Charlotte Gerson is the founder of the Gerson Institute and the daughter of Max Gerson, the creator of the Gerson Therapy. Born in Germany, she attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Charlotte owns the copyright on two excellent DVD’s describing the Gerson Therapy, showing recovered patients.  The first one, “The Gerson Miracle” won first prize at the Beverly Hills Film Festival in 2004.  The later one, “Dying to Have Known” describes the attackers’ claims and counters them with Surgeons and Professors showing cured, formerly terminal, patients treated with the Gerson Therapy and recovered.

Charlotte’s recent book,  Healing the Gerson Way – Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases, written in cooperation with Beata Bishop.  It came out in August, 2007 and has been translated into 12 languages. It is new, in excellent style, eminently readable and usable for self-healing.  It also has almost 100 pages of Gerson recipes. In the meantime, she has written two additional books, Defeating Obesity, and Diabetes and High Blood Pressure — The Metabolic Syndrome;  and Defeating Arthritis, Joint and Bone Diseases.

Steve Prussack (SP): Can you expand on your background and tell us more about The Gerson Therapy?

Charlotte Gerson (SG): First of all I would like to stress that none of the protocols were originated by me; my father Max Gerson invented it all. He started working with nutrition and health when attempting to heal himself of severe migraines that were extremely disabling. All of his colleagues and teachers from medical school believed that migraines were incurable, but he was not happy with that and decided he would find his own cure. It was a very long and research-intensive journey. After years of searching, he found one paper by a women who changed her diet and her migraines got better. This was around 1906 and no doctors were discussing diet. That was for the cooks. But my father attempted to try it out. First he tried living on nothing but milk, as he figured if babies could do it he could too; however, he got sick as a dog. Then he researched what our physiological ancestors lived on. He tried this and he found a vegetarian diet with main staples of fruits and vegetables. After lots of experimenting, he established what he called a migraines diet as his migraines were cured.

During World War I he worked with one of the top-notch bio chemical professors and one of the most famous neurologists in Europe. Max latter settled into his own special practice as an internal nerve physician. Some migraine patients came to him and he got them on fresh fruits and vegetables and most importantly had them stop eating salt, as salt is a serious damaging substance to the body. All his migraine patients were showing great results with their new diets, and it was one in particular patient whose migraines not only went away but his skin tuberculoses, which was also believed to be incurable, was healed. At first Dr. Gerson didn’t understand the connection between the illnesses and the diet. So Dr. Gerson began treating other skin tuberculosis patients with his migraine therapy and found the same positive results. His other colleagues eventually ended up suing him because he said he was an internal neurologist but he was treating skin disease, which was an external disease. The judge asked several of the other accusers if they could cure the disease and they all said no, so the judge let Dr. Gerson continue with his practice. The top-notch tuberculosis doctor heard about Dr. Gerson and called him up, as he wanted to test his therapy. He found 450 seriously advanced skin tuberculosis patients and he told Dr. Gerson that if one of the patients was cured he would believe and support his work. It turns out that out of the 450 patients 446 recovered. Dr. Gerson was still not satisfied so he went out to test other patients with different types of tuberculosis. It was after that that he realized he was restoring the bodies systems to heal themselves, as people were not only being cured of all forms of tuberculoses but asthma, allergies and other illnesses as well. And that is how Gerson therapy began.

SP: At twelve years old you went on the program as well?

CG: It was 1933-1934 and Hitler had just become Prime Minister, so we had to leave Germany. Dr. Gerson was invited to do the presentation of his life to show accusers that he was not falsifying his results by retouching his x-rays. With luck he was able to cross the border to get his x-rays verified, but was not able to reenter the country because of Hitler’s prosecution, and therefore he missed the presentation. We ended up moving to Austria where my father was always in contact with tuberculosis patients and that was in fact how I caught it. But he was able to cure me too.

SP: I actually heard that Adolph Hitler used his therapy?

CG: Yes, so we were told.

SP: Can you talk about the definition of  being truly healthy and how the Gerson protocol works?

CG: The protocol works to re-establish and re-build all the body’s organ systems. It is not necessarily all about raw food; the Gerson therapy has a lot of raw foods but also cooked as well. Its not specifically raw food, but the right food. It does not include salt, which is not a food, and is strictly damaging to the body. The foods in the Dr. Gerson therapy all have to be properly prepared to get the right nutrients.

SP: Is the Gerson protocol sustaining? Is that what you follow day to day?

CG: I have followed it day to day for more than sixty years. If I truly needed salt, I would not be alive. I was born into a salt-free home because salt interferes with the body’s metabolism. Salt is twenty times worse than sugar and that includes all salt. People ask me why they can’t have sea salt and I ask them if they ever read adventure stories when they were young where people would get stranded out to sea on their boats with no food or water but still they never resorted to drinking salt water because they knew it would kill them.

SP: People tell me they crave salty foods. Is it a drug?

CG: Yes, well people crave sugar and that’s a drug too. Salt is a heavily toxic drug. As a matter of fact the body demands water to dilute it. That night we went to that raw food restaurant where the food was heavily salted I found myself drinking an extra cup of water, my mouth was burning, it just was not good (Charlotte is referring to a party at a raw food restaurant in Southern California that featured heavily dehydrated and high fat raw foods).

SP: What’ the best way to go about changing your diet to better follow the Gerson therapy?

CG: The food that I eat, and the seriously ill at the hospital receive, is all organic, all fresh and freshly prepared. There is nothing frozen, pickled or jarred, no salt added to anything, and completely vegetarian with no milk or cheese. The body does need a small amount of sodium to sustain itself but it can all be found and assimilated in fresh fruits and vegetables. Dr. Gerson said “study nature; its eternal laws will keep you alive.”

That’s the one draw back of the Gerson therapy it is time consuming, everything has to be prepared fresh if you really want to heal. Most of these mineral pills don’t work as the body usually can’t assimilate them and besides that they are not the living substance you need real fresh food.

SP: How much juice are you drinking a day?

CG: Well I am healthy and I usually drink about six 8oz glasses of fresh fresh juice a day. We have to insist on organic food because otherwise the food is poisoned by chemicals, artificial fertilizers, pesticides etc.

SP: Well I am sure when this protocol was first developed everything was organic?

CG: Yes exactly. The first decade of the twentieth century there was no artificial stuff. However I do know of one story. When my dad was a boy he loved to play in his grandmothers garden. In 1898 she heard about this new artificial fertilizer so she decided to try some on a small portion of her garden. A short time after my father noticed that the worms that were in the artificially fertilized patch were wondering across the path to the non-treated soils.

SP: What do you think Dr. Gerson would say today if he saw the state of this country and its eating habits?

CG: He passed away in 1959 so he already saw a lot of it, but not nearly as bad as it is today. He was seriously concerned about continuing to be able to heal people with availability of the best food possible. He had to start insisting on all organic food. When DDT first came out, Dr. Gerson began to see that his patients were not doing so well. In fact, within a year and half of the introduction of fungicides and pesticides, meat, milk, cheese, butter and worst of all mothers’ milk was contaminated.

The youngest babies are the most affected, so each new generation is getting worse and we see people younger and younger getting terminally ill. Its terrifying. In 1943 I was 22 years old and my body systems had already formed – they were not developing – so my generation did not get as affected as the younger generations. People my age seem to have better health than their children.

SP: What have you seen, as far as reversing disease and healing with the Gerson protocol?

CG: That is the one reassuring portion of it. We see terminally ill cancer patients who have tried everything and are extremely damaged. We can still turn them around. With the therapy and all the fresh substances we use, the pain disappears and we can get ride of all the painkillers they are taking and begin to heal them. And it’s not just for cancer. Dr. Gerson believed that cancer was the most serious damage to the bodies systems as it is chronic and degenerative.

The Gerson therapy restores the healing mechanisms in the body, which allow the body to heal even in the worst cases. You cannot heal selectively.  If you are healed, the whole body heals. You can’t keep one disease and get ride of another. The Gerson therapy is a total body healing. Giving the body the capability of healing gives it the ability to heal whatever issues arise.

SP: With such great results, it’s amazing that this information doesn’t get out there to the public more.

CG: The pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in the world. They don’t want this information out there. They fought against my father to publish his articles his entire career. There was an article that said, of all the people who get chemo, 2.3% profit from it. It’s a multi-trillion dollar business. We can’t advertise in many magazines because the pharmaceutical companies hold such large accounts that they have taken financial power over other companies who depend on them for growth. The industry is adamant on not letting the information out. It’s all in the money. But thank goodness it is getting through. The Internet is vey helpful. In fact just a week ago information on close to 1,000 papers were released that discuss how to help repair the DNA of the body. “Unrepaired DNA damaged is the primary cause of cancer and degenerative diseases.” The articles go on to say that fresh fruits and vegetables contain the molecules that are used to repair DNA. That is exactly what the Gerson therapy does.

The TV commercials that promote the pharmaceutical companies often reveal that side affects can be serious illness, cancer, and death. They promise you these side affects, but people still buy their products. But when it comes to limiting their food, stopping smoking and eating salt they can’t do it because they enjoy it too much. It’s the most difficult thing of all to get people to prevent disease. It takes twenty or thirty years of the bad habits until people start getting sick and then they don’t even relate the disease to poor eating or smoking.

People are badly informed. People just don’t seem to want to change their eating habits to prevent illness; I don’t even bother to promote prevention because it’s an uphill battle.

SP: Who knows what kind of drugs they put in meat and dairy to keep people addicted to those kinds of foods.

CG: There was one study where a group of scientists were studying obesity in animals but they could not get the animals fat. They found that if they injected the animals when they were young with MSG a small portion in their brain that controls appetite and hunger were paralyzed. The animals not longer could tell when they were full so they kept eating and eating. They now put MSG in processed foods because they know people get addicted to it. MSG had been used for so many years and they tell people that it is ok but its not. They give it to children and kids are becoming obese. Politicians talk about fighting obesity but they are not getting at the root of the issue in fact they are promoting it.

SP: With the implementation of Gerson therapy, you have seen changes in schizophrenics and other mental disorders?

CG: Mental diseases are so easy to cure its ridiculous. One day when I was traveling in Europe I came across this article on the causes of schizophrenia. One doctor found that there are certain fractions of protein that have a strange structure and when that protein fraction gets to the brain it makes you do funny things and all the problems of schizophrenia occur. They found that the same fraction of the protein was in the patient’s blood stream and urine as well. Dr. Gerson’s therapy would take out animal protein from the diet and that’s what could cure the patient. But they don’t do it like that. Every mental hospital is required to serve three protein meals to their patients even though protein is what specifically causes the problem. A doctor in Canada also found that vitamin B3, which is niacin, helps the body break down animal protein in the body. Taken in large amounts, niacin can get ride of the funky protein in the body that causes schizophrenia. It’s a cheap and easy solution. Vitamin B3 opens the capillaries and causes the body to flush, which some patients don’t like so they invented a non-flush kind, which doesn’t work to get the proteins out.

SP: Could you touch on the concept of “Earthing” for us?

CG: Earthing is the most wonderful thing to do and it costs almost nothing. All you use is the electric molecules that come from the earth. Walk around barefoot on the beach for at least 30 minutes a day and you can almost cure anything and all pain goes away. Earthing gives you the energy levels that neutralize pain because they restore the cells and tissues in the body temporarily. The best way to connect with the Earth is to read “Earthing” by Clinton Ober. Earthing saved his life and he now devotes his life to saving other people. He has created earthing materials that help you connect to the earth’s electricity.

SP: Do you think when people leave the Gerson Institute that they continue implementing the diet into their lives or just heal themselves and go back to their normal eating routines?

CG: A lot of the patients who come to the institute are seriously ill and looking for help. We teach classes and have books on how to prepare food for the Gerson diet so you can continue after you leave. For the first 5-7 days most people really miss salt but when your body gets ride of the poisons and your taste buds really start tasting food, not salt, you start to enjoy food. A lot of people like me can’t eat the average food because it burns your mouth, makes you thirsty, or gives you headaches. My book has been translated into 12 different languages. The world craves this information.

SP: Which book do you think is best to start with, for those who want to know more about The Gerson Therapy?

CG: “Healing the Gerson Way” as it’s the most up to date one. You can get it on Amazon, the Gerson institute, or gersonmedia.com.

SP: Did your sisters follow the Gerson protocol or were you the only one?

CG: I had to because of the tuberculoses. My sisters didn’t follow it near as much and they passed away some years ago.

SP: Thank you Charlotte. Do you have any other tips to share with us?

CG: Dr. Gerson said, “Never let the sun set on a day when you have not moved your bowel.” Do an enema if you have to. If you look up constipation in a medical dictionary it’s defined as five days of no bowel movement. That’s deadly. You reabsorb all the poisons.

Charlotte Gerson will be taking YOUR questions on an upcoming episode of our free “YOU Interview the Masters”.  Sign up here to be notified:
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