Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging (47 page)

SS:
I know you design diets for your cancer patients according to their nutritional type based on genetics and ancestry. What diet do you recommend for cancer prevention?

NG:
As you know, unlike many other alternative practitioners who use nutrition in their cancer programs, we don’t have one magical “cancer diet.” Kelley realized different patients need different diets, and we agree—our diets range from a largely animal fat and red meat diet to a largely raw-foods plant-based diet. We utilize ten basic diets, and dozens of variations, depending on the particular metabolic profile
of the patient. Remember, humans are quite a flexible species, and our ancestors occupied a variety of ecological niches ranging from the Arctic of the Eskimos to the tropical rain forests. Each of these environments provided a unique source of food for whatever humans happened to be living there. For example, to use the extreme, the Eskimos adapted to and thrived on a diet of all fatty meat, 80 percent fat and 20 percent protein, with no fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, or grains—there aren’t any of these plant foods in the Arctic. And as long as the Eskimos stayed on a high-fat diet, they did great. As soon as our civilization crept in with white flour, white sugar, canned, processed, and refined foods, Eskimo health deteriorated tragically.

Groups living in tropical climes, on the other hand, had access to a wide variety of edible plants and adjusted to a more plant-based diet. Then you have the traditional Masai, who thrived—as Dr. George Mann of Vanderbilt reported forty years ago—on a diet of exclusively raw fermented milk, a gallon a day for an adult male, mixed with cow blood and occasional meat. So the idea that we should all be vegans, or as Atkins thought, all meat eaters, is incorrect—we’re not that simple.

SS:
Can you give our readers some “takeaways” on what they can do?

NG:
Though it might sound complicated, I can throw out some general rules. Patients with the typical solid tumors, tumors of the breast, lung, stomach, colon, pancreas, liver, uterus, ovary, and prostate, do best with a plant-based diet—though even for these patients, some animal protein and fat is indicated, the amount varying depending on the patient. On the other hand, patients with the immune cancers like leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and the sarcomas—connective tissue cancers we relate to immune cancers—do best with animal-product-based diets, with lots of red meat, fat, yes horror of horrors, even cholesterol, fatty fish, poultry, eggs. For these patients we also allow plant foods, the amounts and forms depending again on each patient’s particular metabolism.

Balanced patients, those falling between the vegetarian and meat extreme, do best with a variety of foods, of both plant and animal origin. They do great at a buffet (organic, of course), with a variety of foods available: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, eggs, cheese, fish, poultry, and some red meat. But balanced people don’t tend to get cancer, and as long as they follow a mixed diet, they should be able to avoid the disease nicely.

SS:
How would a person know which diet “fits” him or her?

NG:
We’re frequently asked how anyone can tell what diet they need to follow without coming to see me. We wish, of course, that all doctors had the training in nutritional individuality and dietary prescription, but of course that isn’t the case. Nonetheless, it really isn’t that hard to tell for oneself. If the thought of fatty pot roast makes you gag, if you love fruit for lunch and don’t need much else or crave salads, I promise, you are on the vegetarian side. Genetic meat eaters could care less if they never see a salad again, their idea of dessert is cheesecake and a piece of bacon, fatty food—and eating this way, they do great. Balanced people do indeed crave a variety of foods, of both plant and animal origin. So without all the fancy testing we do, it is possible to determine what kind of foods one should be eating.

SS:
What other lifestyle changes need to be made to prevent cancer?

NG:
Exercise, exercise, exercise—yes, I work long hours every day and on weekends, but I walk vigorously every day, from work—it’s not like hiking a mountaintop but even these intense walks make me feel better and help maintain my boyish charm. Be active.

Try to minimize the stress in your life. I know, we all have stress, and none of us can get rid of it, and some stress is helpful to us physiologically—stress, to a certain degree, keeps the brain wired and active like mental exercise; we all need challenges at work and in our private lives. But too much stress, as the brilliant Hans Selye said fifty years ago, kills. New research shows it also helps bring on cancer. So do the best you can to keep stress under control (exercise helps with this, for sure).

Also, very important, get rid of negative people in your life. Gerson said he lost more patients from negative family members than from cancer itself, and at times I think he was on to something. We have patients in our practice with the worst kinds of cancer, but who enjoy each day as a gift, and these people seem to do well. Over the years, we’ve learned how to keep out of our office negative, angry, hostile people, who interpret every action of others as a threat or an act of revenge. You can usually get a sense of these people pretty quickly, and we don’t take them as patients. We’re not trying to be mean to unfortunate people with a terrible disease; we just know they won’t do well—they have too many unresolved resentments and issues, often going back to childhood, and it’s going to do them in. Such
unresolved issues create chronic stress, and chronic stress creates physiological breakdown, which is the opposite of healing. When we’re in a stress mode, the sympathetic nervous system breaks down stored tissues to provide energy for our brain and muscles so we can think fast or react fast—but when stress is chronic, the breakdown of tissues never ends, disease follows, and healing remains blocked.

So try to keep stress to a tolerable background noise, not the main event every day.

SS:
It seems to me from our talks that the answer to cancer is simpler than we’ve been led to believe. Do you agree?

NG:
It’s simple in that we see patients with the worst cancers, pancreatic, metastatic ovarian, metastatic colon, patients you’ve interviewed yourself, who’ve turned their cancer around, gotten through the crisis, and lead happy healthy lives with a therapy involving diet, supplements, pancreatic enzymes, and coffee enemas. It seems pretty simple to me, but maybe I like simple answers. So yes, I think the answer is indeed simple. Beard had it all figured one hundred years ago, when he proposed that pancreatic enzymes are our main defense against cancer, Kelley added the nutritional-dietary-detox components, and you have a nice approach to the disease that works most of the time.

SS:
Why don’t we know about this? Why haven’t we heard about these treatments from our established cancer prevention bodies, like the American Cancer Society? Are they doing a good job?

NG:
I think the American Cancer Society is a blight on our civilization—I’ve read that much of its income goes to high salaries and maintaining the luxurious lifestyles of ACS executives. There are wonderful articles on the Web about corruption at the ACS, and the large donations from pesticide manufacturers and drug manufacturers. The ACS should have taken the lead with environmental causes of cancer, but they kicked and screamed and hollered to avoid having to face the issue, promoting such silliness as the viral cause of cancer (which would have given a free pass to industry friends had it proven true).

SS:
Who, as you say, took the lead in discovering the connection between environment and cancer?

NG:
My dear friend the late Ernst Wynder was the first scientist to propose way back in 1950 that cigarette smoking causes cancer. His evidence even at that time was irrefutable, but he said one of his biggest obstacles, along with the tobacco industry, was the American
Cancer Society. Only when the federal government announced that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer did the ACS belatedly come on board, and eventually they gave Wynder some type of award.

SS:
Okay, so they were slower to recognize his important work, but playing devil’s advocate, why does that make them a blight?

NG:
They urge Girl Scout troops in Toledo to raise money to “fight cancer” while they give themselves ridiculously high salaries. The ACS also has traditionally hated anything that even remotely smacks of alternative.

SS:
Why hasn’t there been a cure after all the billions of dollars that have been raised?

NG:
The billions go into drugs, and radiation, and the targeted therapies, and after sixty years of high-tech pharmaceutical inventions and interventions, we still have the same handful of cancers that respond. To date, most cancers, once no longer surgically curable, do not respond to chemotherapy, or radiation, or targeted therapies. Even the alleged miracle of antiangiogenesis is turning out to be a bust; Avastin does little for any of the cancers for which it is used, and the FDA has already rescinded its approval for its use in breast cancer.

Throwing money into the same bottomless pit doesn’t make much sense to me—especially since Dr. Beard nicely presented a scientifically sensible and clinically demonstrated answer to cancer. But to the ACS and the National Cancer Institute, nutrition is silly, it’s too simple, it’s stupid, it can’t possibly work.

SS:
I’ve said before in this book, if it’s too simple, there isn’t enough money to be made … so it gets ignored.

NG:
It’s interesting when one reads medical history, they said the same thing about Dr. James Lind’s citrus cure for scurvy, which he proposed in 1753. As a result, the British Admiralty refused to allow ships to recommend citrus to prevent scurvy for another forty years, and thousands of sailors died miserable unnecessary deaths. Truth is so often beautifully simple, as was Lind’s suggestion and Dr. Beard’s thesis about pancreatic enzymes.

SS:
You have one of the best track records for managing cancer. Is it because these patients are totally compliant?

NG:
One recurring complaint of my critics is that we select our patients. Of course we select our patients! First, there is absolutely no benefit for us to take on a patient who is too far gone, whom we cannot help. It’s not fair to the patient. We select patients we think
that biologically we might be able to help, and who psychologically have a pleasant attitude and will comply. It’s a waste of everyone’s time, especially the patients’, if we take them on and they don’t comply. Fortunately, because we select our patients, compliance is very good and they generally do very well.

SS:
How important is God or spirituality as part of prevention?

NG:
I am devoutly religious and begin each day with prayer and Bible study. We are human beings, not laboratory rats; we are very complicated, and we have a spiritual side that must be acknowledged and nourished as much as our physiologic side. It’s always easier to heal patients who have a spiritual life that brings them to think about greater things than immediate needs. Spiritual practice heals, powerfully.

SS:
Do you feel hopeful about the end of cancer?

NG:
When I first started out I was very idealistic, thinking this wonderful therapy would change medicine and help change the world—I wasn’t giving myself megalomaniacal credit, it was that I thought those who had come before me, Beard, Kelley, Weston Price, were so brilliant. But I’ve come to realize scientists can be as corrupt as anyone else. So I fear they will keep throwing billions into chemotherapy and more chemotherapy, and still more chemotherapy, and boast about two-month improvements in average survival for some deadly cancer as if the Second Coming were being witnessed.

But I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, helping those patients I can help in the best way I can. I have no greater aim than that.

SS:
Thank you, Dr. Gonzalez. I have met with and talked to so many of your happy patients. In fact, they are the only cancer patients I know of who are happy with their disease; it’s a hard concept to grasp, but I know it to be true. And you offer an option in a field where options are dismal. Now you are offering your advice on prevention. There are those who will comply and those who won’t. To me it just makes sense. Thanks so much.

We’re going to explore
survival medicine
in this chapter. Okay, what do I mean by
survival medicine
? Over the years, I’ve written extensively, exhaustively, about the changing planet. We are under the greatest environmental assault in the history of humankind, and if we expect to live longer, healthier, and keep our brains intact, then having an
environmental doctor
in your coterie is now necessary and essential.

This new specialty rose out of necessity. Orthodox doctors have been caught unprepared and uninformed about the effects of toxicity on the human brain. Yet we continue to be told by mainstream medicine the “myth” that toxins are safe, that our healthy livers and kidneys keep us protected from nearly all levels of toxic accumulation. In fact, James Dillard, an assistant clinical professor at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, said, “Most Americans have hundreds of toxins stored in their livers, and the liver is very capable of taking this kind of chemical load.” Really? This is
not
true; in fact, our livers are
groaning
with toxic overload.