We’re going to move on to healing reactions. I thought it was tagged here, give me a second.
SPEAKER 1: While they’re finding that, let me bring you a couple bits of information that came up after yesterday’s class. I was shown in the handbook where it talks about cooking potatoes, and it says cook on a slow temperature for about two to two and a half hours. There are three or four vegetables that are an exception to that slow, low-heat cooking. The potato is one of them; beet would be another one; the artichoke; and corn. Remember, corn is only allowed once a week. But the baked potato really needs to be cooked at 350 or 375 for about an hour and 15 minutes. If you read that in there, please don’t try and bake your potato on low for two and a half hours. You’ll never be able to eat it.
Let’s see if there was something else. No, just a reminder that any of your questions, because we do have the panel discussion later today, try and just write them down and save them for that time. It’ll give us each a chance to give you some input, instead of limiting it.
DR. SMITH: There will be a little time after this presentation, probably, for questions regarding this. Then in that panel, it opens it up again to everything.
QUESTION: Could you be a little more specific about the corn? I understand the baked potato, but what did you say about the corn?
SPEAKER 1: The corn is one vegetable that’s only allowed once a week. But it also should be boiled, as the artichoke and the beet.
DR. SMITH: Okay, healing reactions.
SPEAKER 1: We’re going to encourage you to read the chapters 15 and 16 on Healing Reactions, page 181 through 194. Remember yesterday I said that that is one of the reasons for failure sometimes with a patient, if they don’t understand what’s happening to their body and they start developing these toxic reactions or healing reactions, and then instead of helping that to happen, they’ll suppress the symptoms. So it’s helpful to read that chapter.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that don’t be afraid of the healing reactions. They’re actually the body’s response to what you’re doing, and it proves that your body’s responding to it. It’s essential. The patients at the clinic sit around the dinner table together to eat together, and they’ll be sharing their information. A lot of times a patient will not be experiencing healing reaction right away, or not sure, and feel left out or neglected because they’re not in pain or discomfort or nauseated or high fever.
So it’s a different way of looking at what’s happening to your body, but it’s essential to understand it. It just proves that the body is promoting detoxification. It’s dumping these toxins back into your system, in the blood system, in the digestive system, you’re going to react to it. It can create different symptoms, and we’ll talk about that.
DR. SMITH: Yes, it’s both the looked forward to and the dreaded at the same time, because they can be uncomfortable, but you know that the immune system is starting to kick in. Something’s happening.
Now, technically there are three different kinds of reactions, and I’m going to talk about them just so you understand a little better what’s happening and why we do certain things for each one. But then you don’t have to, each time, “Which one am I?” They can all actually happen at the same time too.
But there are toxic reactions and detox reactions that are a little different than the actual immune system response healing reaction that I was referring to on the first day as the third objective of the therapy.
A toxic reaction is where, after all the food and the juice and the potassium and the thyroid and the system is now receiving what it needs and it has energy and it starts to release its toxins into the bloodstream, if those toxins are being released faster than they are being eliminated from the body, you can have symptoms. A lot of them are actually nervous system symptoms, which could be headaches or nervous irritability.
Even depression. It’s not uncommon that some people know when they’re going to have either a healing reaction or even a detox reaction because they feel depressed, and they’re not usually someone that is depressed. Then, sure enough, in another day, here comes the reaction.
It could be unclear thinking. For some people, there’s a lot being released, and maybe they had some drugs in their system before, they can get hallucinations even. Memories from the past.
Also can be foul odors. The body starts to small. You can start to crave foods, and usually not the healthy foods. Probably foods that were not the ones that you should’ve eaten at the time, that you did, that you’re remembering them or something is happening where it’s coming up into the nervous system. Joint and muscle pain. This is just some of them.
What do you think, if this should happen, would be the first thing to think about for a remedy? An extra coffee enema, which you are allowed to do, particularly when you’re drinking all your juices. We also mentioned, I think it came up a little bit ago, some people, because you’ve got 12 hours or whatever at night, sleeping, and toxins are being released during the night. If there are a lot, some people wake up and feel really bad. They get up – if they’re doing all their juices, they can do this – they get up and they take an extra coffee enema, and they are relieved, and they go right back to sleep.
The primary remedy is the coffee enema. If for some reason it’s not possible to do this, you’re going to need to temporarily reduce the number of juices. The question came up of being able to only do one or two juices a day on certain days when one’s working, but trying to do 10 juices. If you don’t have any symptoms, if you don’t have any detox symptoms, maybe.
But usually people get to learn when they feel toxic. You can just feel it. You may taste it in your mouth, you may feel headache-y, you just know, “I’m feeling toxic.” If that doesn’t happen, okay. But it might be more wise to at least go down to six or eight juices when one isn’t able to take the full amount of enemas to keep that flowing. You can play with it, learn how your body responds.
Detox reactions – it’s a matter of semantics – is really where these toxins that are being released, they’re now flowing through the GI tract, and they are irritating the GI tract, all the way from the mouth to the anus. That’s where typically these symptoms are found. Some of them are also from the sweat. These toxins are trying to be pushed out. So in the skin, there might be rashes, because our skin is a large organ of elimination. The sweat might smell foul. It’s just another way the body’s getting things out.
A woman’s menses could have a different character and odor to it, because that’s a way that every month, some blood gets out of the system. And the body, I think, is intelligent enough to know, “I can send some toxic stuff out with this.”
The whole GI tract could feel irritated, very nauseous, feel sore, because the toxins are irritating. It can cause feelings of nauseousness all the way to vomiting. Dark stools. Usually rule out, of course, if it’s that tarry black, that there’s not blood coming from higher in the digestive tract. But just dark stools usually are a sign toxins are being released. Hemorrhoids are often that irritation right at that area, and some back pressure that can go along with that. Diarrhea. The GI tract, the colon’s being irritated by these toxins, so its reaction is peristalsis, let’s get this stuff out. Diarrhea we’ll talk about. We don’t necessarily want to stop it, unless it’s really severe.
And I mentioned, the skin rashes, cold sores, very common. Canker sores in the mouth, in the tongue, are one of the first symptoms that many people get. Particularly people that have been on chemo. The chemo starts coming out, and we’ll talk about some things to do for that. Just another type of detox reaction. Toxic, detox. Uncomfortable, but you know toxins are being released, and they’re on the move, and it’s a good sign, and we try to give you ways to help moderate that so you can get through that and not have to stop the therapy.
The first one we’ll come back to on the detox reactions is nausea and vomiting.
SPEAKER 1: The best thing, really, the first thing you want to try if you have experience with nausea, is the gruel. The recipe, I mentioned yesterday, is on page 189 in Charlotte’s book, Healing the Gerson Way. It’s really just a mixture of five parts water, one part oatmeal; simmer it for a few minutes and then strain it. We saw the demo on the video. That helps tremendously. A little bit in each juice, you can put some in the peppermint tea, and drink it. The peppermint tea is also another way to help reduce that nausea.
It’s amazing how fast the gruel works. A lot of times when you have a condition or maybe the patient’s had chemotherapy, I think it’s best to just go ahead and start drinking that gruel and peppermint tea as you start the Gerson therapy instead of waiting for that nausea to happen.
Several times I’ve seen patients have an aversion to the green juice. It is usually the first thing that they dislike about the Gerson therapy during a healing reaction. In rare occasions, you can take the green drink as an implant to get through that time, and there’s instructions for that in Charlotte’s book. But you also may need to adjust the diet and have just soft cooked foods for a day or two; applesauce, mashed potatoes, but some soup in with that, oatmeal.
You will pass through it. As long as you’re doing the full protocol that fits your need, you’ll pass through it. I think it lingers longer when you’re not optimizing your potential for what you can do to detox.
DR. SMITH: I just want to add that the gruel being so helpful. At the clinic, Dr. Malindis [sp] calls it better than Maalox. It just is emollient and soothing. It’s that very thin oatmeal and gruel, because it’s kind of just gruelly.
SPEAKER 1: And it tastes good, too, it really does.
DR. SMITH: And it’s giving some extra calories for those people that just aren’t eating as much as they should. If you put some gruel in their juices, they’re getting some extra calories, a little extra protein at the same time.
Diarrhea, which can happen when those extra toxins are irritating the lining of the colon. If it’s not severe, when it’s just starting, we don’t want to plug it up, because this is a way toxins are being released. But we want to moderate it. One really good remedy is a quarter of a teaspoon of clay. We don’t have the canister, but you’re going to hear about clay in a little bit, when we demonstrate clay packs. But montmorillonite clay or bentonite clay has these absorptive properties; when you ingest it, it doesn’t get absorbed into the body, but it pulls toxins, many times its weight in toxins, as it’s moving through.
We add a little clay and potassium gluconate – it’s a supplement that most of the companies sell, the Gerson companies – with some peppermint tea. Just keep sipping that. That can help the diarrhea, because it will just help pull the toxins out that are irritating quicker.
If it’s severe diarrhea or it’s just constantly, which doesn’t happen that often, but just running and running, a person doesn’t want to get dehydrated. So they may need to stop the coffee enemas until they get it under control. Make sure you’re drinking the juices and the carrot juice and staying hydrated. Sometimes just a little chamomile [inaudible 00:29:48] or some chamomile tea goes in and just comes out.
Once that diarrhea is starting to slow, slow, slow, then we start the enemas. Maybe even with chamomile tea then, and then slowly – if we had to stop them because of a severe condition of diarrhea – start in slowly. And that’s a picture potassium gluconate. This is a key company one that you can have on hand.
