Bill Holman heals from prostate cancer with the Gerson Protocol
A nodule was found on Bill Holman’s prostate during a routine health exam in 2007. He then had a biopsy which confirmed that he had cancer on 1/2 of his prostate. Doctors wanted to do surgery to remove the prostate or use radiation therapy, but they couldn’t guarantee that he would be cancer free following the treatments.
Following the biopsy, Bill spoke to his friend Allison who had used Gerson Therapy 25 years earlier to heal her own cancer. She told him that it was a rigorous therapy to follow, and after listening to the details Bill thought that he wouldn’t be able to do all that was required to follow it. So he bought some books on alternative healing instead and then did a juice fast, which was followed by changing his diet and taking supplements. He also had cryotherapy, a treatment in which doctors froze half of his prostate in order to kill the cancerous cells. He says that it took him many months to recover from having this procedure. His doctors sent him home saying he should “continue living as if nothing had happened.”
Then four years later, in 2011, Bill had another biopsy and his doctors found cancer on the other side of his prostate. They said they would not be able to do surgery due to the scar tissue that was left behind from the previous cryotherapy treatments, but that they could do radiation, and proceeded to tell him about it. Bill says, “the side effects from the radiation that they described to me sounded horrible. My doctors told me I would be incontinent and need to wear diapers for the rest of my life, and that there was a good chance that I would develop intestinal cancer in five years. So I decided not to pursue that route.”
Bill says that he contacted his friend Allison again and asked “what are the chances the Gerson Therapy would help me? She said that she could guarantee that it could help, and she had full confidence I would get well.”
Bill reports that it was around this same time that his daughter got married, and soon after that her husband discovered that he had stage IV melanoma. He was told that his only option was an experimental treatment, and he died a few days after starting treatment from a heart attack. Bill says that this tragic event clinched his decision to pursue the Gerson Therapy.
His daughter bought him a copy of Healing the Gerson Way: Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases, and he says that the book became like a Bible to him. In March of 2011, he started doing coffee enemas, he borrowed a Juicer from a friend and began to make the healing juices, and did as much of the therapy as he could from home. Then in July of 2011, he went to the Gerson clinic in Mexico to learn the therapy first hand.
Two weeks later he started doing the full therapy at his home which included 5 daily enemas, drinking 13 juices, eating 3 organic meals a day, and a castor oil enema every other day. He says he experienced several healing reactions (which is common with Gerson) they included severe depression, self-doubt, mood swings and self-pity, but they all passed. His body also released toxins in the form of blemishes on his face and chest, and swelling and knots in my his breast. He used clay packs for a month until those went away. He says that every time he had a healing reaction he would celebrate.
After one year of the therapy he reduced his protocol to only 3 enemas, 9 juices, and a castor oil enema every week. He also hired a woman who used to cook at Whole Foods to help him with grocery shopping, making juices, and meal preparation. Bill’s wife also provided emotional and mental support. She was his caregiver at the Gerson clinic and has kept him going with the juicing routine and supplements. She has also adopted the Gerson lifestyle. Bill says that his family practitioner also supports what he is doing, and he keeps in contact with the Gerson Clinic.
Bill weighed 220 pounds when he started the therapy. He is now a healthier 168 and he intends to stay on the diet for the rest of his life. He says, “I am 100% sold on it one year in. It has become a life journey. I didn’t realize my life would change so much. The cancer is sort of secondary; changing your life is what it is truly all about. It is about healing my whole body, which will give me 10 or 15 more years of life. I think of it as an AA program for your health. Once you get into it you can never go back. This is a gift from God. I just wish more people knew about it.”
The Gerson therapy overview
Max Gerson was born October 18, 1881. He attended the universities of Breslau, Wuerzburg, Berlin, and Freiburg. As a young man he frequently suffered from severe migraines, so he began to focus his experimentation with diet to prevent his own headaches. One of Dr. Gerson’s patients discovered that the “migraine diet” also cured his skin tuberculosis. This discovery led Gerson to successfully treat many tuberculosis patients. His work eventually came to the attention of famed thoracic surgeon, Ferdinand Sauerbruch, M.D. Under Sauerbruch’s supervision, Dr. Gerson established a special skin tuberculosis treatment program at the Munich University Hospital. In a carefully monitored clinical trial, 446 out of 450 skin tuberculosis patients treated with the Gerson diet recovered completely. Dr. Sauerbruch and Dr. Gerson simultaneously published articles in a dozen of the world’s leading medical journals, establishing the Gerson treatment as the first cure for skin tuberculosis.
Around this time, Dr. Gerson attracted the friendship of Nobel prize winner Albert Schweitzer, M.D., by curing Schweitzer’s wife of lung tuberculosis, after all conventional treatments had failed her. Schweitzer’s own Type II diabetes was also cured by treatment with the Gerson’s diet. Gerson and Schweitzer remained friends for life, and maintained regular correspondence, and Schweitzer followed Gerson’s progress as the dietary therapy was successfully applied to heart disease, kidney failure, and finally – cancer.
It was in 1938 that Dr. Gerson passed his medical boards and became a licensed doctor in the state of New York, and his work began to focus more on cancer. For twenty years he treated hundreds of cancer patients who had been given up to die after all conventional treatments had failed them. In 1946, Gerson demonstrated his work before the Pepper-Neely Congressional Subcommittee, which was holding hearings regarding funding for future cancer treatments. Although only a few peer-reviewed journals were receptive to Gerson’s then “radical” idea that diet could affect health, he continued to publish articles on his therapy and case histories of healed patients. Gerson described his approach in the book titled ‘A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases and the Cure of Advanced Cancer.’ Max Gerson died March 8, 1959.
Charlotte Gerson, the daughter of the late Max Gerson, and her son have continued on with his work of healing cancer and other chronic illnesses. She is the founder of the Gerson Institute and author of several books relating to healing from illnesses using the Gerson Therapy including, Healing the Gerson Way: Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases. For over 40 years, she lectured worldwide in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Australia on the cancer therapy that her father started so many decades ago. Charlotte has been featured in several documentaries to preserve the work of her father and recently celebrated her 91st birthday.
The therapy advocates the drinking of 13 servings of organic, raw juices daily, combined with a low-fat, low-sodium, vegetarian diet, specialized supplements, and digestive enzymes. The therapy also includes some detoxing therapies which included the use of coffee enemas, about 5 per day, that detoxify the liver.
The therapy usually begins by the patient and a companion going to the Gerson Clinic for a two or three week stay to learn all aspects of using the therapy, then patients are sent home to incorporate the dietary and detoxification teachings on their own. Healing from a condition such as a stage four cancer takes about 2 years for the body to eliminate tumors, fully detoxify, and then rebuild the tissues.
Additional Resources
More information on Gerson therapy
Frequently asked question regarding Gerson Therapy
More on the benefits of including a coffee enema
Issa Khalaf also healed from prostate cancer with the Gerson protocol
Find these products online:
Omega J8006HDS Nutrition Center
Healing the Gerson Way: Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases