Family Physician Sherry A. Rogers, MD, fellow of the American College of Allergy and Immunology and fellow of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, has written Wellness Against All Odds .* She describes patients who have recovered from cancer and other life-threatening diseases by reducing the total load of toxins in their environment and by utilizing nutrition and spirituality.

Outlined below are several nutritional approaches to curing "incurable" cancer, specifically, the Gerson and Kelley programs and the macrobiotic and carnivore diets. Dr. Rogers points out that all four approaches emphasize eating whole foods uncontaminated with pesticides and drinking unchlorinated, unfluoridated water that is as uncontaminated with agricultural runoff as possible. "The sick body cannot rally if it is busy detoxifying pesticides and other chemicals."

Basically, the Gerson program includes a diet of multiple fruit and vegetable juices as well as raw liver juice throughout the day, in fact totally 13 times. . . . As well, there are digestive enzymes, potassium, iodine, thyroid, vitamins, vitamin injections, and coffee enemas. . . .

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Dr. Rogers points out that all four approaches emphasize eating whole foods uncontaminated with pesticides and drinking unchlorinated, unfluoridated water that is as uncontaminated with agricultural runoff as possible. "The sick body cannot rally if it is busy detoxifying pesticides and other chemicals."

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Essentially, [the Gerson diet] reminds me of hydroponics, [which] is a method of greenhouse farming where no soil is used. Instead, an irrigation system maintains a steady flow of fresh water, which carries in vital nutrients and flushes out the wastes. The reason why the Gerson Treatment reminds me of hydroponics is because in that program the body is literally flooded with nutritional juices from fruits, vegetables, and raw liver; then coffee enemas stimulate the liver to flush out the toxic wastes, speeding up the detoxification procedure. It is just like the greenhouse plant grown without soil, flooded constantly with life-giving nutrients and simultaneously being unburdened of metabolic wastes. . . . This treatment has worked with many impossible cancers.

Realizing that people have differing metabolisms and consequently need different diets, Dr. Kelley, who himself had pancreatic cancer, borrowed from all three of the other programs and also made extensive use of enzymes. He had read of the work of the Scottish physician John Beard who had noticed that the placenta stops growing when the fetal pancreas starts functioning. Dr. Beard first observed this phenomenon in pregnant women and confirmed it in many other species. Dr. Beard then speculated that pancreatic enzymes that can stop the placenta growing could very well also stop the growth of cancer cells. He published his findings in The Lancet  in 1902.

When Dr. Kelley read of this, he started taking large doses of pancreatic enzymes and low and behold his liver got softer and the hard metastatic cancer nodules started to disappear. But as this happened, the release of all this toxic metabolic cancer waste material made him so sick and toxic that he had to stop. Then, when he stopped the enzymes, the liver swelled again, the rocky hard metastases appeared on it, and he knew he had to take the enzymes again to control his cancer. He went back and forth with this until he discovered the coffee enemas.

These enemas allowed him safely to get rid of the toxic waste from the breakdown of the cancer cells. Dr. Rogers points out that patients can get rid of their cancer but unfortunately be killed by the cancer breakdown products in the process. She gives a number of ways to help detoxify.

Basically, macrobiotics is a diet of ‘grains, greens, and beans, seeds and weeds, roots and fruits.’ The sea vegetables or seaweeds, for example, are so extremely rich in minerals, that it is one of the few diets that has not also required large amounts of supplements. However, because of the modern polluted world, this is even changing. We are the first generation ever exposed to such an unprecedented level of chemicals in our daily life. But the work of detoxifying [our] environment uses up nutrients. So even people with excellent diets can become nutrient deficient. We have seen many patients who were macrobiotic counselors and ate a wonderful diet. But when we identified hidden nutrient deficiencies, they cleared conditions they had been unable to with diet alone. . . .

Even macrobiotics is not so far removed from any of the other programs. The high iodine prescribed in the Gerson program to support the thyroid can be obtained from the sea vegetables of macro. Likewise, the potassium prescribed in the Gerson program is more than made up for with all the vegetables of macro. And, the emphasis on chewing over a hundred times per mouthful in the strict phase of macro most likely substitutes for the enzymes [in the Kelley program].

Enzymes that we require for detoxifying the ubiquitous pollutants in our environment are made of protein. Dr. Rogers has found that some patients require a carnivore diet, high in meat, so that they can produce sufficient enzymes to detoxify the pollutants that have entered their bodies. For numerous people a macrobiotic diet, emphasizing cooked vegetables, has been curative; others have benefitted from the Gerson diet of raw organic juices; and she has found that still other patients need a carnivore diet, high in meat and fat in order to be cured. Some people need one diet at one time and quite an opposite kind of diet at another time. She uses the following diagram to illustrate some extremes:

THE METABOLIC CROSS

According to Dr. Rogers when a person has recovered, they usually move toward the middle of the "metabolic cross" and enjoy an omnivorous diet (neither strictly vegan nor strictly carnivore) and with both cooked and raw food.

.Dr. Rogers is quite angry and frustrated by how little most American doctors know about and practice preventive medicine and how much they use expensive drugs instead. She emphasizes the importance of carefully testing an individual’s nutrient levels. For example, in the United States population magnesium levels are frequently low. Magnesium functions almost entirely inside our cells. However, the usual test for magnesium is extra cellular (serum blood level) and does not even hint at a deficiency until it is extremely severe. Red blood cell levels give a better indication. Best of all is a "magnesium loading test," which has the added advantage of simultaneously supplying extra magnesium to our bodies.

Magnesium deficiency—— causes cardiac arrhythmia, chronic back spasms, bladder spasms, asthma, migraine, irritable bowel, PMS [premenstrual syndrome], depression, fatigue, insomnia, sudden death, hypertension, etc.

Another example of a usually unsuspected nutrient deficiency:

But unfortunately, chromium deficiency is only one example of how a hidden or unsuspected common nutrient deficiency can have devastating snow-balling effects on the whole body and mind.

Dr. Rogers gives fascinating examples of people, including herself, getting well. She gives a great deal of excellent information about reducing our "total load" of toxins, first in our own bodies, and then in our food, air, and water, in order to decrease our future bodily buildup of the new twentieth century toxic pollutants.

In regard to spirituality, Dr. Rogers has found that patients who have faith of whatever kind have a very different attitude from those who are struggling and perhaps angry. The latter may be doing all the right things with nutrition and reducing their total load of toxins. However, their condition often worsens. She points out that the sympathetic nervous system, which prepares us for aggression, fighting, and flight, essentially shuts down the parasympathetic system, which controls the various hormones and other natural chemicals that are essential for the vital functions of digestion, detoxification, and healing.

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*Prestige Publishing, Box 3068, 3500 Brewerton Road, Syracuse, NY 13220, 1994; 384 pages, soft cover, $17.95 plus shipping and handling $3.00.