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Announcer: Welcome to the Gerson Tapes. These are a unique collection of lectures and testimonials based on the work and research of Dr. Max Gerson, his family and colleagues. So please, sit back and relax and enjoy the great health information you’re about to hear. Please remember, the information contained in this program is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified healthcare professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of the Gerson Institute and its affiliates. We encourage you to make your own healthcare decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified healthcare professional.
Norman: There have been almost no medical doctors deeply involved with sunlight, or for that matter some of the full-spectrum lighting such as John Ott initiated the studies on long ago. He has written a book, “Sunlight could save your life.” This is available at the Gerson Therapy bookshelf as well, outside. Again, we’re not going to go into long introductions. So, Dr. Zane Kime.
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Dr. Kime: The National Cancer Institute issued a statement that there’s a direct interrelationship between nutrition and diet and cancer. This was a real breakthrough, I felt, because up until that time it’s pretty well been denied that there is any relationship between what you eat and your chances of developing cancer. Many of us in this room have known that for many years, but when a prestigious body of learned scholars like the National Cancer Institute issues it, you know that there’s a tremendous amount of scientific evidence, experimental evidence that shows that there is a direct relationship between diet, nutrition and cancer.
The National Cancer Institute stated that a high-fat diet was implicated in the causation of cancer, that the American diet had too much fat in it. Not only saturated but the polyunsaturated as well, were implicated as being a causation of cancer. The scientific literature brings out that not only a high-fat diet, but that many vitamins and minerals are implicated in helping to prevent cancer. A high- fat diet has been very seriously implicated in the causation of not only breast cancer but bowel cancer and skin cancer, these three different cancers and various other cancers as well. Americans do eat an awful lot of fat. It’s estimated that between 40 and 45 percent of the calories that the average American eats is in the form of fat.
The National Cancer Institute brought out the information that it’s not only saturated fat that is involved, but the polyunsaturated, or the unsaturated fats, as
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well. This has been a real revelation because, as you probably know, nutritionists have been pushing these polyunsaturated oils and margarines and mayonnaises as being something that is very healthful to you. Yet we find in experimental literature that the polyunsaturated fats may be more implicated than the saturated fats, as far as promoting cancer formation. Studies that have been done show that experimental animals that are placed on the polyunsaturated fats get more cancer than the animals that are placed on the saturated fats.
This seems to all boil down to not only a high-fat diet but to many of the vitamins and minerals that we should be getting if we’re eating natural foods. By natural foods I’m speaking of the foods as growing.
Let’s look at foods, just to illustrate this to you. Sugar is a refined food. You’ve removed all the bulk, all the fiber, all the vitamins, all the minerals, all the water content. You’re left over with a pure source of calories, carbohydrate calories, refined, white, granulated sugar.
Other sources of calories that we get from our food can also be refined, like protein. You can refine the protein out of foods. You end up with gluten, which some health enthusiasts that are trying to get away from the use of flesh-foods, they go for these foods. But they’re no different from sugar in that all the bulk and the fiber and the vitamins and minerals have been removed from the protein and you’re leftover with a pure substance that is a source of calories.
Fat is another good example. We removed fat from corn, from various seeds and beans and we end up with a very refined substance that has only calories and all the vitamins, minerals, bulk, fiber and the water content has been removed, like corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower seed oil, soy oil. These are all very refined substances and the vast majority of the nutrients has been removed from these substances.
You say, “Well, what difference does it make?” It seems to make a lot of difference to the body because the body requires vitamins to metabolize these various sources of calories. If you don’t have these vitamins in your diet, the body has got to go to stores and soon these stores are exhausted and your body does not have the wherewithal to metabolize and utilize these foods properly.
Fat is a special example that we can look at because fat has the property of turning rancid. If you take fat and leave it out in a warm room, it will turn rancid much faster than if you refrigerate it. Not only that, but oxygen is another thing that will help fat to turn rancid. If you expose the fat to the air, rather than keeping it sealed, it seems to turn rancid much faster. If you expose it to light, it also turns rancid much faster. That’s why they put oil in brown bottles many times.
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Let’s start putting this together and start thinking about some concepts here. Fat turning rancid. Heat, air and light contributing to fat turning rancid. What happens when we eat fat? Let’s say that we fry our potatoes in some corn oil that has been provided to us as an excellent source of fat to fry things in because, after all, if we fry the potatoes in lard or butter we would be getting too much saturated fat. So we use these beautiful refined clear vegetable oils to cook our food with. We take that fat into our bodies. You remember that the three things that will cause fat to accelerate and turn rancid were heat, air or oxygen, and light. In our tissues, are they warm? Most assuredly. Our tissues are just about 100 degrees. You know how hot it is when it gets 100 degrees outside. So we have that property. Oxygen, do our tissues have oxygen in them? They should. Unless you have arteriosclerosis so bad that you don’t have good circulation any more. They should have an abundance of oxygen. Your circulation is really your life. So we have that property. What about when you get out into the sunlight and expose your skin to the sunlight? Well there you have the other factor, also, that can help fat to turn rancid, accelerate the reaction.
You say, “Well, so what? What if the fat does turn rancid in my tissues? What do I have to worry about?” When fat turns rancid in your tissues, it ages your tissues. It’s the very first step in the formation of cancer in your tissues. That’s why you don’t want fat to turn rancid. The polyunsaturated fats are much more active than the saturated fats and they’ll turn rancid faster than the saturated fats. When they do they will age your tissues and cause your tissues to be physiologically older than your chronological age. Not only that but they contribute to the cancer formation, one of the causing factors in cancer formation and they’ll contribute to every other type of cancer formative agent. As an example, if you take a cancer- causing drug or chemical of some kind, and then you get on a high-fat diet at the same time, it’s going to accelerate the formation of that particular cancer that is caused by that drug.
Now vitamins and minerals are very much implicated in this because if we’re going to keep that fat from turning rancid and causing cancer in our tissues, we have got to have certain vitamins and minerals that we classify as antioxidants available in our tissues to protect that fat from turning rancid. Antioxidants, an awfully big name, but I’m sure you’re familiar these antioxidants that I’m going to mention. Vitamin C, vitamin E, carotene - which is also known as vitamin A but the carotene itself as a precursor to vitamin A has a specific action in the body in helping to protect the fat from turning rancid. It even works better than the vitamin E.
Now fascinating enough, many of you have been taking vitamin E and you don’t realize why you take it. What effect does it have? It’s supposed to be the youth vitamin and the vitamin that regenerates you. In fact, all it does is protect the fat in your tissues from turning rancid and aging you. That’s the effect vitamin E has
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in your body. Vitamin C also has a very similar effect. And carotene, again. We mentioned that sunlight could accelerate fat turning rancid. Sure enough we have a group of Americans that are on a high-fat, highly-refined diet that are not getting diets that have enough of these antioxidants in them to protect them and protect their fat from turning rancid. So we have a lot of Americans on a high-fat, highly-refined, western diet, getting out there in the sunlight. What’s going to happen? Sure enough that fat is going to turn rancid and they’re going to start coming down with skin cancer. Yes, we mentioned earlier that a high-fat diet was very much involved with the causation of skin cancer.
But it’s not only the sun that’s involved in contributing to the acceleration of skin cancer, but fluorescent lights have also been implicated recently as maybe being more of a causal factor of skin cancer than sunlight itself. People come down with skin cancers where it’s exposed to the light, on their face, on their ears, on their nose. Yet when they go to see the physician to have those skin cancers removed, the physician will say, “You better stay out of the sun.” But he doesn’t mention the fluorescent lights that may be more implicated than sunlight, at least in experimental animals that fluorescent lights seem to stimulate the formation of cancer at a more rapid rate than sunlight. We’re not trying to get sunlight off the hook, as far as being an accelerating factor in the cancer formation, because certainly it can do that. If you’re on a high-fat, greasy or oily diet and you’re not getting the nutrients that you should be getting to protect that fat in your diet - the vitamin C, the vitamin E and the carotene - and you get out in the sun, certainly the sunlight will accelerate cancer formation, skin cancer formation. But if you’re on this kind of a program, on this kind of a diet, you’ll get skin cancer all over your body as well. But you’ll get more up where the sunlight can strike your face and down on your hands and things like that.
So definitely sunlight is involved, but do we have to stay on a high-fat, highly- refined diet and therefore hide from the sun? When we take experimental animals and put them on a low-fat diet… We can take two groups. We can give one group a low-fat diet and give them extra vitamins, extra vitamin C, extra E, extra carotene. Then we take the other group and put them on a high-fat diet and give them their regular laboratory chow and make sure that they’re not deficient in vitamins, they’re getting the minimum daily requirement set as a standard for these animals. But then we expose both groups to sunlight. It isn’t too many months until the group that is getting their high-fat, highly-refined diet that they’re getting all the minimum daily requirements that they need that’s been recommended for them, but it’s not long before they start blossoming out on their bodies with skin cancers. The other group that has been on the low-fat diet, that has been given the extra vitamins, they develop zero skin cancer. None. They’re totally protected from the sunlight. So we have good experimental evidence that this is so, that sunlight really is not harmful to someone who is on a natural diet
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who is not consuming large amounts of fat and that is protected by the antioxidants that they should be taking in their diet.
Many Americans are not getting enough of these vitamins in their diet. Many Americans do not eat enough fresh fruit to get the necessary vitamin C that they should have. Many Americans do not eat enough whole grains to get the necessary vitamin E that they should have. And of course, many Americans do not eat enough vegetables, especially the bright-colored ones that have the carotene in them, like the carrots, sweet potatoes, winter squash, dark leafy green vegetables. These are the kinds of foods that we should have in our diets every day. This is good nutrition that’s taught in a high school hygiene class, about getting something bright-colored in your diet every day and getting some fresh fruit every day. Yet many Americans do not get this. The high-fat diet added on top of this is a direct cause for cancer.
Around the turn of the century a physician discovered that infectious diseases could be helped by the use of sunlight. Dr. Vincent was studying tuberculosis, tuberculosis of the skin, and he discovered that sunlight could actually heal tuberculosis of the skin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for this. It wasn’t long until sunlight became the treatment of choice for tuberculosis. Physicians would open up these big sanitariums and they would take their patients out and sunbathe them, day after day, week after week. These patients would come in coughing and hacking and emaciated with their terrible, dreaded disease. It really was a sure- killer in those days. It was as sure a killer as cancer is today. They could not properly treat it. These poor patients would come in and this was their only hope. They didn’t have any chemotherapy or any drugs or any concepts of other types of treatment.
Other infection diseases, like staph infections and strep infections and viral infections, were also found to be healed by the use of sunlight. It was a treatment of choice. They had no other cure for it. Until the 1930s when antibiotics--
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--globulin in the body. So the body can fight these infectious diseases. My friends, there’s many people that are dying today in our hospitals across the nation, dying from infectious diseases that we have no known antibiotics that will cure. The bacteria or viruses are resistant to every known agent. Even in combinations of powerfully potent antibiotics the viruses and the bacteria are gaining the ascendancy to the place where they are resistant to every known antibiotic. There’s people out there dying in the hospitals today because they don’t have antibiotics and the physicians have never heard that sunlight can truly save your life, can build up your immune system and cure you from these infectious diseases that will take your life. Yes, sunlight does build up the immune system.
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Following exposure to sunlight we can draw your blood and find out that the neutrophiles, the white blood cells, have increased capacity to engulf and destroy bacteria. A dramatic effect. “Sunlight? What effect could that have when it falls on my skin?” It has to fall on your skin. It can’t come through your clothes. Sunlight. Just the very physical act of old man sun falling on your skin has an effect upon the neutrophiles in your body that will help them to engulf and destroy bacteria.
Another white blood cell called a lymphocyte is also stimulated into action by the effect of sunlight. It is capable of increasing it’s capacity to recognize bacteria and virus and it starts to produce antibodies as a direct stimulation of sunlight. We can take a patient and measure out a gamma globulin or immune serum in their bodies before they’ve been exposed to sunlight and then shortly afterwards. Draw their blood, look at the antibodies, the immune serum or gamma globulin, and find out that it is dramatically increased following the effect of sunlight. Those lymphocytes, amazing, they have got to be in full action if we’re going to understand how we can fight and treat cancer. Those lymphocytes are the things that can recognize cancer cells, realize that they’re abnormal cells and destroy them.
Those lymphocytes, those white blood cells, are the cells that actually produce a substance called interferon. Have you all heard about interferon? I see many hands. It may be a miracle cure for many cancer patients, interferon. A substance that is produced by the white blood cells, the lymphocytes, and sunlight stimulates these lymphocytes into action. What effect does sunlight have upon cancer? A number of years ago a researcher did a study where he looked at people that lived in various areas of the country. He discovered that the incidence of cancer, the number of people coming down with cancer, was much higher up in the northern states and in Canada than it was down in the southern part of the United States. He published this data, very shrewd evidence, that sunlight really had something to do with cancer. Yet this information was kind of buried in the back volumes in the library and it just really wasn’t gotten out.
The next study that was done was done in 1981, the first part of this year I just saw a new study done, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, where a group of researchers found that the incidence, or the number of people that were coming down with bowel cancer, was much less in the southern part of the United States than it was in the northern part of the United States. They could