My acupuncturist said I should go on the Gerson diet. I rolled my eyes. After being vegan for 5 years and countless vegetarian years, I am exhausted of food restrictions. DH even rejected the Gerson diet when he sought alternative cancer treatments.
Gerson therapy is a form of alternative cancer treatment involving coffee enemas, supplements, juicing, and a special diet that is claimed to cleanse the body, boost the immune system, and stimulate metabolism.
I read The Gerson Therapy: The Amazing Nutritional Program for Cancer and Other Illnesses by Charlotte Gerson, Morton Walker so I would have all the data points to evaluate the diet. It is a complicated and excluding diet that is not sustainable regardless of the anecdotal support.
No avocados. No salt (and 100 other foods.) Coffee enemas. Juicing with only one type of juicer made by one company. They flat out said that if you didn’t use the named juicer, you wouldn’t get well. Really?
Their concept of healing yourself through nutrition is so rigid that it reminds me of religious tenets: “follow this diet with no deviation and you’ll be healed” runs the same logic of “follow this god and do not sin and you’ll go to heaven.” So if I decide that I don’t want to do the diet, I then am deciding to be ill? Why do anything to help myself feel better if obviously I’m not doing the one thing that would save me?
As I was reading the book and would have a piece of cheese, I would think, “according to the Gerson diet, I’m killing myself.” I do understand that our body needs good nutrition to run efficiently, but the Gerson diet is not the way for me.
