“What he did was radical – he treated the immune system with food/diet, rather than treating the symptoms of the cancer disease with drugs. That’s a radically different approach that worked...” Howard Strass on Max Gerson
Food, eating, has always been one of my passions and pleasures. But I’ve not always had a very good relationship with food…or myself. When I chose the Gerson Therapy over chemotherapy (that’s a whole other blog topic…), while part of me knew that food issues were not the sole cause of my cancer, I knew that making this food related choice; eating, living the Gerson way; beginning to LOVe my body with food, was going to be a huge part of healing me.
There is no question to me that food is medicine or food is poison, depending on what we eat and the reasons why we eat it. I am living proof that food is medicine. The Gerson Therapy I’m undertaking means I only eat live food, plant based food, fresh organic food. Nothing processed, preservatived or packaged passes my lips. This has been a radical change for me, as I used to think I ate healthy, now Gerson has redefined it radically. It is strange and shockingly amazing to see the junk detoxing out of my body after 5 months of eating and drinking only living food. Pimples erupt, sweat stinks, stools are toxically gagging material, and weird scary lumps come out of my bowels after enemas. No junk goes in, but my body is having a field day dumping what was stuffed in there; stuck inside my cells for years. My cells that once hoarded toxins and junk are now dumping them with gay abandon!.
After this experience with therapeutic nutrition, and remaining cancer-free for a time (and having a functioning immune system for the first time in over 20 years), I’ve come to a conclusion and set any reader a challenge.
If people simply took one action – one action like changing their diet to a live, vegan diet that included more raw food (and removed all processed, packed foods – anything that comes in a box, bag, packet, or is frozen), then it is my estimate that 80-90% of all physical illnesses and ailments, future and present, would heal. Yeah, I can hear many, many excuses….especially the ones about not being supported societally “who do I eat with now?”, the cost of organic food, let alone the emotional addictions we’d be forced to ditch. But what do you want peeeeeeple? Health excellence? Health magnificence? Massive energy? Clarity of thinking and feeling? Zero tummy upsets? Or.. more of the same, perhaps mediocrity and a guarantee that at some point in time you will develop a chronic, degenerative disease called old age? We all have a choice. All choices have consequences. I know this; mine came early.
I feel this is one of the greatest acts of LOVE toward ourselves. To eat food as medicine. To eat Alive, organic, fresh, living food that come out of the soil. And. these days, I am more than ever into taking loving action. Our organs, our liver wer not designed to withstand the onslaught we give them. Not designed for todays toxic world (chlorinated, fluoridated water, artificial NPK in our soils and foods, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides we ingest, polluted air, an accumulation of preservatives and food colourings, plastics that leach, medications….the list is long). Yes, our system “copes”, but it is never optimum or at maximum potential and then it breaks down. But imagine how we could be? What would you be like if your body was at PEAK inside? These days that question is forefront for me. It burns in me.
Why not try eating the live, healthy way – and see what happens? You know what will also happen – a whole bunch of feelings will come up! Yup, angry frustrated ones that you can’t feel satisfied, can’t have what you want, there’s no comfort, you will feel empty and not “full”, not satiated like, say meat makes you feel. So you think “I must need meat!”, right? (or chocolate, or eggs, or cheese…or anything not green or live!). No, what you feel is your addiction to the food, not need for the food itself. You are actually suffering withdrawal and like my Psychologist, Rose says “where there is suffering, there is a faulty core belief”.
The belief that you need this type of food is the problem; not the food itself. Your huge array of emergent painful emotions is the proof that you need. You and the alcoholic and the drug addict are now on the same page, experiencing the same thing – withdrawal from the thing that made you feel good (in your case that’s food; your drug of choice). And all withdrawal is a cover up. It covers up…. feelings. Shocking but true. But resolvable too.
Yeah, yeah, all the time I hear people say “but food is meant to be pleasurable and pleasurable is healthy” blah, blah, blah! I bought into that line until I got cancer! Pleasure that is cloaking denial is not healthy. Food from God’s garden is both pleasurable and healthy. If I, you, eat a food that is a) processed and steps away from God’s garden and b) harms another life form such as an animal, so that you or I can “get” pleasure, then my “Pleasure” is going to come at a cost sooner or later. Sounds harsh yes? I don’t intend it to be, but this is the truth. Once I had a problem with all this,; I had deep food addictions. I LOVE god’s food, alive food, plant based food. I LOVE that every single thing I put into or onto my body is doing me good. Once I had to live with (in the name of my food-consuming pleasure) sugar rushes, sugar headaches, sugar highs & lows, chronic hypoglycaemia, toothaches, tummy grumbles, wind, digestive discomfort, diarrhoea or alternating constipation, food allergies or intolerances, food cravings, etc. But now I have NONE of these. Zippo, zero, nada, nothing none!
Have you any idea what an unexpected relief this is? I had no idea I could feel this good inside of my gut, of my body. It is a revelation which is why I sound like a zealot!
Back to the feelings issue…when these yukky feelings of food withdrawal and food needs claw away at you, the solution is quite simple (but not always easy to do)….all you need to do is allow yourself to experience them and express them, just like a child would. Claim them, name them, don’t shame them. Say the words aloud “I feel cranky, F#$@&in pissed off, annoyed frustrated, I HATE this!!, I feel empty, I CRAVE it” and so on. Get those feelings out of you, don’t politely hold them in. This is no time for PC (politically correct behaviour), this is time for real, truthful, honest expression. One caveat; I don’t recommend dumping your load onto another… no more hurt is necessary. For sure, do it in the presence of a supportive someone, just not “at” someone.
Remarkably, (and thankfully) our brilliant body has many ways of natural self-correcting healing. One of them is by eating proper alive foods designed to keep us ticking along nicely. The other, possibly more important one, is to feel. Our body will heal all emotional pain – stored up, past, old and new, – simply by expressing and experiencing it. We need to yell, cry, laugh and feel the fear, and not hold back. Once the emotion has emptied out, like a small child, we can get up and play again…. until the next episode. There are a many books written about this, many people talked on this. It is a familiar psychological phenomena and not new. Eating alive food makes you more emotionally alive too.
“It is the act of bringing thoughts and feelings to conscious awareness that growth occurs” “we have an innate, self-healing capacity, a self-healing process. If you are permitted to cycle through the natural progression of emotions -neither stifled nor abetted – you will eventually calm down and go back to the sand box and the event will pass like a blip on a screen“. Dr Patricia Love*
“What you feel you can heal“ John Gray
When we eat to block out our feelings (often its called eating pleasure, or “the food pyramid”) we stuff our feelings down, often unknowingly and that ends up making us sick; it can end up as cancer. We also need to eat guilt-free, whatever that food is, and not eat “healthy” as another form of denial. Eating food as medicine is all about a new way to Love you, love your body; care deeply.
When we eat differently to that, and eat and drink a Live Food diet, it is important to be kind and gently with yourself and gently allow your feelings to naturally surface. In taking this action, this loving set of steps toward yourself, you’ve decided to care for yourself in a deeper way. In time you will feel fantastic mentally, physically, emotionally and you will feel more satisfied than ever before (yes it is true!) and…. you won’t need food to satisfy you in the old way ever again. You will still enjoy your food, it will taste delicious, your taste buds will sing and dance to a new tune!
This could take a year or so… depends on you. The dissatisfaction will come and go – ask any addict – its a journey you embark on, a process you undertake, not a once-off thing. Its a process of learning to love yourself; both with food and feelings. I’m still on my journey.
We’re all designed to grow and change. And we can choose to stagnate. That’s allowed too. God doesn’t judge us, but we’re usually pretty good at doing that to ourselves or to one another. Look at our baby bodies. We grow from a baby state where we can’t talk, walk, roll or crawl. But by age 2, our growth is nothing short of phenomenal. Similarly we are designed to grow emotionally, mentally, and spiritually – at the same pace! Why? Because growth actually makes us happy (resisting growth makes us unhappy).
Growth is the way we become fulfilled. Our soul’s, our hearts, need it. We need love more than we need water. That means we need to eat as an act of love, do what we love, play with people we love, expand our love, give our love, receive God’s love.
This one thing I’ve finally learnt: there is a big difference between nourishing my body and feeding an addiction.
And food as medicine is surely an act of great self-love. And that is also why I believe I am healing from cancer. It isn’t the food alone… it is the growing love for myself. The willingness to act more lovingly toward me, consistently, and to release the associated pains along the way. I ask myself “what is my potential? What am I capable of with perfect health? I really want to know.
Will you take the challenge to act lovingly today…and tomorrow… and begin a new journey; find out how your and your life could be?
Thank-you God, Thank-you Dr Gerson, Thank-you organic Farmers, Thank-you Russell, Thank-you dearest family, friends, Thank-you body for healing. ❤
Ps: All proceeds from every purchase from my online store http://www.ecotoys4kids.com goes toward healing my body; juicing 40kg of carrots, 14 lettuces/greens, 20kg of apples per week!
* Dr Patricia Love quotes from the book “The Emotional Incest Syndrome: what to do when a parents love rules your life”.
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