This article originally appeared in the February/March 1996 issue of the Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients and is reprinted with permission of Robert Crayhon, M.S., and of the Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients, 911 Tyler Street, Port Townsend, WA 98368-6541; (360) 385-6021: Fax (360) 385-0699; Email: tldp@olympus.net http://www.dr-gonzalez.com/crayhon_txt.htm
Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D., is a practicing physician in New York City who
specializes in treating cancer with a treatment originated by Dr. Kelley, D.D.S.
He has a unique perspective on nutrition, autonomic nervous system balance and
biochemical individuality. He joined Robert Crayhon for the June 16, 1995 taping
of the national TV show, "Alternative Medicine." His address: 36 East 36th
Street, Suite 204, New York, N.Y. 10016. His office phone number is
212-213-3337.
RC: Dr. Gonzalez, how did you start approaching cancer from your unique
comprehensive metabolic and nutritional approach?
NG: I was a second year medical student intending to become chief of medicine at
Sloan Kettering, and a friend of mine introduced me to Dr. Kelley, the infamous
dentist who developed this elaborate nutritional approach to cancer. Skeptically,
I approached him, and he said, "All I ever wanted was someone from the orthodoxy
to look through my records." At the time, my research advisor at Cornell, where
I was a medical student suggested I do it as a summer project. It evolved into a
five year research study. We went through ten thousand of Kelley's records, and
found that this man had indeed reversed advanced metastatic cancer. We went
through the cases of thousands of patients.
RC: The way Dr. Kelley started-- correct me if I’m wrong-- was when he found out
he had pancreatic cancer he walked into a health food store and bought
pancreatic enzymes. The whole thing began by chance.
NG: That's right. It was purely by chance. He had a lot of digestive problems,
as patients with pancreatic cancer will. In an attempt to help his digestive
problems, he started taking huge doses of pancreatic enzymes and immediately
felt a change in his tumor. That's how it started.
RC: There are many facets to the therapy that you do, but pancreatic enzymes
are-- you believe-- the most powerful anticancer substances available. Why are
they so anti-cancer?
NG: It’s the way the body is designed. In orthodox and even unorthodox
physiology, we tend to think that the enzymes serve one function: to help to
digest food. Indeed they do that. But Kelley-- as did many researchers before
him and since-- believed that the enzymes are a primary defense against cancer,
and are far more important than the immune system in terms of controlling the
development and growth of cancer. So we believe that is one of their designated
functions in the human body.
RC: Critics of this will say, "Pancreatic enzymes released into the digestive
tract are molecules way too big to get into the bloodstream."
NG: In the 1940s, scientists documented that they do in fact get absorbed. There
is a wonderful study from 1976 in Science magazine, one of the ultimate
scientific journals, where a professor at Cornell did a study with rabbits and
mice and found that the pancreatic enzymes are absorbed through the intestinal
tract, complete and active, and are not destroyed in the gut.
RC: Are there any studies on pancreatic enzymes' anti-cancer activity?
NG: Yes. There is a wonderful study from 1965 where a doctor used them in animal
models and a doctor found they had an extraordinary, powerful anti-cancer
effect.
RC: Now these are inexpensive substances, aren't they, compared to
pharmaceuticals?
NG: Yes.
RC: Why hasn't there been a greater interest in pancreatic enzymes? I know they
were studied for nearly a hundred years. Is it because they were overshadowed by
the work of Madam Curie, and the belief her work generated that radiation would
cure all cancer? Or is it because pancreatic enzymes are unpatentable?
NG: Because of FDA regulations, pancreatic enzymes fall in the category of a
natural substance. Therefore, there is no impetus for a drug company to spend
hundreds of millions of dollars in researching pancreatic enzymes. They cannot
patent what they might find. There is also the psychological resistance to look
at natural substances in the orthodox research community, although that is
starting to change.
RC: I know that your practice is based on biochemical individuality, the belief
that everyone has unique needs. Some of your cancer patients are not given that
much pancreatic enzymes because their pancreas is strong and they do not need
support in that area. You really examine each person to find out what their
unique needs are.
NG: Correct. The doses vary quite widely, depending on the patient.
RC: Roger Williams and other researchers firmly established that we are all
biochemically unique. Yet medicine fails to recognize this. Why do you think
that is, and why do you think medicine is looking for the one therapy that will
suit everyone?
NG: It is the limitations of human thinking. People want to reduce things to
simple answers. Nutrition is not a simple answer. There is no simple way to
approach even a single individual patient. Everybody is different. Everybody
needs a different diet, different doses of supplements, different supplements.
The same dose of one supplement will make one patient feel wonderful and make
another patient feel very sick.
RC: Let's look at calcium. So many women are taking calcium because they are
told that it is going to strengthen their bones. Yet you have said that the
misuse of vitamin and mineral supplements are a real problem, and that people
don't realize that the wrong nutrient for the wrong person can have profoundly
adverse health effects. Why is that? Because of the individual responses to
these nutrients?
NG: Yes. In certain patients, calcium can stimulate certain kinds of cancer,
like breast cancer. If you look at the statistics epidemiologically, the
increase in breast cancer parallels the increase in use of calcium.
RC: As well as the increase in toxins in our environment and the use of
synthetic hormones. You also say that for some people, vitamin E is the wrong
nutrient and should not be taken.
NG: We have been saying that for years. Everyone laughed at us. I have a lot of
respect for the Shute brothers and other people who have researched vitamin E.
Yet some free radicals serve a useful function. Too many antioxidants may knock
out the beneficial role of free radicals in your body. Free radicals are how our
body defends itself against infection. I have seen people on high doses of C and
E who develop more infections, not less.
RC: The other point to underscore here is that you believe the reason that
studies of nutrients come up with mixed results is not just because, say,
vitamin E or C is good for some and fails to help others-- it is because it is
good for some and bad for others, and that researchers are not looking for the
bad effect, because they are not looking for the effect of nutrients on the
autonomic nervous system. A large part of your understanding of the patient
comes from looking at which particular portion of the nervous system is
dominant, correct?
NG: That's right. The unconscious nervous system does many things in your body:
it digests food, controls glandular function, and controls heart rate and body
temperature, to name just a few of its actions. This unconscious system is
divided into two halves that work in opposition, but together, in helping the
body achieve homeostasis. The sympathetic nervous system stimulates the adrenals
and thyroid, and inhibits others. The parasympathetic stimulates the liver, the
pancreas, and digestive tract, and inhibits others. They work together, although
they are in opposition. These are the two nervous systems that together control
your day-to-day physiological functioning.
RC: How do you determine which part of the nervous system is dominant, and why
is that important to your therapy?
NG: Because out of that we are able to determine which diet and supplements will
suit the patient best. Their sympathetic or parasympathetic dominance tells me
what kind of program they need.
RC: Let's say a person comes to you who is parasympathetic dominant, and you put
them on the wrong diet, will you make things worse?
NG: You can kill them.
RC: Even if it is a vegetarian diet that is low in fat?
NG: Parasympathetic dominant people need red meat three times per day. Putting
them on a vegetarian diet is like raising a lion on hay.
RC: Are there personality types associated with these different types of
autonomic dominance?
NG: Sympathetic dominants are aggressive, type A businessmen that get up at six
and get more done by noon than the rest of us do in the whole day. They are very
ambitious, smart, and energetic in the morning. Parasympathetics would like to
sleep until noon, and are very creative. Artistic ability tends to be in the
parasympathetic side of the nervous system.
RC: Can people change from one side to another?
NG: We are seeing people who are the opposite of their genetic inheritance.
Chemicals in the environment have knocked out their strong nervous system. Wrong
diets have gummed up their works.
RC: We are told that everyone should go on a diet high in complex carbohydrates.
T. Colin Campbell and others suggest this protects against various degenerative
diseases. Is this some form of insanity, in light of the ample evidence that we
are all biochemically unique?
NG: It is absolute insanity to suggest that the whole human species as different
as it is could be put on one diet. The human species occupies every ecological
niche from the arctic circle to equatorial rain forests and there are different
foods available in these regions, and people have had to adjust. There is no way
one diet is suitable for everybody. The Eskimos are one of the most famous meat
eating peoples. They live in the Arctic circle. They have no growing season.
They have no fruits. They have no vegetables. The only Eskimos that could
survive are those that eat a high fat, high protein diet.
RC: The Eskimos are dying off. Don't they thrive on a diet of 80% saturated fat?
Is an increase in carbohydrates in their diet killing them?
NG: Yes. And they were among the healthiest people in the world until they
switched their diet to a Western one. When they cut their saturated fat
consumption from 80% to 40%, they began to develop our pattern of degenerative
diseases. For them, fat was the perfect fuel. There was a study that showed that
Eskimos lacked the enzymes to digest complex carbohydrates. Zookeepers know that
if you raise a lion or tiger on grains and beans it is going to die. Eskimos
need red meat as well, to function effectively.
RC: And right now you are doing some controlled trials.
NG: That's right. We are doing controlled clinical trials with pancreatic
cancer. Our hope is that once these studies are published and we document that
this program can indeed work, the academic medical world will start putting
money behind it. Then we can train other doctors to do it.
RC: You don't accept every patient that comes to your door. And it not simply a
space or time limitation. Do you reject a patient if their immune system has
been destroyed by conventional therapies?
NG: Most of the patients I see have had chemo or radiation. It is a question of
amount and the type of cancer where it is being used.
RC: There are many books in health food stores which say that the underlying
cause of disease is that we are all too acid, in large part because of a
meat-based diet, and need to push our body towards a more alkaline state by
eating more fruits, vegetables, almonds, millet, etc.
NG: That is absolutely incorrect. Sympathetic dominants tend to be more acid,
parasympathetic dominants tend to be too alkaline, and balanced people tend to
be somewhere in between. Sympathetic dominants do well on alkalinizing foods
like fruits and vegetables. Parasympathetic dominants need acid forming foods,
of which red meat is the most powerful.
RC: Dr. Kelley's wife got into trouble with a vegetarian diet, didn't she?
NG: After Kelley cured himself of cancer on a vegetarian diet, he assumed that
it was the perfect diet and that the whole world should be on it. He put his
wife on this diet to help with her allergies. Initially she did well. Then she
began to do worse and worse; He began to make the diet more strictly vegetarian,
eventually putting her on all raw fruits and vegetables with no protein at all.
She ended up in a near coma. He was confronted with the fact that here he was
the great nutrition doctor, and he almost killed his wife with the wrong diet.
He was going to have to call an ambulance and put her in the hospital. He
figured the only thing he hadn't done was put her on red meat. Initially she
refused, but he convinced her. He put some meat in the blender, and fed it to
her, and within an hour she was feeling better. She has been eating red meat two
to three times per day since. That's almost twenty-five years ago. She has been
in excellent health since.
RC: Very few people are looking into the effect of macro- and micronutrients on
the autonomic nervous system function. This may turn out to be, as you believe,
one of the most important ways our diet and nutrient intake affects health. Dr.
Gonzalez, thanks for being with us.
NG: My pleasure, Robert.
Nicholas J. Gonzalez, M.D., P.C.
Linda L. Isaacs, M.D.
36A East 36th Street
Suite 204
New York, N.Y. 10016
Phone: 212-213-3337
Fax: 212-213-3414