http://www.alternativemedicine.com/digest/issue06/06002R00.shtml

Daring to Heal My Cancer with Nutrition

"Who do you think you are that you can drink some carrot juice, pop vitamins,
do coffee enemas, and get well when there are sophisticated technologies for
cancer?" Except they aren't winning the cancer war with these supposed
marvels."

When her doctor said only chemotherapy and radiation would work against her
cancer, Cheryl Wilkens said "no thanks." Instead, she turned to the nutritional
therapy of Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D., and has been cancer-free ever since.
CHERYL WILKENS

Dr. Gonzalez's Website http://www.dr-gonzalez.com/



What prompts a person with cancer to say "no" to chemotherapy and radiation? As
suspicions build today that scientists are misfiring in their battle with
cancer, more people like myself are investigating other ways of treatment. One
third of Americans are now choosing alternative care, and not just those
needing cancer treatment. But if you want to know about cancer, I have a
firsthand understanding on why this is so.


MAKING DR. GONZALEZ' PROGRAM WORK FOR ME

In December I was back in his office again because the lump had grown
dramatically and it felt hot. No longer thinking it was scar tissue, he
operated at once. He told me it was a high grade malignancy, a kind of cancer
called histiocytoma. He said he was sure he got it all with his scalpel. But
the next day the lab said he had to cut out an even bigger chunk of my knee,
which he did, leaving me with a 15 inch scar, somewhat disabled, and in
constant discomfort.
Two weeks later I sat in the oncologist's office. He glanced through my medical
file, then recommended the maximum treatment of chemotherapy and radiation over
the next 6 months to kill any remaining cancer cells. He said he wanted to
check with other institutions over the weekend for a second opinion. But when I
saw him again the next week and asked him what he had learned, he said he had
gone skiing instead. When I told him I'd be seeking a second opinion at the
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and with New York City physician Dr.
Nicholas Gonzalez, he abruptly stood up and walked out.


One of the first shocks I got at the Mayo Clinic was that while my surgeon had
said there was no evidence of a malignant melanoma, the Mayo Clinic doctors
indicated otherwise. After examining the pathology slides for my moles, they
called it "a superficial spreading level 3 melanoma." They also told me, for
the first time, what the likely side-effects of chemotherapy for the
"histiocytoma" might be, such as damage to my kidneys, heart, and gall bladder.

Back home again, my surgeon asked me to visit his office. He "warned" me that I
had been the topic of conversation with 15 top cancer specialists and that none
of them had heard of Dr. Gonzalez' metabolic-nutritional therapy. They all said
I shouldn't waste my time on a New York City "quack." The way the surgeon
looked at me would have crushed the hopes of many patients, I'm sure; but when
he saw I wasn't convinced, he looked uncomfortable, dropped his surly posture,
and changed the subject.
He pulled out a report from the National Cancer Institute that said basically
there weren't grounds for believing chemotherapy would be effective for my
histiocytoma. Yet here he was telling me I should go through with it because
alternative treatments were useless.

Meanwhile, my knee wasn't working right because the surgeon had removed my
patella tendon. Of course nobody told me about this until much later, when I
discovered it by reading through my records. Now my knee wasn't strong enough
even for me to walk upstairs.

I thought about things. I'm 43. There is cancer in my family. My father,
grandfather, and great grandfather all died of cancer. With that kind of
history, I thought maybe it's time to take a different approach to treatment.
When you are diagnosed with cancer, you are introduced to yourself. You find
out what you are made of. And when you choose an alternative therapy, you find
yourself living in a glass house. People watch what you do—they watch
everything—and often with a skeptical eye.
In February of the next year, or 7 months after my first office visit for my
knee problem, I walked into the Park Avenue offices of Nicholas J. Gonzalez,
M.D., in New York City for my first 2 hour appointment. I was reassured to
learn that he tapes his office visits for future reference. I suppose I wasn't
quite as desperate as many of his patients who come to him bearing prognoses of
2-3 months more to live, after having survived unsuccessful courses of surgery,
radiation, and chemotherapy. Still, the results from his analysis of my blood
and hair weren't good news. I had a great deal of cancer in my body, most of it
in my lymphatic system.

I saw Dr. Gonzalez again the next day for 2 hours when he laid out the details
of his comprehensive program of metabolic therapy. This is based on the 25
years of research by a dentist named Dr. William Donald Kelley who developed a
program featuring nutrition, detoxification, and supplements as a way of
treating many degenerative diseases, including cancer. Dr. Kelley described 10
categories of metabolic types. As he saw it, there are 10 different body styles
of needing and assimilating foods. Nutritional therapy should be based one's
metabolic type, he said. Dr. Gonzalez spent 5 years studying cancer patients in
Dr. Kelley's program to be sure it worked.


A PROFILE OF THE GONZALEZ INTENSIVE NUTRITIONAL TREATMENT PLAN FOR
CANCER



As I drove back home, I thought that maybe more doctors should ask patients
about their bowel movements. All my life I have been constipated. If I went
once a week, I considered that normal. Now I see how abnormal and toxic that
was, how it contributed to my illness. After all, if a body is smart enough to
create a disease, then it makes sense that it must be smart enough to cure it,
too.

Sometimes I had doubts about it all. I would say to myself: "Who do you think
you are that you can drink some carrot juice, pop vitamins, do coffee enemas,
and get well when there are sophisticated technologies for cancer?" Except they
aren't winning the cancer war with these supposed marvels.
My doubts usually came when I wasn't feeling well or was over-tired. My husband
was a strong supporter. "It's a done deal," he'd say whenever he saw me in
these funks. He meant that as far as he was concerned, this was the best and
only way to whip cancer. That made me able to trudge on.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The same applies to completing
a comprehensive regimen like this one. Just hit away at it one day at a time
until it becomes second-nature to you—which took me about 3 years, by the way.
Anyway, the alternative to the alternative doesn't really work.

Looking back at the last 40 years of cancer research, it seems like digging in
your pocket for a coin that's not there. They've been looking in the wrong
place. Somewhere in my healing journey I took on the attitude of this Chinese
proverb: "Man who says it will not work, shouldn't disturb man who's making it
work." And I thought: until God opens another door, this alternative treatment
is the best for me.

Perhaps my greatest discouragement comes from the fact that a program like this
that works, even though it costs less than chemotherapy, is not covered by
insurance. I paid for this all out of my own pocket. The supplements ran me
about $400 a month and my 2 sessions with Dr. Gonzalez cost $1800. It was a
huge financial burden, yet it was a price I was willing to pay to get well. Of
course it meant I had to keep my full-time job as church secretary during this
period even though Dr. Gonzalez generally recommends you concentrate your time
on healing.
Today, after 3 years on Dr. Gonzalez' program, I am nearly cancer-free.
According to a standardized blood test used by conventional cancer doctors, I
do not have any cancer. But according to the more refined test that Dr.
Gonzalez uses, I still have some cancer activity. So I will always have to keep
up a nutritional maintenance program.
Am I lucky? Yes, I am lucky-lucky to have taken control of my own health care.
Lucky to have been introduced to this form of treatment. Lucky not to have
burned up my body with chemotherapy and radiation.

Let me tell you something a little grim. In the 3 years I've been on this
program, I have known many people with cancer who chose chemotherapy and
radiation. They are now either dead or on yet another chemo series for a
relapse. Yes, I am lucky!



[] EDITOR'S NOTE: No physician can successfully treat or cure all cancers.
Be cautious when you consider a practitioner for cancer treatment. On the other
hand, the clinical work of Dr. Gonzalez has been so impressive that the
National Institutes of Health is now backing further research into his
approach. We hope that when the results are announced, they will be presented
fairly and accurately and not distorted by the cancer establishment.




I began to figure out how best I could make Dr. Gonzalez' program work for me.
It called for a daily regimen of, literally, 150 vitamins, minerals, and
enzymes, starting at 3:30 a.m. I had to do 4 coffee enemas a day, starting at 2
a.m., to help rid my system of the toxins being released as the tumor
dissolved. This was to especially help my liver and gall bladder, which would
respond quickly to the caffeine and contract vigorously, releasing stored
wastes. About once a month I did a special bowel clean-out (Dr. Gonzalez calls
it the "clean sweep") using psyllium seed husks and a bentonite liquid. This
scrubbed out my colon. Along with this I did a liver flush (using olive oil,
apple juice, ortho-phosphoric acid, and other ingredients) to help purify my
liver. Both of these procedures took about a week. There were other practices I
didn't have to do but that Dr. Gonzalez often prescribes to cancer patients.
There is a detoxification program Dr. Gonzalez calls the "purge." You drink a
mixture of citrus fruit juices and Epsom salts. This is to aid in the rapid
removal of metabolic wastes from my body. Dr. Gonzalez also has patients do
skin rubs, salt and soda baths, mustard foot soaks, and castor oil
compresses—and again, all of this is to draw the toxins out of the body. I had
to start eating organically grown foods and whole grains and only meats
produced without hormones or antibiotics. Raw vegetables and fresh fruits,
fresh juices, especially 8 ounces of carrot juice every day, and no canned,
processed, or deep-fried foods—these were also part of my program. I figure
that by the end of my first year on the Gonzalez program I had consumed the
juice from over 2000 pounds of carrots and an untold amount of apples. I
avoided refined sugar out of consideration for my pancreas; I avoided aluminum
cooking utensils, as well as aluminum-containing deodorants and lotions. White
flour, soybean products, and peanuts also had no place in my diet as part of
this program. —Cheryl Wilkens Each of our cancer protocols is highly
individualized, says Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D., a classically trained
immunologist now among the nation's preÎminent practitioners of alternative
cancer treatment with a busy clinic in New York City. "It is essential, though,
that each patient comply 100% with their individual program in order for them
to survive." When they do, the results can be quite astonishing—an estimated
80% success rate, Dr. Gonzalez claims. Add to this the fact that most of the
patients that show up in Dr. Gonzalez' Park Avenue offices have received their
"death sentences" in so many months-to-live from their conventional cancer
specialists, after having "failed" with chemotherapy and radiation. Failed?-not
from Dr. Gonzalez' viewpoint. For him, these people have barely begun the real
struggle against their cancer, the one with the positive outcome. In some
respects this dramatic case study stands for the powerful healing possibilities
of the Gonzalez approach, or for any alternative cancer treatment that
genuinely is open to an alternative outcome, which is to say, remission and
life after cancer. A lawyer, age 28, had advanced leukemia; her doctors said
she had only a few days left to live. Three months after starting the Gonzalez
program, she was still alive; in fact, she was much better. A year later—some
362 days after the "few days" she supposedly had left to live—she was in
complete remission and back at work. The Gonzalez program has 6 main features.
First, appropriate diet, which means one of 10 basic diets with 94 variations
depending on the metabolic type of the cancer patient and of the cancer itself.
Second, intensive nutritional support, which means a huge amount of vitamin and
mineral supplements. Third, proto-morphogen support—these are pills made from
raw beef organs and glands. Fourth, general digestive aids, including pepsin
and hydrochloric acid. Fifth, pancreatic enzyme therapy, taken orally to help
liquefy tumors. Sixth, detoxification, to help the body eliminate the unhealthy
abundance of toxins and waste products as the tumors decompose. Apparently, the
pancreas secretes these special enzymes into the bloodstream where, under
normal healthy conditions, they digest and deactivate potentially cancerous
cells. Kelley also realized that each person has a unique biochemical,
nutritional condition, so any approach, if it is to be effective, must be
individually tailored. Even so, there are some general broad categories which
he called the 10 metabolic types, and these become the basis for the individual
nutrition plans. Is there proof all this works? Yes, a fair amount, but Dr.
Gonzalez is now recruiting patients with pancreatic cancer to take part in a
new clinical study to test his therapies. Years ago, Dr. Gonzalez studied some
of Kelly's pancreatic cancer patients to see how long they survived. Normally,
pancreatic cancer comes with a 5 year survival probability. Dr. Gonzalez found
that those patients who followed the program to the letter survived 9 years,
compared to 8 months for those who did so only partially, and 67 days, for
those who started it then quit. "The ultimate goal for all of us is to try and
get clinical trials so we can get our therapies tested," Gonzalez says. "Then
if it really does work, the world will have the facts to confirm it."

’S NOTE: for more information, contact: Nicholas J. Gonzalez, M.D.,