[rezinart]

Gerson started out as a tuberculosis physician, and around every tuberculosis
infection, around every cavern and cavity and lesion, he saw a puffy malfunctioning sphere
of adjacent tissue that had been damaged by toxins from the infection. Partial metabolites
from the diseased tissue materials that are not entirely metabolized can cause problems
because they are junk to the tissue around them and they damage and upset otherwise
normal tissue.
Gerson saw that by restricting protein and by giving a high-potassium, low-sodium,
basically all fruit and vegetable diet, with fresh raw juices and much freshly prepared raw
food, edemas could be absorbed. He saw that this could be encouraged, the course of
tuberculosis could be affected, and patients could be saved.
Gerson’s answers to tissue damage syndrome were the most logical answers that
have been contributed to medicine to date. There is nothing better in medicine for salt and
water problems, for the edemas that surround tumors; there is no better answer.
Essentially, salt and water therapy means creating a situation in which the cell will
tend to return to normal. Many medical doctors do not understand why potassium will
function in this way, and why a low sodium, high potassium diet is therapeutic. That is
because our medical schools are in, but hopefully coming out of, a period of ossification in
cellular biology. Not much progress has been made for a long period of time. We have
accepted theories of the pumping enzymes, called sodium pumps, magnesium pumps,
many, many postulated pumping systems, that are supposed to exist in human cells, that
have never been observed or proven in most human cells. Chapter three of Guyton’s
Medical Physiology, and first part of every textbook on cellular biology and medical
physiology describes sodium pumps which have never, ever been observed in most human
cells.
It is on that basis that a theory of cell metabolism is taught in medical school that
does not, and cannot, predict that a low sodium, high potassium diet is good for you or will
have and beneficial effect. However, slowly gaining acceptance throughout the world is the
work of Dr. Gilbert Ning Ling, who will be one day recognized as the father of the new
cellular biology, which is based in physics rather than wet chemistry.
Dr. Ling’s work led Dr. Cope to Gerson because, essentially, Cope went looking for
something that would prove Ling’s theory, which correctly predicted the value of high
potassium, low sodium diets. Cope found evidence in the treatment developed by Gerson,
and he found more evidence in the related treatment developed by Mexican cardiologist Dr.
Sodi-Pallares.
What happens in the human cell is mostly not what we are able to read in our
medical textbooks. Essentially, we are still reading medical textbooks, and students are still
being taught that the cell is a bag of water with solutes. According to Dr. Ling’s theory,
without getting too complex, our human cells are more like solid-state electronic devices.
Raymond Damadian, M.D., the developer of magnetic resonance imaging, used Ling’s model
to develop the theory behind MRI. Damadian says that human cells are more like ion
exchange granules in a water softener. They are not bags of water.
There is, throughout the cytoplasm of our cells, water that is structured. You can see
this through magnetic resonance measurements. The water in our cells is not free liquid. We
are more than 55% water, most of us, and the water in our cells is structured. It’s not like
ice, it’s not that structured, but it’s much more stacked than free liquid water. The reason
that it is structured is that there are dynamic energies in cells that hold water in an
organized pattern. It is the work of Ling that describes this.
Imagine, if you will, inside the membrane – or the outer skin – of the cell, a ball of
steel wool. The ball of steel wool is, more or less, one long molecule; a big, long strand that
forks and wraps around and around. It is like a skeleton inside the cell. It is a protein and
lipid, or fat, macromolecule, and there is an electron current that flows through it. As the
electron current flows through it, a force is created that attracts paramagnetic ions. In the
water molecule, that’s the hydrogen – anything with an uneven atomic number is
paramagnetic – so this force attracts hydrogen. You’ve got an H2O molecule: say the “O” is
my fist, and the “H’s” are my extended fingers (shows a victory sign). The hydrogen atoms
turn towards the macromolecule.
They all point toward it, one after the other, all lined up. You’ve got a layer of
polarized water around that filament, and a second layer on top of the first layer, and a
third layer, and so on. There are layers on top of layers. There is virtually no free water in
the cell; it’s all multiple polarized sectored layers of water inside the cell. It is the water
securing itself that controls the water content in the cell. How does structured water prevent
excess hydration? It’s simple: you can’t pour water into ice.
If potassium fills the sites to which it may bind on this macromolecule, the cell will
organize water. If potassium is lost from those association sites, and sodium is bound, the
cell will lose much of its ability to structure water, and it will swell with much more water.
As Dr. Ling describes it in his Association-Induction Hypothesis, for every molecule of
ATP that is complexed with the macromolecule, twenty association sites for potassium for
every one molecule of ATP that complexes to the macromolecule, which is this big ball of
steel wool inside the cell.
The mitochondria are nestled inside the ball of steel wool. The little mitochondria are
taking sugars that have been funneled to them by activities within the cell. They burn the
sugar, they make ATP, and the ATP complexes with the macromolecule, which contributes
to the binding of potassium at association sites, which contributes to the structuring of
water content normally for hours, meaning it is not energy from ATP that actually controls
ion content in the cell.
What this means, from Gerson’s point of view, is that when you are sick, when your
tissues are damaged, when your cells have lost potassium and taken on sodium and extra
water, we must reduce the challenge of sodium and load potassium into the system. Taking
supplemental potassium in addition to a low sodium diet helps potassium to compete for
association sites in the cell. When you do this, you create a situation in which potassium
may again be bound.
This big ball of steel wool, this macromolecule, can exist in one of two configuration
states: normal or damaged. If you insult the cell, if you poison it, if you starve it, if you take
away its oxygen, the macromolecule will flip over to a damaged configuration. The
macromolecule jumbles some or all of its proteins and lipids, and it can no longer complex
ATP well, and it cannot control potassium binding. Anybody who has taken chemistry will
ask, “What is the difference between potassium and sodium? They have the same valence.
Why aren’t they interchangeable?” They are not interchangeable in the bio system. The cell
actually has a preference for potassium, as Ling demonstrated.
A little bit about Ling: He is a genius from China who won the Boxer Award in Biology
during the 1940’s. While he was still a graduate student, he invented the intercellular
microelectrode, on which the whole field of micro electrophysiology is based. He was the
head of the molecular biology laboratory for Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia and Chief
Editor of the journal Physiological Chemistry and Physics and Medical NMR , and is now
(2002), Director of Research of the Damadian Cancer Foundation.
When you create a high potassium environment for a damaged cell, you can get
potassium to hook on to one or more association sites, because those sites will take
whatever’s there, sodium or potassium – when the cell is damaged. When the protein-lipid
macromolecule is in a damaged state, if you can get potassium to bind at one site, a
marvelous phenomenon occurs that Ling calls interactive cooperativity – something we
could use more of in the world of humans – in which potassium binding at one site will
trigger potassium binding at adjoining sites. If potassium can be bound at one site, other
sites will begin to prefer potassium over sodium, too. So if you can just start the process,
the cell will flip back, like dominoes, to a high potassium load; interactive cooperativity. At
the same time, the cell’s water organizes, the water content of the cell shrinks, and ATP
production increases. That is the result of successful salt and water management of tissue
damage syndrome.