What is Gerson Therapy?

Gerson Therapy recommends drinking 13 juices a day. Photo: Getty Images.

At age 22, Jessica Ainscough was diagnosed with a rare cancer, epithelioid sarcoma, which spread through her left arm and shoulder.

Chemotherapy was initially successful, but within a year the cancer had returned. Doctors told Jessica her best hope was to have her arm amputated.

She declined all further conventional medicine instead, choosing to follow Gerson Therapy, an alternative treatment which saw her drinking 13 juices a day and giving herself DIY coffee enemas, documented on her Wellness Warrior blog (which has now been removed). After eight years battling the cancer, Jessica died.

THE HISTORY OF GERSON THERAPY

Developed by German doctor Max Gerson in the 1930s, the therapy claims to boost the body's own immune system to heal cancer, arthritis, heart disease, allergies, and many other degenerative diseases.

Dr Gerson died in 1959. His daughter Charlotte Gerson went on to establish the Gerson Institute in the US in 1977. Since then, Gerson Therapy has been studied and discredited by the American National Cancer Institute.

WHAT IS IT?

Gerson Therapy consists of three parts:

1. Organic diet
A strict low sodium, high potassium diet with no salt, no spice, no oil and 13 glasses of juice a day.

2. Supplements
Gerson postulated supps would help correct cell metabolism, prescribing potassium, B12, and enzymes among others.

3. Detoxification
His detox system included enemas as he believed there were toxins in the bowel. “Coffee enemas won’t remove toxins, but will remove healthy bowel bacteria, says WH health expert Dr Ginni Mansberg.

THE DARK SIDE OF DETOX REGIMES

A beautiful life was lost, potentially unnecessarily says Mansberg.

“Her prognosis if this tumour had been removed, was quite good. But the thing that is really sad about Jess’s case is that she was 22 when diagnosed,” Mansberg says.

“If someone told me at that age, ‘we not only have to remove your arm, but your whole shoulder girdle as well, and you will be disfigured’, I would be clutching at straws as well.”

“None of us know what we would do in the same situation, but I do think there are so many therapies out there like colonic irrigation, coffee enemas and detox regimes that prey on the vulnerable and this is a warning.”

ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES

“You really do need to be a full time wellness warrior to be able to practice it and if you do have a fatal cancer to be spending all day giving yourself coffee enemas or having no taste in your food, or 13 glasses of raw juice, it’s awfully sad,” she says.

“What is really going to bring meaning to your life in those last days is connecting to others and making the most of time with your family, not solitude, obsessing about food and being a slave to your illness.”

Mansberg says Jess’s case is a tragedy and highlights the combination of the failings of the medical profession in providing support, so the vulnerable fall prey to harmful therapies.

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“We need a middle ground between supporting patient choice and finding a credible medical therapy, which Gerson is absolutely not,” she says.

Cancer Australia released a statement saying, "For many people affected by cancer, feeling that they can assume some control of the treatment of their disease can be psychologically empowering.”

"Cancer Australia encourages clinicians to discuss the use of alternative therapies with those affected by cancer in an open, evidence-based and patient-centred manner."

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