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by Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D.
Editor’s note: The following information is excerpted from the totalhealth article, which ran in May 2001, deciding to pursue an alternative Cancer therapy by Dr. Linda Isaacs, Dr. Gonzalez’s partner. It serves as an excellent introduction to this first of two articles on condition specific nutrition as a primary therapy for pancreatic and other cancers.
In writing this article I drew not only upon my own
experience but also on the results of a survey I sent
to 50 of our long-term patients. They were kind
enough to share with me some of the information
about how they learned about our treatment, how
they made the decision to pursue this protocol, how they
motivated themselves to persevere and how they handle
inquiries they receive from others about their treatment
choice.
If you have been diagnosed with cancer, this is most
likely a frightening time for you, bringing about radical
changes in your life. Decisions about therapy may have
to be made very quickly after the news is delivered. The
first and most important step in your decision-making
process is to learn about the disease that you have. For
some patients this seems natural, for others it may be
frightening or confusing. But learning about your disease,
and options you have for treatment, is the first step
toward choosing which option you pursue. Leaving the
decision to you r physicians or to your family may place
you into a treatment protocol that you are unable or
unwilling to put into practice or that you will subsequently
regret.
The responses of the patients I surveyed for this article
can be helpful because they are, for the most part,
patients who have been with the practice for many years.
Some of their stories can be read on our Website www.drgonzalez.com.
Some of their cases were included in
the 1993 presentation to the NCI. They had to make their
decisions well before we had any published results.
Many of them initially investigated a number of treatment
options but eventually they made the decision to
stop searching- to settle down on one option and to
pursue it to the best of their ability. As another patient
wrote, “I think it’s really important to find people and
treatments you trust and stick with them. I come across
many people who are ill and a lot in fear and (they) keep
jumping from one thing to the next hoping for an instant
miracle. They are not willing to make a commitment and
‘do the work’ and they are not getting well.”
Many of them are convinced that inner resources are
very important as patients embark upon an alternative
therapy. Such qualities as faith, perseverance and enjoyment
of life were mentioned, as well as a willingness to
reach out to friends and family for help. Among their
comments:
“You must be very focused with the attitude that you
are running a marathon—not a sprint.”
“It has to ‘make sense’ and ‘feel right’ to the patient.
The patient must be willing to do whatever she can to get
well. The patient must be willing to be unsupported by
the medical establishment.”
“The people who will do the best are the ones not intimidated
by the medical profession and its scare tactics,
these people need to know the control is in their hands
not the physicians and that the patient is responsible for
the healing.”
“I think a positive attitude helps, as well as a strong
commitment to the program, and looking upon it as a
privilege, not a punishment.”
“It truly takes someone who is willing to interrupt
their status quo lifestyle and prioritize their health.”
“You need the help of others. I have six friends that
organize a pill sorting party every 40 days and we have
become very close.”
“I imagine the type of patient who does well on this
type of approach is a person who takes time to understand
health principles; believes in the program;
trusts (their practitioner); is willing to make lifestyle
changes, perseveres and never gives up; maintains a
sense of humor; has support at home; and has a deep
belief in God.”
— Linda Issacs, M .D.
As a medical student at Cornell in 1981 I first began investigating
the work of the late and very eccentric Dr. William Kelley, the
dentist who developed a nutritional enzyme approach to cancer
during the 1960’s. My research mentor at the time, Dr. Robert
Good—then President of Sloan-Kettering and recently described
in his obituary as the “Father of Modern Immunology”
—suggested as part of my project I evaluate all patients with
appropriately diagnosed inoperable pancreatic cancer treated
by Dr. Kelley within a specific time frame (we ultimately chose
the years 1974–1982). Dr. Good, wise teacher that he could be,
encouraged me to focus my efforts on this particular malignancy,
since pancreatic cancer was at the time, as it is today, an
invidiously aggressive illness that kills most of its victims within
3–6 months. Dr. Good realized Kelley treated other types of
cancers as well as non-cancer illnesses. But he felt that if I could
show Kelley had even a few significant victories against this disease,
his work would deserve to be taken more seriously—after
all, no one in orthodox oncology anywhere
could claim any success with
inoperable pancreatic cancer.
In my searchings through Kelley’s
files I did indeed discover a series of
remarkable patients diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer who had done
extraordinarily well for years under
Kelley’s care. I documented these unusual
cases as a part of my lengthy report
on Kelley’s methods, completed
as fulfillment for my immunology research
training under Dr. Good—who
by that time had moved to All Children’s
Hospital in Florida. Though
the manuscript remains unpublished
to this day—due to the usual biases in
the medical and publishing world—by
the late 1980s, long after Kelley had
closed down his office and disappeared
from view, word of my study and my unusual findings
with pancreatic cancer spread quickly in the alternative world.
In 1993, Dr. Michael Friedman, then Associate Director of
the National Cancer Institute, suggested I pursue a small pilot
study, evaluating my nutritional approach in patients diagnosed
with inoperable pancreatic cancer, for reasons similar
to those of Dr. Good 12 years earlier. He felt that if I had the
guts to put my therapy to the test against pancreatic cancer in
a formal clinical trial and the treatment showed some benefit
even in a few patients, the NCI would have to move to the next
level with my work and support large controlled clinical studies.
By “benefit” Dr. Friedman meant three out of 10 patients living
one year.
My colleague Dr. Linda Isaacs and I far exceeded Dr. Friedman’s
definition of success; of the eleven patients in the study,
eight with very advanced stage IV disease, nine lived at least
a year, five lived two years or more, and two lived beyond four
years. Based on these well-documented results, published in a
peer-reviewed journal in 1999, the NCI agreed to fund a comprehensive
controlled study, originally designed to pit our therapy
against the best available chemotherapy in patients diagnosed
with inoperable pancreatic cancer. This closely followed study
seems well-known within both the alternative and the orthodox
medical world as one of the NCI’s first attempts to study, seriously,
an alternative approach to cancer. Unfortunately, despite
the earlier optimism that surrounded the project, it remains
seven years later uncompleted, for many reasons that for now
must be kept confidential.
So though the long story of our clinical trial must be told
at some other time, while that project struggled along its peculiar
pathway, we did pursue laboratory studies in a mouse
pancreatic tumor model developed by the renowned molecular
biologist Dr. Parviz Pour at the University of Nebraska. Again,
as with the pilot study, the results were positive, impressive,
published in the peer-reviewed literature, and presented at an
NCI invitation-only conference.
Since so much of our research, both clinical and laboratory,
has involved pancreatic cancer in one way or another, it’s understandable
that many familiar with our regimen associate it
primarily or even exclusively with the
disease, even though Dr. Isaacs and
I do treat all forms of cancer as well
as non-malignant illness. Nonetheless,
after several conversations with
my friend Lyle Hurd, the publisher of
totalhealth, I decided to write about
this particular disease once again,
concentrating not on the clinical
studies, but our success with patients
treated in our private practice.
In doing so I hope to demonstrate
that with our nutritional therapy, a
number of our patients have beaten
soundly this normally rapidly terminal
condition in a way unmatched
anywhere in the orthodox oncology
literature. I hope also to make the
same point Dr. Good made with
me in our first conversations about
Kelley 25 years ago, and the point Dr. Friedman repeated years
later. If we can document even an occasional success with inoperable
pancreatic cancer, our therapy deserves to be taken
more seriously.
At this point, I thought it might be useful to discuss briefly
the pancreas, its anatomy and physiology, and our general treatment
approach before presenting a series of case reports of
patients diagnosed with the disease who have done well while
under our care.
Anatomically speaking, the pancreas lies in the backmost
region of the upper abdomen, technically known as the retroperitoneum,
directly behind the stomach. Here it sits literally
fused to the posterior body wall, lying horizontally along it. In
the adult, the organ is about 10–15 cms (5–6 inches) in length
with a tapering shape consisting of a widened head, a narrowing
body and still more narrowed tail. In one of my lectures
years ago, I suggested that the pancreas looked somewhat like
the head of a seagull or tern, with its head and tapering beak. I
think that analogy a good one, even today.
The pancreatic head fits snugly in the duodenum, the first
part of the small intestine into which the partially digested food
flows from the stomach after each meal. The duodenum itself
has a well-described “C curve” shape that wraps around the
pancreatic head and receives the bolus of pancreatic enzymes
that continue the digestive process.
In its microscopic structure, the pancreas consists of two
very distinct cell types, those of the exocrine pancreas that
synthesize the digestive enzymes, and the endocrine cells
that manufacture various hormones. The exocrine cells far
outnumber the endocrine, making up about 90 percent of the
organ’s total cell mass. These enzyme producers array themselves
in nests called acini, the production centers for the main
classes of pancreatic enzymes: the proteolytic group including
trypsin and chymotrypsin that break down large proteins into
their component amino acids; the lipases, that chop up long
chain fatty acids into smaller molecules; and the amylases, that
cleave complex carbohydrates into sugars such as glucose and
fructose. The pancreas actually secretes
many enzymes in each class,
and dozens overall.
The acinar cells synthesize and
secrete the powerful proteolytic enzymes
and the lipases as inactive
precursor molecules lacking any
digestive capability. Consequently,
these dormant molecules pose no
threat to the pancreas itself, which
otherwise could be digested away. But once released into the
duodenum, the precursors quickly transform into active enzymes,
ready and willing to attack any food that might be arriving
from the stomach.
The scarcer endocrine cells also lie in nests, known as isles
of Langerhans, that lie scattered throughout the pancreas,
though they tend to be concentrated in the tail region. Scientists
recognize three categories of islet cells, each of which
synthesizes a particular hormone. The alpha cells secrete glucagon,
which stimulates the liver and muscle to release stored
carbohydrates as the need arises, such as between meals or
when food is scarce. Beta cells manufacture insulin that serves
to drive excess blood glucose into cells for use as energy or for
storage during and after a meal. Delta cells produce somatostatin,
which regulates the synthesis and activity of the other two
islet hormones. All the endocrine cells release their respective
hormone molecules directly into the bloodstream, for use at
distant tissue sites such as the liver and the various muscles
of the body.
Pancreatic Cancer
According to Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine (16th edition,
page 537), in 2004, pancreatic cancer killed 31,270 Americans,
making it the fourth major cancer killer. It is a particularly
virulent disease, with 98 percent of patients dead within a year
of diagnosis. The cause of this malignancy still eludes orthodox
thinkers, though over the years they have uncovered some
clues. Scientists report that cigarette smoking increases the risk
three times, with up to 30 percent of cases linked to the habit.
Chronic pancreatitis and obesity predispose to the illness, as
does diabetes mellitus. Experts argue for a genetic component
in some families, with approximately 3–9 percent of all cases
thought due to such an inherited predisposition (DeVita VT,
Hellman S, Rosenberg SA, Cancer: Principles and Practice of Oncology,
6th Edition. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 2001, page
1127). I remember one patient in my practice who reported six
first-degree family members had died with pancreatic cancer.
However, the relationship between pancreatic cancer and coffee
consumption proposed some years ago and reported in the
media has now been discounted.
Cancer can begin in either the enzyme or hormone secreting
cells, though exocrine malignancies make up at least 90
percent of all pancreatic tumors, the much rarer endocrine tumors
(also called islet cell cancers) a mere 5–10 percent. The
more common form, adenocarcinoma, usually kills quickly; the
conventional medical literature reports that average survival for
patients with widely metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma at
the time of diagnosis falls in the range of 3–6 months from
diagnosis; earlier stage patients live on average some 10–14
months. The prospects for long-term
survival remain dismal whatever the
stage, even after many millions invested
in research over many years.
In the conventional medical world,
surgical resection of localized disease
provides the only prospect for longterm
survival, but at the time of diagnosis
most patients already have widespread
cancer and for them, surgery
offers no benefit. Chemotherapy does little; the FDA approved
gemcitabine, known as Gemzar, specifically for the treatment
of pancreatic adenocarcinoma after data from clinical trials
showed that patients treated with the drug lived on average 5.6
months, four weeks longer than those receiving other forms
of chemotherapy. Researchers did claim that in addition to
this slight survival advantage, 29 percent of Gemzar-treated
patients enjoyed an improved “quality of life,” defined as less
pain, increased appetite and an overall slight enhancement of
their general “well being.” Though short lived, such benefits
still represented an advance over previous options for the disease.
Recently, investigators at a number of academic centers
have reported little additional improvement when they added
other powerful chemotherapy agents into the Gemzar mix.
Scientists divide the rarer islet cell tumors into many subtypes,
depending on the specific hormone released; for example,
insulinomas secrete insulin, glucagonomas, glucagon,
and gastrinomas, gastrin. These cancers may secrete these hormone
products in excessive, even dangerous amounts—for example,
frequently patients with insulinomas come to the doctor
complaining of fainting between meals, when the extra insulin
drives so much glucose out of the bloodstream that blood sugar
drops precipitously. Whatever the particular type, islet cell
carcinomas tend to be less aggressive than adenocarcinomas:
even patients with metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis
can live five years due to its inherently slow progression, but
progress it usually does, eventually with fatal results.
Our Approach to Cancer in General
In my experience, most alternative practitioners who think
about cancer recommend one diet for everyone, regardless of
the tumor type, in a kind of “one size fits all” approach. Usually
this proposed ideal turns out to be just another variation
on the same vegetarian theme, with animal protein and animal
fat demonized as the true enemy of all cancer patients and of
life in general. However, as those familiar with our work know,
Dr. Isaacs and I think quite differently, believing that each of
us is unique not only in height, weight and shoe size, but also
in terms of dietary and nutritional needs. We rely on not one
but ten basic diets, ranging from the nearly purely vegetarian
to mostly red meat, with the fat, throughout the day. My predecessor
Dr. Kelley spent years of his professional life insisting
that one size doesn’t fit all, that each of us is biochemically and
nutritionally unique and each of us requires a diet designed for
our specific metabolic needs.
Ironically, when dentist Dr. Kelley first began treating patients
with other than dental disease in the late 1950s and early
1960s, he believed that for optimal health humans should eat
vegetarian, period. However nice the theory might have sounded,
in practice he discovered that vegetarianism worked only
for occasional patients, and that many actually worsened eating
this way. Through a process of trial and error, he learned that
though some of his patients did well with a plant-based diet, to
his astonishment many did best when they ate red meat and
only minimal vegetables and fruits, and some thrived when he
prescribed a diet allowing a variety of both plant and animal
based foods.
I recently said, when asked to say a few words in his memory
after his death, that just about everything that could be said
about anybody, good, bad and indifferent had been said about
Dr. Kelley—with some justification. But if we put aside his controversial
nature for a moment, if Kelley was nothing else, he
was a man possessed of great curiosity. As he refined his therapy
over the years, he began to think about the reasons why this
should be—why some of his patients thrived eating plants while
others blossomed eating meat, and still others did best when
consuming all types of food. His intellectual journey led him on
a long and winding path that eventually ended at the autonomic
nervous system (ANS), the collection
of nerves that regulates all aspects of
our metabolism, such as digestion
and blood flow, which do not require
any conscious input. In a sense, autonomic
means it works on its own,
automatically, without any need for
us to think much about what it might
be doing at any given time.
Though the details of autonomic
physiology and Kelley’s elaborate
model are certainly beyond the score
of this brief article, some general
points deserve mentioning. The individual nerves of the ANS
begin in the hypothalamus and brainstem, in an area neuroscientists
call the “lower brain,” to contrast it to the “higher” brain
centers of the cerebral cortex that help us think both grand and
trivial thoughts, that allow us to ponder, do math, write music
and fill out our income tax forms.
Signals from the autonomic centers travel out of the brain
to reach every tissue and organ in the body, from tiny muscles
of the hair follicles of our scalp, to the sweat glands of the feet,
and just about everywhere else in between. Scientists divide the
ANS into two distinct branches, the sympathetic nervous system
(SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), each
consisting of its own very unique set of nerves designed to carry
out a particular set of instructions. The SNS and PNS tend to work
in contrary ways, in opposition to each other, not to struggle and
fight, but instead to allow very precise management of our every
metabolic activity from second to second. When the SNS fires, for
example, heart rate increases, as does the strength of each cardiac
contraction: the small arterioles of the skin and those along
the entire digestive tract constrict, while the vessels that feed into
the muscles and into the brain dilate, to allow easier and stronger
blood flow. As a result, blood pressure rises and blood itself
gets preferentially shunted from the gut and skin to the muscles
and brain. Furthermore, the sympathetic nerves inhibit virtually
all digestive processes and processing, including the secretion
of all the various digestive juices as well as peristalsis, the series
of muscular contractions that propel food along the intestinal
tract. At the same time, the SNS signals most endocrine organs,
including the thyroid, the adrenals, and the gonads, to release
their respective hormones.
The parasympathetic nerves, when firing, orchestrate the
opposite chain of events; heart rate slows and cardiac contraction
weakens, while the arterioles of the skin and digestive tract
open wide. Blood pressure drops, and blood flows more strongly
into the skin and into the various digestive organs. Meanwhile,
digestive activity along the entire gut picks up, including
the secretion of acid, enzymes and bile, as well as peristalsis.
However, when the parasympathetic nerves gear up, endocrine
activity slows considerably.
Scientists traditionally teach that the sympathetic system
serves as our body’s first responder in times of stress, be it
physical, emotional or psychological in origin. Hopefully my
cursory description above gives clues why the SNS might help
us survive through times of great or even minor difficulty.
When challenged, whether physically or intellectually, it helps
us if blood, with its oxygen and many life-supporting nutrients,
flows steadily and effortlessly to the
brain to allow for quick thinking. As
blood moves more efficiently into
our many skeletal muscles, we can,
if necessary move rapidly and with
great force—to our benefit should
we need to run from a fire or extricate
ourselves from a crashed car.
We have all heard stories of heroic
feats of human strength, such as a
parent lifting the end of a car to help
a trapped child escape; such actions
are possible, when the sympathetic
system is fully active.
The sudden burst of hormones from the thyroid and the adrenals
helps convert our reserves of stored energy, the sugar
in the liver and fatty acids sequestered in fat cells, into readily
usable fuel. This too makes perfect sense, for under duress,
we want our brain’s neurons and muscle cells supplied with
as much energy as they might need, for as long as they need
it. And at times when we are fighting for survival or struggling
through a final exam, we don’t want our energy wasted on the
more mundane processes of life such as digestion. So it’s to
our benefit that when the SNS fires during periods of stress,
digestion essentially shuts down.
Though the SNS does deftly help us battle through major
obstacles in life, such as a car accident, even more mundane
events in a typical mundane day—an unpleasant phone call,
a problem with the kids and their homework, a presentation
at work—can send these nerves into high gear. We rely on our
sympathetic responders from moment to moment, day in and
day out, to deal with all our stresses and stressors.
In contrast, the parasympathetic nervous system helps us
repair and rebuild from the wear and tear of life’s daily battles,
whatever they may be, both major and minor. The PNS becomes
active during and after a meal, to promote digestion, to expedite
the absorption of nutrients and their efficient use in all the
cells throughout our body. These nerves are also busy at night,
while we sleep, directing the restoration of our depleted energy
reserves as well as the repair of damage done to our cells and
tissues each day as we move through life in a polluted, challenging
world.
After years of thinking about the
ANS, Kelley came to believe, as we do
forty years later, that some are born
with an overly developed sympathetic,
and a correspondingly weak parasympathetic
nervous system. In such
folk, the organs normally stimulated
by the sympathetic nerves, such as
the heart and the skeletal muscles,
along with the various endocrine
glands, tend to be highly developed,
even hyperactive, while those tissues
normally prodded into action by the
PNS—such as those of the digestive
system—will be inherently weak, slow
to act, inefficient.
On the other hand, others of us seem to be innately possessed
of a hyperactive PNS, and a weak SNS. In these people,
all the tissues and glands normally activated by the PNS—such
as the organs of digestion—will be very efficient, while the
heart, the skeletal muscles, and the various endocrine glands
will be slow to respond, physiologically clumsy.
For those who fall in between with a balanced autonomic set
of nerves, both the SNS and PNS can fire as needed with equal
efficiency, and all the tissues, organs and glands each regulates
will be equally developed and equally responsive.
Kelley wasn’t the first to propose that we humans could
be divided into three autonomic groups, the sympathetic and
parasympathetic “dominants,” as he called them, and the balanced
metabolizers. The great research scientist Francis M.
Pottenger, M.D., Sr. had suggested in the various editions of
his classic text, Symptoms of Visceral Disease first published in
1919, that our species could be categorized in this way. More recently,
during the 1940’s and 1950’s, the physiologist Dr. Ernst
Gellhorn, a Professor at the University of Minnesota Medical
School, documented the same, that humans fall into three general
autonomic categories.
All this neurophysiology is more than of just theoretical interest:
both Dr. Pottenger, Sr. and Dr. Gellhorn believed that
much if not most disease occurs when the autonomic branches
are not in balance, and health requires the equilibrium be
restored. Though neither of these two researchers developed
these thoughts to any great practical degree, Kelley took these
pioneering ideas and outlined an entire system of disease and
its treatment based on autonomic imbalance.
Though again, the details are beyond the scope of this article,
Kelley specifically associated certain illness with sympathetic
dominance, particularly digestive diseases such as ulcer
disease, colitis, or irritable bowel. Such people can be predisposed
to anxiety, but rarely suffer from depression, and rarely
report allergies.
Parasympathetics, with their very efficient gut, escape most
digestive problems, but are subject to allergies, asthma, chronic
bronchitis, hypothyroidism, and chronic fatigue. They can, if
the parasympathetic system becomes too overly domineering,
end up in serious, life altering melancholic depressions.
And it was Kelley who first proposed that cancer occurs only
in a state of autonomic imbalance, and that each of the two
extreme groups, the sympathetic and parasympathetic dominants,
fall victim to certain malignancies. The common solid tumors—the
cancers of the breast, lung, colon,
pancreas, liver, uterus, ovaries, prostate
—Kelley believed forty years
ago strike only sympathetic dominants,
never parasympathetics. In
contrast, the immunological malignancies
—leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma
—seem to inflict only those
with a strong PNS, never sympathetic
dominants.
Balanced folk, Kelley claimed and
as we see in our experience today,
tend to be the healthiest among us,
generally immune to the diseases of the autonomic extremes
including cancer. In my 19 years of practice, I have never seen
a cancer patient whose autonomic branches, when first seen in
my office, proved in be in balance.
Though Pottenger and Gellhorn broke important scientific
ground, each in his own way, it was Kelley who first associated
states of autonomic dominance with very specific dietary and
nutritional needs. Kelley proposed that those with a strong SNS
do best eating more vegetarian, dining primarily on plants.
The parasympathetic dominants are the meat eaters, the carnivores,
who thrive on animal protein and animal fat in all its
forms—saturated, unsaturated and even cholesterol—while
doing poorly on excessive amounts of fruits, vegetables, nuts,
seeds and grains. These are the patients that just can’t tolerate
grains.
Balanced people, in between the two autonomic extremes,
do well at a buffet (preferably organic of course) choosing
and eating a variety of natural food types of both plant and
animal origin, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole
grains, eggs, dairy, fish, poultry, and red meat (though not
nearly in the quantities needed by a typical parasympathetic
dominant).
So, Kelley had come to associate each of the three autonomic
groups with specific dietary needs and specific illnesses.
But, inquisitive scientist that he was, Kelley took his evolving
model of human biology to the next level, explaining why
this should be the case, why each autonomic type seemed to
require, for optimal health, a unique diet, so different from the
optimal diets of the other two groups. Carefully, with the help
of the scientific literature, he began to put the pieces of this
complicated metabolic jigsaw puzzle together, a process we
have continued ourselves to this day.
If we look first at the details of a vegetarian type diet, plant
foods provide nutrients that neutralize metabolic acids, and
ultimately push the blood and body fluids in an alkaline direction.
In an alkaline environment, sympathetic activity slows
dramatically, while parasympathetic firing strongly perks up.
In addition, plant foods of various sorts, whether fruit or vegetable,
provide certain minerals in large amounts such as magnesium
and potassium, which together serve to slow down
the sympathetics and rev up the parasympathetics. Such
thoughts aren’t just from Kelley: academic physiologists have
known for years that magnesium does block sympathetic activity,
and potassium directly stimulates the PNS into action.
Certain B vitamins richly supplied in plant foods, such as
thiamin, riboflavin and folic acid, stimulate the parasympathetics
and block sympathetic firing. And nuts, seeds, grains and
even leafy greens provide large amounts of linoleic acid, an essential
omega-6, which similarly inhibits the sympathetics and
turns on the parasympathetics. So, if we put all this information
together, a vegetarian type diet, because of its alkalinizing effect,
because of its specific nutritional profile, its collection of
minerals, vitamins, and fatty acids, will tend to slow down sympathetic
activity, turn on the parasympathetics and bring the
out of balance autonomic system of a sympathetic dominant
into, or at least toward, balance. As the autonomic branches
move into equilibrium, the various tissues, organs and glands
work more efficiently and appropriately, none too strong nor
too weak. Health improves, and disease, whatever it may be,
tends to regress.
Red meat contains large amounts of sulfates and phosphates,
which in the body quickly convert into sulfuric and
phosphoric acid, both of which, like any metabolic acid, strongly
stimulate the SNS. In addition, the four amino acids phenylalanine,
tyrosine, aspartic and glutamic acid, which red meat
provides in abundant quantities, one way or another do the
same. Phenylalanine and tyrosine specifically serve as precursors
to the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, without which
the SNS can do nothing, and aspartic and glutamic acid each
turn on the sympathetic centers of the hypothalamus. Certain
B vitamins, like B12, found in red meat exert similar influences,
activating the sympathetics, and blocking the PNS. The saturated
fatty acids richly supplied in red meat, often seen as one
of its detriments, also powerfully stimulate the sympathetic
nerves. So for all these reasons—its acidifying effect, its amino
acid, vitamin and fatty acid profile, red meat perfectly suits the
needs of a parasympathetic dominant, acting to stimulate the
weak SNS, toning down the overly strong PNS, and bringing the
two autonomic branches—and the various tissues, organs, and
glands—into more efficient equilibrium. With such balance,
once again, health improves, disease tends to regress.
A diet providing both plant and animal products in roughly
equal amounts yields nutrients that stimulate and suppress
both autonomic branches. For a balanced metabolizer, born
into sympathetic-parasympathetic equality, a variety of foods
will help maintain their inherent physiologic status quo.
We, like Kelley before us, use not only diet, but also supplements,
with the specific aim in each patient to move their SNS
and PNS into harmony. In the alternative medical world, practitioners
prescribe many supplements for many reasons, but
in our office autonomic balance remains always the primary
goal. For our vegetarian, sympathetic dominant patients, we
generally recommend very large doses of magnesium, some
potassium, but very little calcium, which we find stimulates the
sympathetic nerves into action. For these people we also prescribe
chromium and manganese, which have a similar parasympathetisizing
effect. We also find useful the B vitamins, like
thiamin, riboflavin and folate, which specifically suppress the
sympathetic nerves and stimulate the PNS. We suggest these
patients avoid certain Bs like B12, inositol and choline, which to
the contrary stimulate sympathetic activity.
Our parasympathetics, in terms of supplements, usually do best
with large amounts of calcium, but must avoid all but the smallest
doses of magnesium and potassium, each of which would
only serve to stimulate their already hyperactive PNS, and suppress
their already weak SNS. We do include in their protocols
extra zinc, which we believe to be a sympathetic stimulant, but
keep to a minimum chromium and manganese. We also limit
thiamin, riboflavin and folate, but often prescribe fairly large
amounts of B12, choline and inositol, each of which serves to
turn on their weak sympathetic nerves while suppressing the
overly active parasympathetic system. We frequently suggest
for them fairly large doses of the omega-3 fatty acids for their
sympathetisizing effect, often from fish oil as the most suitable
source, but restrict to a minimum the omega-6 class.
For our balanced patients, we prescribe a variety of supplemental
nutrients in moderate doses that stimulate and suppress
both autonomic branches, including magnesium, potassium,
calcium, chromium, manganese and zinc, all the Bs, and
a mixture of fatty acids, both the omega-3 and omega-6 varieties.
In this way, their inherent autonomic balance stays steady,
in place, moving neither into sympathetic nor parasympathetic
extreme. We try to keep them exactly where they should be, in
balance.
For our cancer patients, as with all our patients, we use diet
and various nutrients, including the minerals, trace elements,
vitamins and fatty acids to push their ANS into equilibrium.
Though autonomic balancing remains a crucial goal for our
cancer patients, as Kelley believed decades ago, and as we believe
today, it is not in and of itself sufficient to beat the disease
once it has become firmly established. All our cancer patients,
regardless of their autonomic profile, must also take, in addition
to their other supplements, large quantities of orally ingested
pancreatic enzymes derived from the pig pancreas, for
a direct anti-cancer effect. This enzyme product remains the
mainstay of our cancer protocols, as it was for Kelley, based on
the work of the brilliant Scottish scientist, Dr. John Beard. It was
Beard who first suggested to the consternation of the medical
world that pancreatic proteolytic enzymes represent the body’s
main defense against cancer and would be the ideal treatment
of the disease.
For more information visit Nicolas Gonzalez, M.D. and Linda
Issacs, M.D. at www.dr.gonzalez.com.
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