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Another mouse, the C3H mouse (these last two mice are not direct analogs), gets
mammary tumors, always mammary tumors. At weaning, protein-calorie restriction will
prevent, in a large percentage of those mice, the development of tumors. Even if the diet is
initiated after they develop tumors, outcroppings of tumors can be kept to a minimum and
extension of survival of the mice is established as being marked over the controls.
Let me read you a paragraph written by Dr. Good and David Jose. This is from
“Quantitative effects of nutritional essential amino acid deficiency upon immune responses
to tumors in mice” which was published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine 137, in
1973:
“Protein-calorie malnutrition may produce profound and sometimes
paradoxical changes in the immune defense mechanisms against infection and malignancy.
Depression of host resistance to some viral infections and malignant tumors has been
reported in nutritionally deprived animals. Our previous studies have demonstrated that
animals fed limited amounts of a casein (milk protein – ed.) diet showed intact mycotoxic
cell-mediated immune responses to tumor antigens at a protein intake that resulted in
profound depression of specific humoral antibody responses, including serum “blocking
antibody”.
These findings suggested that specific cell-mediated mycotoxic immunity may
operate more effectively against tumor cells in the moderately protein-deficient animal,
because of the absence of serum inhibiting factors. Further reduction in the level of protein
in the diets of tumor-bearing animals resulted in depression of both humoral and cellular
responses. In addition, a persistent defect in mycotoxic cell-mediated function was found in
animals after nutritional protein deprivation at a young age. Thus the animal’s immune
resistance could be either increased or depressed depending on the timing and the severity
of the nutritional deprivation. Similar inhibitory effects upon the incidence and growth of
malignant tumors have been reported in animals fed diets imbalanced or deficient in the
essential amino acids.
Normal mice with protein-calorie restriction initiated at weaning live double the
normal life span. They will not grow to full size. But, although they are somewhat smaller
that full size, they remain tremendously active, with sleek coats, and live twice as long.
Most of you have noticed how large people become eating the western diet, regardless of
their racial background. Maybe we’d all be better off small.
Maybe we have been killing ourselves with this high protein based diet on an attitude
that holds that we should, “eat lots of protein, it’s good for you.” When Good first published
on this subject in the 1970’s, he speculated that high protein diets may cause cancer and
heart disease. Because he had rattled some cages and rocked some boats at SloanKettering,
when he left to go to the University of South Florida at Tampa, Good was out of
favor with the same cancer industry that had earlier promoted him. But he had
tremendously advanced the study of the effects of isolated dietary influences on the
immune system, and his contributions have helped us to understand more about how
Gerson’s therapy works.
Gerson saw the immune-stimulating effect of protein restriction in people in his
clinics in the 1930’s. He published, through well-known medical publisher Franz Deuticke, a
book called Diattherapie der Lungentuberkulose, which translates “dietary treatment for
lung tuberculosis”. In that book, Gerson described the same kind of changes Good saw. He
noted that his protein-restricted patients showed increased white cell counts with a shift to
the left in the differential. That doesn’t mean they had car trouble. It’s the old German
notation for increased lymphocyte activity, nonspecific immune activity. Gerson repeated
this observation in a number of later publications, including the monograph you are all
familiar with, A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases.
To refresh our memories, let’s review what we have discussed: potassium
supplementation, sodium restriction, calorie restriction, protein restriction, and thyroid
supplementation. When you provide high potassium, low sodium environment, even badly
damaged cells may be able to structure their water somewhat. When water is structured,
the cell is able to control its water content, because its water is approaching the kind of
molecular organization seen in crystals. This molecular organization limits the amount of
water in the cell.
When you have the basics in place, you have something to work with. Tissue that’s
functioning can be pushed to greater function. Gerson saw a depressed cellular metabolism,
depressed tissue function, in cancer and other diseases. Gerson’s attitude toward
metabolism was a bit like that of the makers of the old Volkswagen “bug” toward the
towards the car’s cabin heater. Those heaters had two positions, “on” and “off”. If you
wanted to regulate the cabin heat, you had to do it yourself, manually. The carmakers
probably thought, “if you vant heat, you got heat. If you vant it off, shut it off”. Gerson
wanted metabolism, so he turned it on with large loading dosages of iodides and iodine, and
up to five grains of thyroid.
Thyroid hormone signals mitochondria to multiply and increase production of ATP.
This gives your cells, like little planets, more industrial cities producing more energy.
Iodides and iodine affect some tissues directly in the same way.
Protein restriction turns on T-lymphocytes, which are important because they are a
big part of tumor immunity, capable of infiltrating tumors and killing tumor cells. They also
help orchestrate larger and more general systemic responses from the greater immune
system.
Protein restriction also avoids feeding the process of toxic waste manufactured by
damaged tissues and neoplastic tissues. Cancers tend to deal with proteins poorly and to
create metabolites that are toxic to nearby normal cells. Take, for example, a melanoma
tumor. It’s easy to talk about this because there are magnetic imaging studies of these
things. A melanoma will spread damage outward in a sphere maybe several times the
volume of the tumor.
In this sphere, tissue doesn’t work well because it is waterlogged, insulted, and
damaged by tumor toxins, metabolic waste from the tumor. That tissue will just sit there,
stewing in its own juices, without good drainage. When you take out that tumor and look at
the battleground, the damaged normal tissue, with an imager that gives good T1 and T2
measurements, you can still see the sphere of waterlogged tissue for months after the tumor is gone; months, if the patient is not otherwise provided a way to correct that tissue damage. With Gerson’s therapy, that sodium ring around tumors will disappear within
weeks, because that’s how effective Gerson’s management is against the kind of tissue
damage syndrome that is seen around tumors.