conditions. And so, they've kind of been misnamed for making people believe they're cancers.
But acute leukemia doesn't respond well to the Gerson therapy. Multiple myeloma doesn't respond great to the Gerson therapy. However, the advanced protocols that we're utilizing at the Gerson Clinic could play a vital role in reversing something like multiple myeloma. Acute leukemia, I won't touch, because I know I can't help it. So I won't touch it. But a lot of the other blood disorders related to that don't respond favorably. With the exception, on occasion, chronic leukemia, can respond to the Gerson therapy. But multiple myeloma and acute leukemia, we really don't have great success with on the basic Gerson therapy.
[00:14:19] SCOTT: Let's talk then about how metabolism and the inability of the body to create energy leads to the right environment for cancer and other chronic complex conditions.
[00:14:32] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, that's a great question, because that is the crux of the matter. You talked about how Freiberg has produced some great minds that have come out of there. Gerson went to the University of Freiburg. Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine, Otto Warburg. He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1931 for demonstrating that cancer, viruses and bacteria cannot survive in an environment where the body and the cells can properly oxygenate the selves. And he went on to describe and theorize that the body's primary ability to oxygenate cells and tissues is completely dependent on an alkaline diet.
Now, I have to say for the record, that was 1931. For 20 years prior to that, Gerson in Freiburg already had a therapy demonstrating that very fact. So I would not be surprised if actually Warburg won that Nobel Prize on the back of Dr. Gerson's work, because Dr. Gerson had already been clinically expressing that in the Freiburg region for over 20 years. And you can rest assured Otto Warburg and Gerson knew each other. But anyway, that's just surmising.
Getting back to the issue of metabolism. If you read Dr. Gerson's book that he gave to us before he died, over and over and over again, that is the word that he mentions constantly, metabolism. Disease is ultimately a breakdown in metabolism.
Now, let's define that for a second. What is metabolism by definition? It is the breakdown of food into energy. Once that entire system from beginning to end is broken down, you no longer can create energy on a cellular level. The immune system needs massive amounts of energy to rally an immune response. That's why when you see someone who's sick and/or dying, what do you notice? They're lethargic? Why are they lethargic? They're losing the capacity. They've lost the capacity to produce energy on a cellular level. And everything that we do with the Gerson therapy is based on restoration of metabolism.
So let's break this down. It's so simple. It's biochemistry 101. I learned it in the first two to three weeks of biochemistry in chiropractic school. Where does the breakdown of food of energy begin? In your mouth. In your gut. Is it any mystery that we're taught natural medicine, where to 70% of your immune system reside? In your gut. If you can't heal the gut, you will not heal anything. You have to start in the gut. There's only one way to heal the gut. You heal it with food. The only way you can heal the gut is through food, nutrition. You can't heal it with supplements. It's such a big tragedy that you have doctors out there just pounding supplements down people's bodies. They can't heal with supplements. You only heal with food.
Well, how does the Gerson therapy heal with food? 20 pounds of organic fruits and vegetables every single day. Every single day, they're getting one juice every hour on the hour, from 8am to 7pm, 13 hours straight. They're getting to in between half hour breaks. 13 Juices every single day. That's how you begin to heal the gut. You get all the poisons out of the environment, all the drugs that have caused gut deterioration, GMO foods that destroy the gut, all of these things. And you start restoring the gut with food.
Now you've restored the gut. Now the gut is able to break down food and put it into your bloodstream. Now, your cells have to take that food and create energy. And this is where the other issue lies in how we've utterly and completely destroyed the cellular metabolic process.
Let's look at a cell. Here's your cell. Around your cell, you have one, a cell membrane. That cell membrane, it is the gatekeeper of that cell. It determines what it's going to allow in. What it can't allow in. What it has to allow out. And what it can't allow out. That is all determined at the level of the cell membrane.
Now, what is that cell membrane made up of? It's made up of fats. It's made up of what are called phospholipids. Well, lipid is fat. Well, what kind of fat are your cell membranes made up of? Whatever fats you're feeding it. Whatever fats you're feeding your body, your body's going to use to naturally maintain your cell membranes. What kind of fats today are people eating day and night? Cookies, cake, ice cream, cheese, milk, meat. All these oils, highly processed oils, cooked oils, partially hydrogenated oils. All of these things are loaded with what? Saturated fats.
Why is this significant? This is so significant when it comes to health and disease. When we define fats, we define it based on what? Its saturation. There're saturated fats. There're a monosaturated fats like olive oil. Then there's polyunsaturated fats like flax oil. Now, what does this mean? When we're talking about saturation? What does it mean? It means that those fats are either saturated or unsaturated with hydrogen. This is very important. Fats are long, or short or medium carbon chains. And they're defined based on their saturation with hydrogen.
You've read a label and ingredient label, you see partially hydrogenated oil. Companies have learned they can bubble hydrogen into their products, and they can stabilize it forever. And you can store it on the shelf for forever. The problem is this, fats are saturated with hydrogen. What are the health implications of this? How many times have you heard an alkaline diet promotes health. And acidic diet promotes disease. How many times have we heard this? But it's never really explained. What does that mean? And what are the health implications of those two terms?
Alkaline promotes health. Acidic promotes disease. What are we talking about pH? What is pH? Potential hydrogen. It's potential hydrogen. When we have an acidic diet high in the saturated fats, we get a buildup of hydrogen, not just in the body, but in particular, at the level of that cell membrane.
Why is this important? The way your body creates energy, it converts sugar into energy, but only in the presence of oxygen. Only if oxygen can get into that cell can you convert your food that you've broken down into energy. When our cell membranes are composed of saturated fats, saturated with hydrogen, and this is what Otto Warburg went on to theorize and explain. As oxygen approaches that cell to go into the cell, the charge at the level of that cell membrane cannot accept it, and it literally gets repelled away. You cannot properly oxygenate tissue and cells in a body that's loaded with hydrogen and saturated fats. This is the crux of the matter.
And so, acidity, an acidic diet, by definition, is the buildup of hydrogen. And a better definition of acidity is the improper utilization of oxygen by the body. So you have to completely restore the cell membrane, which is why on the Gerson diet, there are no saturated fats. It's the only fat that Gerson used that he found was the only fat that didn't cause tumors to progress was flax oil. And so, the patients start to get flax oil. Flax oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid. And its electrical charge literally acts as a magnet to draw oxygen into the cell. So that now we can convert these 20 pounds of organic fruits and vegetables into energy.
[00:24:16] SCOTT: So a couple of the things that I read in preparing for this that I think are important in this metabolism conversation, you said that deficiency and toxicity are the causes of disease. And you also make the point that obesity is about metabolism, not about calories. And so, the metabolism conversation, very, very important. You talked about the 20 pounds of organic fruits and vegetables, the 13 juices per day. Talk to us a little more about the juices. Is it primarily fruits, vegetables? And then are there certain things that you add to these juicers to enhance their healing effect?
[00:24:54] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, that's a great question. Up until 1952, Gerson's juicing protocol was grapefruit, lemon, I believe, fresh pressed grapes and something else. It's not coming to me right now, but that was his original juice protocol. But anyone who knew Dr. Gerson, he was the consummate scientist. He was constantly trying to perfect his therapy based on what was coming out in the scientific literature of his time.
And so, he revamped his juicing protocol in 1952. And now, that juicing protocol that he left behind was a lot of carrots with Granny Smith apple specifically. Why Granny Smith apple? When sugar enters the cells to be broken down into energy, it's called the Krebs cycle. The Krebs cycle goes through three reactions. Those reactions require specific nutrients. The first reaction in the Krebs cycle requires malic acid. And Granny Smith apples are loaded with malic acid. So carrot and Granny Smith apple are a primary juice on the Gerson therapy.
We've added Gerson with lemon as well, based on a study that Chris Wark actually presented to me on a study that where they just tested all these fruits against cancer. And two fruits stood out as stopping cancer dead in its tracks. And it was clear compared to all the other fruits. And those two fruits were lemon, which were originally in Gerson's protocol, and cranberry juice. So we've reintroduced lemon into the carrot juice as well.
Now, Gerson also came up with four green juices. All four have Granny Smith apple. But they also have chard. They also have watercress, all the various lettuces. They have a little bit of green pepper, red cabbage. So all of that goes in as a combination of the various greens that would go into Dr. Gerson's green juice. So that is the crux of Dr. Gerson's juicing protocol.
[00:27:06] SCOTT: And then my understanding is that you also add an aloe vera and spirulina as well for additional healing properties, correct?
[00:27:16] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, that's right. And we add more than that actually. Gerson actually added a special potassium compound powder solution that he came up with after 300 different experiments. Why the potassium? You have to have potassium to flush all the sodium and water out of the cells. And that's what we're addressing with salt, right?
Into each juice goes Dr. Gerson special potassium compound powder. And into the carrot juices goes Lugol's solution. Iodine. Why? Because we're also iodine deficient. The thyroid is dependent on iodine. And the thyroid gland is one of your primary metabolic organs, because it's responsible for reproducing and making mitochondria, which convert sugar into energy inside of your cells. Potassium goes in. Lugol's solution goes in. And we've added, over the last two to three years, pure, unadulterated, raw aloe vera, organic, harvested in the Dominican Republic. Shipped to us. Two days ship, and frozen. We refreeze it and we take it out as it's needed.
There's not a more potent healer of epithelial tissue than aloe vera. And when you're trying to heal the gut, and you need to heal it fast, we think that the aloe vera that we've added to that protocol is going to do incredible, good for healing that gut lining. Not only that, aloe vera contains something called acemannan. Acemannan boosts up the macrophage production in your body. Macrophages are the big cells in your body that literally eat and digest cancer, viruses and bacteria. These things we've added to the Gerson diet along with one more thing, raw living spirulina.
Up until recently, you and I, we could only get the best form of spirulina out of a powdered or freeze-dried organic Spirulina. Now, I don't know if you've ever tasted and smelled, powdered organic spirulina. But it smells horrible. And it tastes horrible. Why? Because it's dead. You've taken a cyanobacteria, a bacteria. And when you freeze dried it, or dehydrated it, you killed it. And it's still potent healing even in that form, but it's dead. That's why it stinks.
Well, there's a guy in Florida who's revolutionized the production of spirulina. And he sells it completely alive and raw. If you put it on a microscope slide, you literally see the spirulina swimming around. And so, he sends it to us the day of harvest in cold packaging, and we have two weeks to use it to get its maximum therapeutic benefit. So we add that to the green juices.
[00:30:32] SCOTT: You suggest that chronically-ill people have 7 to 10 pounds of sodium and water that's stored in our cells. That we have a "massive cellular edema", which is an environment where mitochondria cannot thrive. So talk to us about how we address this cellular edema. And then on the sodium and salt conversation, are there any healthy salts? Himalayan salt? Celtic salt? Or do we need to avoid those as well?
[00:31:01] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, that's a great question. We've been taught that, "Oh, take a lot of Himalayan salt, Celtic salt. It's good for you. It has the minerals. It has iodine. It has all those things," right? Well, let's talk about that.
But anyway. Yeah, look, you said is that our sick patients that are coming in with seven to 10 pounds of salt and water accumulated in their cells. Everyone, today, patients, companions, they all walk out 5, 10, 15 pounds lighter. I'm not kidding you. After a two to three-week stay at our clinic. Not all of that, but most of that is because of all the excess sodium and water the Gerson therapy flushes out of the system. There's only one way to get sodium and water that's trapped. It's literally trapped in your cells.
There's a law in the human body. If you eat sodium, your body dumps potassium. You eat potassium, your body dumps sodium. That's a law. We are potassium animals. We are supposed to be getting in massive amounts of potassium on a daily basis in the form of fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, we have this completely reversed. We're not getting enough fruits and vegetables. And we're eating all these canned, boxed bottled foods that are loaded with sodium. And we're adding sodium to our food.
So today, we have this massive dilemma and health crisis of sodium and water being built up in the cell and swelling the cell up. How can the mitochondria that have to convert sugar into energy function in that edema environment? They can't. You have to get sodium and water out of the cell. And the only way to do that is the potassium in the juices, naturally occurring in the fruits and vegetables, and Dr. Gerson's compound powder. That's why he created the compound powder. He knew he had to consistently and constantly flush sodium out of the body.
Keep in mind, your kidneys are only programmed. They are literally programmed from birth to get rid of 240 or 50 milligrams a day of sodium. After that, they're programmed to reuptake it. That's what they're designed to do. And so, to flush sodium, to get it all out, you have to have that constant influx of potassium. And that's why Gerson did that.
Now, let's talk about salt. Not all salts are created equally, right? Well, table salt is what? It's 99.9% sodium chloride, right? It's sodium chloride that is the destructive molecule. It is what causes the cellular edema. But equally important, it's the sodium chloride that destroys the thyroid gland. It destroys the thyroid gland.
That's why when they came out with table salt, what happened? People started getting goiter. They started walking around looking like turkeys and chickens. They started getting goiter. So what did they do? They iodized it. They iodized it just so you don't walk around getting goiter. It's still destroying your thyroid gland on a subclinical level. Why? What did I say the thyroid is dependent on? Its dependent on iodine? Well, the chloride molecule, it displaces iodine from the thyroid gland.
When people say, "Well, I don't eat table salt. I eat the good salt." Well, here's the problem. Celtic salt, Himalayan salt, Redmond salt, all these different natural healthy salts, they're 86% to 87% sodium chloride. That's the destructive molecule. There's a reason why the Dead Sea is dead. It cannot support biological life because of the sodium chloride content.
It's my understanding, like there's this one special kind of bacteria that can survive in the Dead Sea, because it can handle that sodium chloride. So it doesn't matter if these natural salts contain all the vitamins and minerals. That sounds great. So does a green juice. A green juice contains all those vitamins and minerals, right? So there's no such thing as good salt. There's no such thing as better salt. If you're going to use salt, you want to use Celtic and Himalayan, right?
The body's obligatory loss of sodium on a daily basis is 250 to 270 milligrams, as I just mentioned. That's the amount of sodium you need on a daily basis to maintain maximum healthy function. How much is that? That's less than a quarter of a teaspoon. So if you want to take a quarter of a teaspoon of Celtic or Himalayan salt, put it in some water, dilute it, drink it. That's healthy.
[00:36:11] SCOTT: I want to clarify, is it the sodium chloride that affects the thyroid? Or is it the chloride? And do we need to be concerned about other sources of chloride like magnesium chloride, for example? Do those other types of chloride molecules have similar downsides?
[00:36:27] DR. VICKERS: That's exactly right. It is the chloride molecule that destroys the thyroid gland. It's the sodium molecule that causes the cellular edema. Those are the two issues. Now, magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, it destroys the thyroid gland. People say to me, "Can I use water softener when I'm on the Gerson therapy?" I'm like, "Well, water softener is sodium chloride." Then there's the alternative of potassium chloride. I tell them, "You can't use potassium chloride." It's going to destroy the thyroid gland as well. We're trying to restore and rebuild the thyroid gland. Potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, the chloride molecules, the chloride molecule.
Just two more things regarding what else destroys the thyroid gland. That would also include fluoride and bromine. Both of those displace iodine from the thyroid gland. Fluoride, obviously, you know where you get that from. Water, toothpaste, right? Or bromine. Where do you get bromine from today? Where's everybody getting bromine from? Bread. Your breads are made with bromine. That's why you walk into a health food store, you go to the bread section, it says "made with unbrominated flour." Because all the companies today, they make bread with bromine. So if you're a big bread eater, rest assured you're iodine deficient.
[00:37:46] SCOTT: Yeah. Another thing that I don't know that many people realize is a lot of pharmaceutical medications have a fluoride molecule as well. And so, we're potentially getting this on a daily basis. There is a movement in the health arena to have a daily celery juice. Many people seem to find it helpful. You suggest it's not a good idea and could be the biggest mistake a cancer patient could make. Why is that the case?
[00:38:11] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, that's a great point to make. Gerson has a forbidden foods list. And front and center would be juicing celery. Celery is the highest form of sodium you can get out of any vegetable. And so, to concentrate those high levels of sodium by juicing the celery root or celery, you're going to have problems if you're a cancer patient. I certainly would not be doing it if you're a cancer patient.
If you're healthy and you want to do a little bit of celery juice in whatever you're juicing, then I don't necessarily see a problem with that. But people need to understand, Gerson was an empirical genius. And if you look at his forbidden foods list, there are specific reasons why he has that. And celery was one of them because of the sodium content.
[00:39:11] SCOTT: We talked about the importance of fats for building the cell membranes. I wonder, where does that leave the ketogenic diet conversation? Some people with seizures or neurological conditions seem to benefit. But where does the concern over saturated fats leave the keto diet discussion? And does the source matter? For example, are avocados a concern or saturated fats from organic nuts for example?
[00:39:35] DR. VICKERS: Great questions. Let's talk about the ketogenic diet, okay? There's dirty keto. And there's plant-based keto essentially, right? Both, in my eyes, if you're an advanced cancer patient, I wouldn't go near them.
And look, let's face it. The ketogenic diet for the treatment of cancer, that's a recent fad. Just like the Atkins diet was the fad for weight loss, which we discovered after a year or two, was completely destroying the human body based on these principles that we just discussed, okay?
The saturated fat issue, it was starting to shut down human metabolism. Not to mention, destroying the kidneys from the high protein diet that is behind the Atkins diet. A.k.a. now the ketogenic diet for the most part.
There is absolutely no clinical evidence, long-term clinical evidence, of the ketogenic diet has the ability to reverse advanced terminal cancer. There is none. And in 10 years, we're going to look back on it just like we did the Atkins diet for weight loss. It is the most ridiculous way to treat advanced cancer. And I'm not going to go into what I think about it for other diseases, because I just don't see how it can compete with something that's plant-based, and especially something like the Gerson therapy. For 120 years, we've been reversing virtually every single degenerative disease, including advanced cancer. It is the antithesis of the ketogenic diet.
And I can guarantee you, in 10 years, we're going to be able to say, "That was ridiculous." And you have the biggest names in the industry promoting the ketogenic diet. It's so high in fats and saturated fats, it's going to feed tumors, and it's going to break down cellular metabolism in the end. And so, I just do not advocate going anywhere near that if you're trying to heal yourself of advanced cancer.
Okay, so if you look at Dr. Gerson's forbidden foods list for a cancer patient, right? This is for a cancer patient. Avocados are on that list. Nuts and seeds are on that list. No nuts and seeds. No avocados on the Gerson therapy.
Let's talk about nuts and seeds first. Why are there no nuts and seeds? Well, because they are high in saturated fats, okay? And so, you eliminate them for that purpose, I'm sure. But the main purpose he eliminated nuts and seeds is what are we trying to heal first and foremost? At the beginning of this conversation, we talked about we need to heal the gut. And in order to heal the gut, you need fruits and vegetables and food to do that.
Nuts and seeds, even on a healthy body, they're not easy to digest. If I take a handful of almonds, and I eat a handful of almonds, I can feel it. If they're not properly germinated, soaked and germinated, right, then they're actually quite difficult to digest even in a healthy body. Imagine a sick and dying body, a gut that's so deranged, that can't even break down hardly fruits and vegetables. So, nuts and seeds were eliminated on the Gerson therapy for cancer patients because they're too difficult to digest. And they're going to impede the process of healing the gut. Plain and simple.
Avocados. Avocados are nature's perfect food, or one of nature's perfect foods. The problem is, for a cancer patient, is exactly what we discussed. It has a higher fat content, a higher saturated fat content. And so, Gerson eliminated it for that purpose for a cancer patient.
Now, if another patient came in, diabetes, heart disease, maybe even autoimmune disease, I don't see a problem necessarily with having an avocado on an occasion. But for a cancer patient, we have to get the saturated fats out of the diet to restore the cell membrane.
[00:43:41] SCOTT: You talked about flax becoming a health promoting component of the cell walls, becoming a magnet for bringing oxygen into the cells. I'm guessing that hemp oil was not popular in the days of Max Gerson or maybe even used. And so, I'm wondering if that's an oil that he looked at? Or if you have any thoughts about hemp oil, coconut oil, fish oil and olive oil. Where did those fall in that discussion?
[00:44:07] DR. VICKERS: Let's talk about hemp oil. I don't know. I'm sure Gerson did not work with hemp oil. I don't think they were extracting it back then. They may have been. I doubt it. That seems to be another recent phenomenon. I would probably defer to a guy named Udo Erasmus.
[00:44:23] SCOTT: Who's has been a guest on the podcast previously, by the way.
[00:44:26] DR. VICKERS: Has he? Yeah. I've never met Udo. But talk about a genius when it comes to oils and stuff. I would have to defer to him. What does he have to say about hemp oil? I'd actually be quite curious. I mean, he would probably be the guy to defer to on that question, right?
Now, let's talk about the other oils. Coconut oil. Coconut oil is being promoted as this magical health food. It can't be further from the truth. What is it? It's a medium chain fatty acid, right? It's a medium chain fatty acid, but it's highly and completely saturated. That's why it's hard at room temperature. It's highly inflammatory because of that saturation process. So coconut oil is not a healthy food. A coconut is. And coconut milk from the coconut is, again, one of nature's perfect foods. But when you take these things, and we highly concentrate properties of these foods, coconut oil, it actually can be destructive to the human body. I wouldn't take coconut oil, coconut oil on a daily basis in the prescriptions that are being floated out there, two tablespoons a day, to save my life. I wouldn't do it.
[00:45:51] SCOTT: How about fish oil?
[00:45:53] DR. VICKERS: Well, let's talk about fish oil, right? Why is flax oil in an opaque, completely opaque bottle? The reason why it's in a completely opaque bottle is because of its unsaturated nature. It's highly volatile. It breaks down really quickly when exposed to light, air and heat. So that's why you buy it in the refrigerated section in an opaque bottle.
Fish oil is actually they say 10 times more volatile than flax oil. And so, all these companies producing fish oil – Fish oil, if you're getting it straight from the raw fish, beautiful. A perfect food. But the problem is what are they doing? They're taking it from the fish. Not only that. There are so many things, right? Our waters are so polluted today. And where does the pollution in our waters get stored? In the fat and oil of the fish. For that reason alone, I wouldn't be taken fish oil. For that reason alone. And that's why I don't eat anything from our waters. I never eat anything that comes from our waters ever, for that reason.
But more importantly, as it relates to this conversation, fish oil is highly, highly volatile and breaks down. These companies are purporting their product to be pure, unadulterated, cold-pressed. But the problem is this, it goes rancid so quickly. And when you put it into a capsule form, the processing that that goes through, rest assured that when you take a fish oil supplement, if you burp it up, and you taste that fishy aftertaste, that's a rancid oil. That's a fish oil that has gone rancid. Because fresh fish oil that doesn't have that taste is a raw fresh oil. Fish oil, I won't touch it today, either.
[00:48:00] SCOTT: And how about olive oil?
[00:48:02] DR. VICKERS: Well, that's a great question. Olive oils, monosaturated. It's a monosaturated fat. So in healthy people, it probably served some form of a beneficial process or effect for keeping us and maintaining health, right? For a cancer patient, no way. Again, we have to get the saturation out first. When they're cured after two years, to have a little bit of olive oil on a daily basis, I don't see a problem with it.
Look, cultures have survived on olive oil for millennia. And so, I just don't see the problem with it in a healthy body because of its a monosaturated nature.
[00:48:49] SCOTT: You talked about the importance of thinking about pH, about hydrogen. How do you suggest measuring pH? Should we be thinking about salivary pH? Urinary pH? What's the ideal pH if we're measuring with pH strips, for example?
[00:49:05] DR. VICKERS: That's a great question. And I tell people don't even bother. Because when you test the urine and the saliva, you're going to be in constant state of flux based on what's going on in the human body. And you'll drive yourself neurotic constantly trying to check your pH.
When you're living your life on the foundations of the Gerson therapy or just basic principles of the Gerson therapy, you're going to remain alkaline. It's that simple. You just concentrate on eating an alkaline diet, and just rest assured you're going to keep your body in a proper state of balance. I see these people who are constantly peeing on a stick trying to figure out, "What's my pH?" And it is, it becomes a neurosis at that point. And so, it's just really not necessary. If you're just using common sense and following these basic principles, you'll be okay. There's no need to worry about that constant, "What's my pH at?"
[00:50:08] SCOTT: So if we're shooting for more alkalinity, is there any value in drinking alkaline water?
[00:50:15] DR. VICKERS: Well, that's a great question again. I'm a huge proponent of Kangen water. I believe in Kangen water. Why? Because Kangen water promotes the production of hydroxyl molecules. That's what makes it alkaline, okay? You have these companies out there producing alkaline water that you can buy in a store, all they're adding are alkalinizing minerals. Do you know that's not alkalinizing the cells and the hydrogen out of the body? That's just an alkalinizing agent now that the kidneys have to get rid of on top of the acidic diet.
So if you have an acidic diet, the kidneys are being stressed because they have to eliminate that acidity in an emergency state that's created in the body. Now you add these waters where they add an alkalinizing mineral to it, the body has to get rid of that too.
Kangen water, on the other hand, is different. That's electrolyzed water that creates hydroxyl molecules. When you drink a juice, do you know that juice will test acidic on litmus paper. It will actually test acidic. But when you drink it, it gets broken down into potassium hydroxide. Hydroxide. That is a highly alkaline molecule. Kangen water produces hydroxyl molecules.
I have seen miracles with proper supplementation and Kangen water, not in cancer, but in your other more benign diseases. An alkaline water of that nature, I don't see a problem with it if, and only if, you're on a really good food-based supplement program and getting high quantities of fruits and vegetables. Absolutely vital.
[00:52:07] SCOTT: What are your thoughts then on hydrogen water, which is really emerging in the last five or eight years? Maybe the tablets you put into your water and so on? Is that potentially health-promoting or health-negating?
[00:52:19] DR. VICKERS: That's a good question. I don't know other than this, hydrogen water is bonded hydrogen. Just like water, H2O, right? Those are two binded hydrogen molecules. They don't have the same electric charge as a solitary roaming free-radical hydrogen ion charged H+ in the human body and at the level of a cell membrane.
Bonded water H2, I honestly can't tell you what that's doing in the human body, other than we know that water is H2O. How that differs from the destructive, acidic, hydrogen positively charged molecule compared to the bonded hydrogen? I can't tell you the difference on a scientific level.
[00:53:12] SCOTT: Many people have heard that sugar feeds cancer. Many people think we should not be eating fruit. You don't believe that's true. So what happens with sugar when oxygen is getting into the cell versus when oxygen is not getting into the cell?
[00:53:28] DR. VICKERS: And this is the biggest tragedy out there today when you're trying to find the proper information for healing yourself from disease. Our patients are getting 3500 to 4000 calories a day in sugar from fruits and vegetables. If sugar-fed cancer, the Gerson therapy would be leading people straight to their grave quicker than they would get there naturally. So how is it that the Gerson therapy has the most renowned history for being able to reverse advanced terminal cancer? Because sugar does not feed cancer. It heals cancer.
And it goes back to what we discussed about being able to convert that sugar into energy, where the ketogenic people have it right. They have it right. Is in an acidic body, sugar would feed cancer. Why? Because in an acidic body, you cannot get oxygen into the cell. Therefore, you cannot convert the sugar into energy. That sugar, if oxygen can't get into the cell, will go through anaerobic glycolysis. Meaning no oxygen present. And the final production is fermentation and lactic acid. Just like wine, beer, kombucha. Those are created in nonoxygenated environments. They're high in lactic acid. Why? Because no oxygen was getting in. And that lactic acid is what ultimately feeds disease.
The ketogenic people have it right. In an acidic body, sugar would feed cancer. In an alkaline body, where you've now restored the body's capacity to oxygenate cells, that sugar gets converted into energy, rallies the immune system, and cures people of their disease.
Let me just break this down on another issue, obesity, weight loss. You're told, if you want to lose weight, you need to consume only 1200 to 1500 calories per day. That's like starving. How is it that our patients can get 3500 to 4000 calories per day and we can drop a quarter to a pound a day off of their bodies until they are their normal weight? How is that possible on 3500 to 4000 calories? Because weight loss has nothing to do with caloric intake. It has everything to do with the body's ability to convert those calories into energy. And that is where the Gerson therapy reigns supreme. And that is why it's sugars that heal cancer, it's sugars that help you to lose weight, because you create the proper environment to break it down into energy.
[00:56:33] SCOTT: So when we're in this anaerobic glycolysis, that leads to lactic acid. That's feeding disease. We have to have the right fats to impact the oxygen delivery to the cells. Once we've addressed the fats and we're doing some of the things that you're talking about, is there a value in other oxygen based or oxidative therapies to support the oxygenation of the cells? For example, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, or EWOT, exercise with oxygen therapy, or maybe even ozone? Do those have any role in promoting health in your opinion?
[00:57:10] DR. VICKERS: They can provide an enormous benefit on our protocol. And that's why our clinic is called the Advanced Gerson Therapy Clinic. We are creating the conditions with the Gerson therapy for the body to restore metabolism. Getting oxygen into the cells. What do you do? You create that environment that oxygen can get into the cells and then you hit the body with the oxygen therapies.
So you come to our clinic, not only do you get the Gerson therapy, so that we can do that, restore the metabolism, but you get hyperbaric oxygen, you get ultraviolet blood irradiation with ozone, you get pulsed electromagnetic frequency therapy, particularly the BEMER mat. They say the BEMER mat oxygenates tissues 30% greater than a chamber. You go through all of that while on the Gerson Therapy at our clinic. And you can continue that at home. You can do rectal ozone at home by bubbling ozone into your coffee enema and taking ozone rectally. These are very viable therapies in conjunction with Gerson.
[00:58:23] SCOTT: I love that. I've done my exercise with oxygen therapy already this morning. I'm glad that has some potential value. I want to talk now about the idea of coffee enemas. Lots of different recommendations that you see online. We'd love to get your insights as an expert. We know that the juicing that we talked about has the potential then to move toxins from the cells into the bloodstream. That might then be a reason that coffee enemas can be helpful in supporting the liver supporting detoxification. Talk to us about the mechanisms through which coffee enemas support health and wellness.
[00:59:01] DR. VICKERS: Yeah. Look, you tell most people that sticking coffee up their rear end is going to detoxify and provide a health benefit and they're going to look at you like you're crazy. But the reality is, it is 100% scientific. And here is the mechanism behind it. There are actually a few things that the coffee enema provides benefit for the human body. But first and foremost, your liver. It produces an enzyme called glutathione S-transferase. Glutathione S-transferase is one of the most potent detoxifying enzymes in the human body. Well, that enzyme, it's made by the liver using palmitic acid. The liver takes palmitic acid and it makes glutathione transferase.
Well, properly roasted organic coffee taken rectally is loaded with palmitic acid. And it has been clinically demonstrated that when you do one coffee enema, the production of glutathione transferase by the body goes up 600% to 700% greater than normal. There is not a more potent way to detoxify the human body. It's that simple.
Now the people always ask two things. Well, if I take it rectally, how does it get to my liver? And secondly, why can't I just drink it? Well, let's address the first. Sitting right there when it enters the rectum is what? The hemorrhoidal veins, right? The hemorrhoidal veins. Well, the hemorrhoidal veins absorb the coffee, and they dump it into the portal vein. And then the portal vein ends where? Right in the liver.
So you take coffee rectally, it goes straight to the liver unadulterated. That's why if someone – And people have done this, and they've died. If you drink a bottle of vodka, you're going to get really sick. But if you took a bottle of vodka rectally, you'd be dead within 30 minutes, because it goes straight to the liver without being metabolized and causes liver coma, essentially, and you die.
Coffee, when taken rectally, goes straight to the liver via the same mechanisms. Fortunately, it doesn't have the same effects as vodka. But I've been doing one coffee enema every single day for 25 years since the day I met Charlotte Gerson. Charlotte Gerson, up until she died at the age of 98, was doing one to two a day for 75 years. People who are arguing that, "Oh, you can't do them. They're dangerous. They kill people." It's a lie. That stuff on the Internet, it's an abject lie. Our cancer patients are getting five a day for two years.
[01:02:02] SCOTT: You're making my two to three times a week feel like I'm a bit of a slacker. I guess I have to up my game a little bit.
[01:02:08] DR. VICKERS: Well, you're not. Look, two to three times a week is probably good. I mean, I take it to one time a day. It's the first thing I do. When my feet hit the floor, that's where I'm going. I'm going to do my coffee enema. It's how I start my day.
[01:02:20] SCOTT: Let's talk a little bit about other potential mechanisms. And I don't know that you'll even agree with these. But one of the other things that I've read is that coffee enemas can help with bile flow. And so, supporting the gallbladder, the release of bile. And then I've also heard that they can be helpful for supporting the vagus nerve. So any thought on bile flow and/or the vagus nerve?
[01:02:42] DR. VICKERS: I can't address the vagus nerve. I don't know. The bile flow? Absolutely. You actually get that effect when you drink it. That's why when you drink coffee, one of the things that makes you do is go to the bathroom. Why? Because it's increased bile flow. And so, that increases the peristalsis of the colon making you go to the bathroom. All right? So we know that is the other therapeutic thing that the coffee enema does, is it increases bile flow. What's attached to bile? Toxins.
The way the human body detoxifies is the liver converts cholesterol into bile acids. And toxins get bound to the bile acids and get eliminated through the intestines and the kidneys. That's the one thing, the other thing that the coffee enema does. One more thing that the coffee enema does that people aren't familiar with is it's a natural form of dialysis.
As you and I sit here over a 15-minute period of time, our blood is being filtered through our liver and our kidneys two and a half times in a 15-minute period. When you do a coffee enema, your bloods actually being filtered five times in that 15-minute period.
[01:03:56] SCOTT: So with the idea that bile is being released that has these toxins in it, there's the potential for enterohepatic recirculation of bile. Commonly, we think about using binders like charcoal, or chlorella or other things to help minimize enterohepatic recirculation of toxins. Do you think there's some value in using binders around the time of a coffee enema? Or is the bile moving through the system so quickly as a result of the coffee enema, that that's not always necessary?
[01:04:27] DR. VICKERS: Yeah. Well, I'd say on the Gerson therapy, it's probably not necessary. The amount of nutrition and fiber that you're getting that combined bile and get it through the system, I don't think it really is an issue. If you're just doing coffee enemas, which nobody should ever do, apart from this kind of a regimen, because when you do stimulate that glutathione transferase mechanism, that requires massive amounts of nutrients.
In order to run the glutathione transferase cycle, the production, it requires all your B vitamins, vitamins, minerals, cofactors. And so, you're already depleted. And so, if you just start doing coffee enemas without massive amounts of nutrition, you're just going to deplete yourself even more.
But to get the bile out of the body, no. Like, oatmeal, the fiber and oatmeal will just bind and release any excess bile as well. So you can do those things. I'm sure they would be some kind of a benefit. But I don't see it as a prevailing worry.
[01:05:36] SCOTT: Let's talk a little bit about the type of coffee. I usually think of using an organic gold roast. I know there's different roasts that have different types of or different levels of some of the acids. You mentioned the palmitic acid, for example. So what types of coffee should we be thinking about? And then how important is testing the coffee for the presence of mycotoxins?
[01:05:56] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, we rely on our provider who has been providing us for 20 years. And that's a company in Eugene, Oregon called Royal Blue Organics. And they make a Gerson Therapy roast. If you ever listened to Charlotte Gerson speak before she died, she was not a fan of the green coffee. She was not a fan of green coffee. And I never listened to her reasons why.
But recently, there's a big darling weight loss supplement on the market called Green Coffee Extract. It's a darling weight loss supplement that everybody's taking now for weight loss. Well, what they're finding now is that that supplement is actually causing the sulfation pathways of liver detoxification, which is like the liver's primary detoxification pathway from breaking down. It's blocking the sulfation pathway of liver detoxification, green coffee extract.
I already am not a fan of green coffee extract. And so, when I heard Charlotte talk about it – Or excuse me, green coffee. When I heard Charlotte talk about, it just confirmed what I already believed and knew about it. So we've always used a lightly roasted organic coffee that comes from a bean that has a higher pH, higher pH, more alkaline bean, than your typic drinking being. What gives coffee its flavor and its aromas, it's based on its acidity, right? So different beans have different acidity. And so, this company in Eugene, Oregon roasts a certain bean that they wouldn't roast for a drinking coffee. And it's a more basic, meaning pH bean.
[01:07:44] SCOTT: And what about the mycotoxin testing aspect of this?
[01:07:47] DR. VICKERS: I don't rely on that. You hear this now, that what's out there, the mycotoxins in coffee. And I don't know if that's related more to standard conventional production. Or if it's related to even organic production. I can't speak for that. But I have to trust that the company that we're using, that we have used, and that we've successfully reversed cancer, using their coffee, somehow deals with that mechanism.
[01:08:17] SCOTT: With the juices, you mentioned several things that you do to make those more health promoting. Are there any other materials that could be helpful in adding to the enema solution? Some talk about trace minerals. Some talk about essential oil. Some talk about using ozonated water. Maybe the Kangen water. Like, how can we further optimize the coffee enema solution?
[01:08:41] DR. VICKERS: Well, like I mentioned earlier, you could bubble ozone into your coffee enema, right? That's a viable way of doing that, getting oxygen in your body. If people made their enemas with Kangen water, I don't think I'd be opposed to that either.
One thing that I'm looking into right now is fulvic acid. I'm looking into fulvic acid. But it's potent. I mean, the amount of fulvic acid you need, as a dosage, is like salt. It's like a quarter of a teaspoon. I want to be sure I'm doing – You don't want to overload the body, because you easily can, right? And we're doing so much already that, to add something else, even in miniscule amounts, what kind of effect is that going to have on the body? You don't want to overload the body with massive amounts of supplements. There just comes a point where the body's like, "What are you doing? I can't do anything with all this. Slow down." Because supplements are so highly concentrated. That's the only thing I've really been looking into lately, is fulvic acid.
[01:09:47] SCOTT: Let's say someone prepares 1200 cc’s of coffee enema solution, maybe that's five cups, is it important to do a specific amount per fill and release cycle? Or if someone feels like they can't hold the coffee enema, maybe they only tolerate 200 cc's, for example, is it okay then to do several fill and release cycles over a period of time? Talk to us about how much we need to be doing at once. And then how long is the average coffee enema that's done at your clinic?
[01:10:19] DR. VICKERS: Yeah. Dr. Gerson – I can only speak for Dr. Gerson's protocol. And the ratio is this, it's three tablespoons of ground organic coffee for every quart of water. You would boil that for five minutes, simmer it for 15, strain it, and that would be your enema.
Now, we make a concentrate, which varies those 12 tablespoons to a gallon, and 12 tablespoons to a quart, and then we use eight ounces of that concentrate, add 24 ounces of water. But regardless, 32 ounces of liquid is what Dr. Gerson would put into the body.
Now, if a lady came in that was 5"1', 90 pounds, then maybe we would do 24 ounces. Now, if someone can't hold that much, which in the beginning, that's actually quite common. But as you do it more, you become a seasoned veteran, so to speak, and I could run a marathon with my enema at me at 32 ounces. But in the beginning, people can't do that.
If they can't, then you take 16 ounces. You have them hold that for about 10 to 12 minutes. Have them released. Go back and do the next 16 ounces 10 to 12 minutes, hold and release. That would be the standard protocol on how to deal with that kind of a situation.
[01:11:42] SCOTT: So if you can do the full 32 ounces that you talked about, is it just a one cycle 15 minutes? And that's the entire enema for that that enema session?
[01:11:51] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, that's right. The enema was supposed to be held 12 to 15 minutes.
[01:11:56] SCOTT: And is it best to – And I've heard everyone argue all different sides of this, lying on the right side, lying on the left side, lying on the back. Does it even matter? I know some people now talk about standing coffee enemas. So what's the rationale for the positioning? And what do you think is ideal here?
[01:12:15] DR. VICKERS: Well, look, Gerson would have told you absolutely to lie on the right side. What organ are we trying to affect? We're trying to affect the liver, right. And so Gerson absolutely would have you lie on the right side, because that's where the liver is. For whatever purpose, he felt that necessary. That's what we abide by. Everybody's got an opinion. We've been doing it for 100, 120 years. We lie on the right side. We tell people to lie on the right side.
[01:12:42] SCOTT: Some people suggest that they feel like some of the enema solution remains stuck in the colon after they do an enema. So does that matter? And is there a reason why that might happen in some people?
[01:12:54] DR. VICKERS: I don't know why that would happen. We hear it quite often. But it's already absorbed into the body pretty much at that point, the coffee. You could do a water enema followed up with a water enema to release the rest of it. That often works. But as to why some people experienced that and some don't, I really can't say.
[01:13:16] SCOTT: Are there any contraindications for coffee enemas? So if someone has hemorrhoids, or diverticulitis, or maybe Crohn's, or ulcerative colitis, or IBS, IBD or SIBO, any of those conditions that would lead you to have concern? And are there any long-term concerns around doing too many enemas and negatively impacting normal peristalsis when you stop doing them? Can we become too reliant on them?
[01:13:44] DR. VICKERS: Well, like I said, I've been doing them for 25 years. And if my diet is proper, I have normal bowel movements. It's that simple. Now, people say, "Well, ever since I started doing enemas, I don't have a bowel movement during the day." Well, that's because, typically, a coffee enema is worth two to three bowel movements in terms of what you're eliminating. But even still, I can still have normal bowel movements throughout the day, particularly when I'm eating loads of fruits and vegetables.
But those other conditions, are there any contraindications? The reality is no. I mean, if someone comes in with Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, even if they're bleeding, they still get the coffee enemas. And ironically, their bleeding starts to subside within the week, even doing coffee enemas on a daily basis.
The only things that might contraindicate coffee enemas is maybe somebody who has an extreme allergy to caffeine or gets really fidgety, and nervous, and tachycardia, and kidney or heart issues, speeding up the beating of the heart and the pulse. Those might be the only contraindications. But I've never not given someone coffee enemas.
[01:15:04] SCOTT: How often do you see that heart related issue that you just talked about or issues with caffeine then causing jitteriness? I generally have seen that oral use of coffee may lead to some of those symptoms, but that coffee enemas tend to do so less commonly.
[01:15:21] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, that's great question. Because if I drink a cup of coffee, I'm a mess. I mean, I'm a mess. My nerves are a mess. My digestive system, my heart. I just don't feel good. When I do one coffee enema, I feel amazing, right? Same amount of coffee. When you take it through the digestive tract, its effects on the adrenal glands, that's where it affects. When you drink it, it affects the adrenal glands. When you take it rectally, it bypasses that. And the caffeine is really neutralized in the liver.
Now, in some people where it's being absorbed into the bloodstream, it still has a little bit of an effect on them. But typically, within a week on our therapy, where you've started to cleanse the liver, reestablish the nutrient status in the body with all the nutrients, they don't have those reactions as sensitivities. Not just a caffeine, but all other food allergies and food sensitivities literally go away within a week or two on the Gerson therapy.
[01:16:21] SCOTT: When people are doing the enemas with your program, they're juicing, they're getting electrolytes, they're getting minerals from the juices. If someone's not doing that, which we know they should be, but if they're not doing that, they're doing coffee enemas, ongoing health support, maybe they've finished your program and they're just continuing with coffee enemas, do you think that they potentially could lead to any imbalances in that realm? Or maybe we need to be then making sure we're adding electrolytes or minerals?
[01:16:47] DR. VICKERS: Well, no doubt about it. And I mentioned that I said, "Look, when you stimulate the glutathione transferase system, you require massive amounts of nutrients." All your vitamins, minerals, cofactors are necessary to run that cycle. So the general rule for anybody is if you're going to do one coffee enema, you have to follow it up with three to five pounds of organic fruits and vegetables every single day, whether that's eaten or whether that's juiced. You have to. That is the rule. Coffee enemas really should only be done in conjunction with these principles.
[01:17:24] SCOTT: Some people suggest that coffee enemas can negatively impact the microbiome. That they have some possibility of washing out that healthy flora. I've never felt that's the case. But I do hear it commonly. So any negative implications of ongoing coffee enemas on the microbiome that you have served?
[01:17:45] DR. VICKERS: No. And the reason why is this, the bacteria that they're talking about, first of all, are mostly congregated in the small intestine. And they only make it up to half of the transverse process, essentially, of the colon. The entire ascending colon and the transverse colon do have bacteria in them. But do you know those bacteria are getting less and less as you go throughout the large intestine? The coffee doesn't make it further than halfway up the sigmoid colon, which is purely eliminated. This theory out there that you wash out the gut microbiome with coffee enemas, it's just not true.
[01:18:26] SCOTT: On another interview, you talked about castor oil. I know some people use castor oil internally. Others are doing castor oil packs. How do you incorporate castor oil into the Gerson program?
[01:18:37] DR. VICKERS: Yeah, both those ways. Castor oil packs are an ingenious way of getting rid of organ pain. Let's say you have liver pain, kidney pain, you have bloating, gut discomfort. If you take a castor oil pack and you put it over the affected area for about an hour and a half, two hours, it's amazing what it can do for pain. We use that as a mechanism for pain control at the clinic.
Gerson used castor oil orally to move toxicity out of the body. And so, every other day on the Gerson therapy, you get two tablespoons of castor oil orally at 5am. And then you get two tablespoons of castor oil in your coffee enema at 10am. The massive amount of toxic elimination with that treatment is astronomical, so much so that you can't put a chemo patient on it.
If you have a patient that had just been previously treated with chemo and you bring them into the clinic and you do that castor oil regimen on them, you could kill them. Because that chemo was stored up in the cells that they had. And it will pull out the chemo so quickly from the cells back into the bloodstream that they could go into chemo toxic shock and die.
And so, castor oil can be a very, very potent detoxifier. Our grandparents knew that. Our great grandparents knew that. If you got sick as a kid, 50, 60, 80 years ago, you are getting two tablespoons of castor oil. Why? Because it eliminated toxicity, started driving toxicity being created by the virus and the killing of the virus out of the body.
[01:20:27] SCOTT: Do your patients simultaneously use immunotherapies or other more conventional cancer therapies while they're doing your program? And does your program synergize those other things? Or are those generally problematic to do together?
[01:20:41] DR. VICKERS: Okay, so we're doing our own natural immunotherapies, right? We're doing something called Kohli's therapy, or Kohli's toxins. We're doing something called dendritic cell therapy, GcMAF. These are all natural immunotherapies.
Well, let's talk about the conventional side. Chemo, radiation, not compatible. Now, recently, in about the last three to five years, I've had a few patients combine immunotherapy, standard conventional immunotherapy, with the Gerson therapy with good, if not great results. Had they done immunotherapy individually? It's a zero-sum game. They stop working.
Do you know, I once had as a companion in my clinic. He came as a companion to his wife who had cancer. A Chinese guy. He's the one who researched, developed and brought to market today's immunotherapies. Opdivo was one of them, and I forget what the other one. It was the standard immunotherapies that first came out. He was the one with his colleagues that developed and brought it to market. And his wife's at our clinic doing the Gerson therapy, not doing the immunotherapy.
After three weeks of spending time with this man, he had to admit that, ultimately, the immunotherapy drugs were self-limiting and they stopped working. Why? It makes complete sense. When you come into our clinic sick with any disease, particularly cancer, you're so depleted. And that's why we have to rebuild that body with all that nutrition. When you artificially stimulate the immune system with immunotherapy, you deplete the body even more, because your body is rallying its nutrient reserve tank in your bone in your bone marrow to support that immune response from the immunotherapy drug. You are depleting and depleting and depleting even more than you're already depleted.
And so, there comes a point where you completely exhaust the immune system. And it's game over. These immune therapy drugs, they stimulate the immune system. There's no doubt about it. So much so that the immune system turns on itself and kills itself. That's the side effect of today's modern immunotherapies. They are literally killing people with cytokine storms. They're called cytokine storms.
When they get the immunotherapy drug, the body's turning on itself and literally killing itself. People die from immunotherapy drugs. Do you know, in 100% of cases, everyone gets a side effect from the drug. It's not always death. It's rarely death. Let's say, 15%, 20% maybe of cases can have a death response. But there's 100% of cases that gets some kind of a cytokine response.
Here's what's happened with our patients. Our patients who have done Gerson with the immunotherapy have absolutely dumbfounded their doctors, because they haven't gotten the cytokine storms and side effects that all the other patients get. Is that because the Gerson therapy is somehow self-regulating the immune system, even in the midst of the immunotherapy drug? I don't know. But our patients have responded very well to using immunotherapy with Gerson.
[01:24:30] SCOTT: How long do most people stay at your clinic? And then once they go home, what are some of the components that they then would continue at home?
[01:24:40] DR. VICKERS: Well, they stay at our clinic. Typically, the standard stay is three weeks. I've had people stay four weeks. I've had people stay six weeks very rarely. I've had a couple stay three months. But the standard stay is three weeks. When they go home, this is a two-year therapy. Your cancer didn't come on in one year. It's not going to go away in one year. This is a two-year therapy.
Your cancer has taken decades to show itself. It's literally a 10 to 20-year process. So once it rears its ugly head, you've already had it for 10 to 20 years. So going home, you have to continue this therapy for two years. So you come to our clinic to learn how to carry this therapy out in its extreme specificity and intensity. You go home. You continue the therapy. You're gradually weaned off it over those two years. But the first six months is extremely intensive. And then you get gradually weaned down for two years.
After two years, you're cured. And let me express that we don't cure everyone, okay? People think, well, we cure everyone. We don't. And anybody out there in our industry claiming 70%, 80%, 90% cure rates, let me tell you, they're lying through their teeth, especially in stage three, stage four.
Stage three, stage four, if you're curing, completely curing, no evidence of disease 30% to 40%, you're the best in the world. You are the best in the world in stage three, stage four, particularly stage four. Stage one, stage two, we could claim 75%, 80% easily. Stage three, stage four, 30%, 40% if you're lucky.
[01:26:46] SCOTT: So when people leave the clinic and go home, they're continuing on with their juicing, they're doing their coffee enemas. Are they also still doing the PEMF therapy? The ozone therapy? What are some of those other things that they're also continuing?
[01:27:00] DR. VICKERS: That's up to the patient, right? Those are optional going home for them. We encourage them to do everything. But let's face it, none of these things are cheap. The Gerson therapy is not cheap. 20 pounds of organic fruits and vegetables over a month period, I mean, how much do you think that runs? That has to run into the couple $1,000 a month at least. Then you've got the coffee, you've got the supplements, you've got the flax oil. Then you if you want to add all this other stuff, I mean, look, it's not cheap. People have their limitations, both financial and logistical. We just hope they can do as much as they possibly can going home.
[01:27:42] SCOTT: Coming back to Germany, the German new medicine, Dr. Ryke Hamer talks about the role of mental-emotional health in cancers. What was Max or Charlotte Gerson's thoughts on the role of mental-emotional health in these complex conditions in cancer? Did they explore that realm in their work?
[01:28:01] DR. VICKERS: They didn't. Not that they ignored it. But Dr. Gerson, it's the effects of those spiritual and emotional issues on metabolism, and the production of energy, the hormonal systems. What do the emotional and the spiritual impacts have on the body as it relates to metabolism, the hormones? What does it do to our energy production and consumption, right? I mean, that's why stress is such a major cause of disease, because it robs so much energy from our immune system.
I think Gerson understood the emotional component behind it. But it wasn't his major factor in whether or not someone is going to get well. And it's great. If you can deal with someone's emotional stuff, you're going to have a huge impact on their disease. But if you don't change the underlying heirs of their diet and metabolism within their body, I can't imagine you're going to cure many people.
[01:29:04] SCOTT: Tell us how people can find you, learn more about your work, your clinic.
[01:29:09] DR. VICKERS: Yeah. Our website is GersonClinic.com, GersonClinic.com. They can always reach me directly through
Now, all our Gerson supplements are actually on another website called GersonClinics.com. We also have a link to that on our website, GersonClinic.com, where they can get all the Gerson things that they need, and specialty supplements for individual conditions that we would promote with the Gerson therapy as the foundation of someone's treatment for another benign condition. So these are the ways that people can get a hold of us.
And you go to our website – And this would be for your listeners. If you go to our website, and you click on gift, click on gift and put in the password, lowercase, all lowercase, podcast, and you can listen to all my private lectures that our patients at our clinic have access to when they come and stay two to three weeks at our clinic.
[01:30:42] SCOTT: Yeah, those are excellent. I had an opportunity to listen to some of those. I'm excited that you're making that available for people. My last question is the same for every guest. And we know some of this answer already. But what are some of the key things that you do on a daily basis in support of your own health?
[01:30:58] DR. VICKERS: Well, as we mentioned, I already do a coffee enema. But I invariably eat three to five pounds of produce every single day. Every single day, I get three to five pounds of organic produce. And then I don't eat salt. I mean, unfortunately, if I go to a restaurant, I sometimes can't avoid it. But you will never see me add salt to food ever. Because sodium that I need for optimal function is naturally occurring in my fruits and vegetables. It's already there. And so, if I'm eating three to five pounds a day, I'm not going to have a problem.
What else do I do? I take a natural vitamin C supplement from Paleovalley. I don't know if you've heard of Paleovalley. It's from Autumn Smith. Autumn Smith used to be J.Lo's personal, either physical trainer, or she was a choreographer. I forget. But she worked side by side with Jennifer Lopez. She's amazing. I mean, this young lady is amazing. And she's created amazing products. So I take her vitamin C product, which is very expensive, because it's coming from organic camu camu, organic acerola cherry and organic amla berry, the three highest sources of vitamin C in nature. Not ascorbic acid, what you get in most of your vitamin C supplements that come from a laboratory, and they're derived from genetically modified corn starch, sulfuric acid and acetone. That is where a lot of your vitamin C supplements come from. I take her Paleovalley vitamin C supplement, and her turmeric. I take her turmeric supplement as well. So those are two things that I essentially add to my diet.
[01:32:39] SCOTT: You have given us some fantastic information. My takeaway was to revisit my water softener for one. I learned a lot of important things from the conversation. Just want to thank you for being generous in your time for sharing all this great information and for doing what you do. So thank you so much for being here Dr. Vickers.
[01:32:57] DR. VICKERS: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
[OUTRO]
[01:32:59] SCOTT: To learn more about today's guest, visit GersonClinic.com That's GersonClinic.com. Gerson clinic.com.
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a positive rating or review, as doing so we'll help the show reach a broader audience. To follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or MeWe, you can find me there as Better Health Guy. To support the show, please visit BetterHealthGuy.com/donate. To be added to my newsletter, please visit BetterHealthGuy.com/newsletters. This, and other shows, can be found on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
[OUTRO]
[01:24:41] ANNOUNCER: Thanks for listening to this BetterHealthGuy Blogcast with Scott, your better health guy. To check out additional shows and learn more about Scott's personal journey to better health, please visit BetterHealthGuy.com.
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Disclaimer
The content of this show is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any illness or medical condition. Nothing in today's discussion is meant to serve as medical advice or as information to facilitate self-treatment. As always, please discuss any potential health-related decisions with your own personal medical authority.
