After she was diagnosed with cancer, doctors told Carol Beard’s mother she had three months to live.
They told her mother she should start getting her affairs in order. Instead, she began a strict diet of organic vegetable and fruit juice, coffee, and food supplements.
“That’s how our ancestors ate, from the ground,” Beard said. “Our food’s not the way it used to be.”
Beard’s mother lived for another two-and-a-half years.
The diet is called Gerson therapy, and it’s one of many forms of alternative medicine that use food to treat and, in some cases, even have been said to cure diseases like cancer and skin tuberculosis.
Gerson therapy is an example of a treatment causing debate among experts. Even today, no one is sure what really works.
“The challenge is to differentiate between the myth and the real deal,” said Carleton biology professor Ashkan Golshani.
“There are always people who claim their mixture has magical powers. Which one do you trust,” he said.
People have used food as medicine for thousands of years, Golshani said. Ninety-five per cent of pharmaceuticals are derived from natural substances or are manufactured to replicate them.
He said he doesn’t consider all of those drugs “food medicine,” though, because many of them are synthetically produced and include other chemicals.
What classify as food medicine are products like echinacea, an herb taken to reduce the effects of cold symptoms. Cinnamon and garlic help to lower blood pressure, he said, and ginger helps counter intestinal issues.
Golshani also included all common vitamins on the list of food medicines. Most of these are best used as preventative medicine that helps the body fight off diseases before they take root, not as cures.
The idea that healthy, organic food can help the body heal itself is the basis for many alternative forms of therapy.
The Breuss Diet, invented by an Austrian neuropath, involves a 42-day diet of small amounts of juice and tea that will eventually help the body destroy a cancerous tumour on its own, according to a description on the Livestrong website.
The theory is that cancer cells thrive off of amino acids, and depriving the body of protein weakens the cancer cells so the body, which is being pumped full of carrot-celeriac-beet-black radish-potato juice, can fight them off naturally, according to the website.
Similar reasoning is behind Gerson therapy, a prescriptive treatment which uses organic juices and meals, as well as regular liver cleanses they call “coffee enemas,” to help the body cure itself.
The process takes a minimum of two years and requires the dedication of the patient and their friends and family. Dr. Max Gerson invented the treatment in Germany in the 1920s.
“It’s treating the cause, not the symptom,” Beard said.
Gerson therapy is expensive; a two-week stay at the Gerson clinic costs US$11,000, the recommended juicer is $2,400, and the recommended amount of organic food, coffee, and supplements can set a person back almost $1,500 per month.
And since insurance is often not prepared to pay for alternative treatment until the patient has explored all conventional avenues, the patient often has to shoulder the cost.
Beard and her daughter have also undergone Gerson therapy for a malignant liver tumour and acute asthma, respectively.
After seeing her and her daughter’s health improve dramatically as a result of the treatment, she said she swears by the therapy’s “holistic” approach and is now the president of the board of directors of the Gerson Institute, a non-profit organization that provides training and care for those undergoing Gerson therapy.
So why doesn’t food medicine receive more government funding for research and distribution?
Beard said that while governments, the American Medical Association, and pharmaceutical companies are well aware of Gerson therapy, “there’s no money in carrot juice.”
When Gerson presented five cured patients to an American congressional committee in 1946, Beard said they denied him funding.
Golshani said governments will usually only fund research into alternative medicine if there is proof the treatment will save lives.
Measuring success rates of Gerson therapy is more complicated than that, Beard said.
A number of factors need to be in place: the patient ideally should not have had chemotherapy, they should not have taken too many medications during their lifetime, and most importantly, they need a strong will to live, she said.
“If I give a number, I can’t support it with good, statistical, qualified information. All I can give you is my observation,” she said.
She said she has seen a woman recover after 15 years of fighting breast cancer, and seen a person free of pancreatic cancer for 25 years after treatment.
Beard said she has even seen a hairdresser with cancer who excreted hair dye from her scalp and fingertips during the detox.
When a person is desperate enough after years of trying to heal or rid themselves of a condition, Golshani said they are vulnerable to the allure of alternative medicine, and can fall for scams.
“Those guys always say pharmaceuticals are [misleading people], but the little guys are doing the exact same thing,” he said.
“There are a lot of so-called “cancer diets” out there just preying on those who are so desperately looking for a fast, effective and positive cure,” wrote Examiner health writer Debbie Nicholson in an article about cancer diets.
She said diets like Breuss and Gerson could even lead to malnutrition and anorexia in some cases.
Senior nurse at Cancer Research UK Sarah Turner told the Guardian that she wouldn’t recommend food medicine because there isn’t scientific or medical backing for their claims.
But she said they can be useful alongside conventional treatments.
Golshani agreed, saying he wouldn’t shy away from recommending aspects of the Gerson diet for its nutritional benefits and placebo effect on patients.
But he said those who ignore modern medicine in favour of alternative measures are in “huge danger.”
“Vaccines, antibiotics, those are the things that really revolutionized the health care system,” he said. “The reason we live this long is because of those drugs.”
When it comes to claims that treatments like Gerson therapy and the Breuss diet actually curing degenerative diseases such as cancer, Golshani is skeptical and thinks the public should be, too.
“If someone claims that they have this cocktail of juice that’s going to do magic with respect to cancer, I don’t believe it,” he said.
“Do your research, go with your instinct, and put a little logic into it. If it makes sense, go for it.”
