It was simply an honor to speak to Nicole Ferrer, Interim Executive Director at Gerson Institute, an organization we hold very dear. Gerson Institute was founded by Charlotte Gerson, daughter of Dr. Max Gerson, and has been sharing the good news of health and healing for decades. We owe much to the Gerson Institute and the dedication of its people to two-stage juicing.
JL: Okay, hello, everybody. It is such a pleasure to be here today with David, our CEO and founder of PURE Juicer, and our very special guest, Nicole, who is the Interim Director, Executive Director for Gerson Institute. This is a very exciting meeting for me. I’ve worked with Nicole since I’ve started here. We have a lot in common and a lot of philosophies and purposes in common. But the purpose of this meeting is to really dive in and talk about the tradition and the expertise that Max Gerson brought us over a 100 years ago, as well as how relevant it is today. So, Nicole, welcome.
NF: So, great to be with you guys.
JL: Thank you, thank you. And David, welcome.
DF: Thank you, always a pleasure.
JL: Oh my goodness. We understand how important time is to everybody today, so I really just want to start diving in. Nicole, would you like to share a little bit about yourself and the history with you at Gerson Center first, and then we’ll dive into the Gerson Center, the Gerson Institute itself?
Gerson Protocol: You Are What You Eat
NF; Sure, yeah, so my name is Nicole and I’ve been with the Gerson Institute for 10 years now. And I started as an information specialist, so on the front lines, answering phones and helping people that just came into the office. And over the last 10 years, I basically worked my way through every department, and now I’m overseeing the operations and acting as the interim executive director. And it’s just been a very fulfilling, I don’t know, career at the Institute and really life changing, you know, it really turned around my lifestyle and my relationship to healthy foods and just being able to see for yourself on yourself, the actual benefits and changes that come with eating healthy.
JL: So, that’s great. So, you–when you started at Gerson Institute, you were moving into a healthier lifestyle. Like you were learning a lot about Gerson when you started, and that’s changed your choices in food and such?
NF: Oh yes, definitely. I mean, you always hear kind of that saying like, “you are what you eat,” but you really don’t–it doesn’t really hit–until you actually change what you’re eating and realize like, “Wow, I feel so much better.”
And my focus is there and energy and just your overall wellbeing and realizing that it’s not as daunting as you think it is in the beginning, at least for me. But just even making small changes. And that really helped working at the institute because we had Gerson meals for lunch and Gerson juice, and so it was really an immediate difference that I could see and feel.
JL: I love that. One of my favorite things was visiting the Gerson Institute, the center in Tijuana. But we’ll talk about that later.
Let’s dive into–I’m so excited that you had that. I had the same experience. I know David had the same experience, and then we’ve talked to so many people who have done the Gerson therapy and have had that same experience, life-changing experiences, actually.
Let’s talk about the science of Max Gerson, and just tell us as much as you’d want or the things that really seem to matter to patients who are just getting started on this journey. Tell us what you tell them.
Gerson Therapy’s Four-Pronged Approach
NF: Sure. You know, so kind of in a nutshell, the Gerson Therapy uses a four-pronged approach to really just activate your body’s ability to heal itself. That’s already built into the body back years and years of eating unwell environmental exposures and things like that. You know, those things decline and aren’t working as they should. So, the four different prongs are, like we were talking about the diet.
Diet
So, a lot of people think that the Gerson therapy is either a vegan diet or it’s only raw, but neither of those is true.
It’s plant-based and there are cooked foods and raw foods. So, some of the staples are baked potato, which a lot of people think, “Why potato? There are a lot of starch and whatnot.” But it’s actually a really, really good source of protein. So, that, and oatmeal, that’s a staple for breakfast, and Hippocrates soup.
Hippocrates soup is, yeah, been around forever. It’s so good, it’s so good. It’s one of my favorites too, I make it all the time. And that’s something that’s eaten throughout the day.
So, the diet does not include salt. The only oil is flaxseed oil and it’s unlimited amounts. And this is not to say that salt is bad, you know, we obviously need sodium in the human body to function, but what the Gerson therapy is doing partially with the diet is on a cellular level. So, it’s really turning, reversing what is going on on a cellular level.
And most of the time, because what prompts disease is there’s too much sodium in the cell and not enough potassium, there’s an imbalance in there. And so by eliminating the salts with the diet, we also have potassium as one of the supplements. That starts to push the sodium out of the cells, bring in the potassium, and then the cells start to work as they should.
JL: And you sell the potassium, right? You sell that as a supplement at gersoninstitute.org?
NF: We don’t sell it ourselves, but we have a list of approved vendors that do sell it.
JL: Got it, got it.
NF: And it’s in a powder form, and it’s a specific compound that Dr. Gerson came up with himself, so it’s a really important part.
JL: Yeah, I need to get that, I wanna get that.
Juicing
NF: It’s good stuff. So, that’s one part is the diet, and then next are the juices. So, that’s kind of the thing that people know the most about Gerson. And they also think that Gerson therapy is just a juice cleanse, but again, it is not, there’s, you know, like we just spoke about, there’s food being consumed on a regular basis, but there’s three juices on the therapy. So, there’s carrot, carrot with apple, and then Dr. Gerson’s green juice, which has specific ingredients which include romaine, Swiss chard, green apple, green bell pepper, tops of the beet leaves, endive and escarole and watercress. Oh, and purple cabbage.
JL: Yep.
NF: So, those are all specific ingredients in the green juices. And the most intense Gerson protocols will include about 13 eight-ounce juices per day. And ideally they’re taken spaced out throughout the day.
You’ll see in Dr. Gerson’s book, and a lot of the literature, they talk about every hour. And that’s the ideal way to do it, because you’re basically flooding your body with the nutrients that it needs and is lacking on a regular basis. And because it’s in juice form, it’s easier for the body to absorb and assimilate, so you’re not having your body work more in order to gain that. But a lot of people will start-
JL: That’s the thing that I loved about when I first got here, is learning about that and just that it’s not that it’s a replacement, but it’s just gentler on your system. Especially when people are starting Gerson Therapy, their bodies are fighting off other things and they’re trying to heal other things. So, it’s not that you can’t eat, it’s just that it’s a gentler way to give you more of what your body needs, so it can work harder on fighting other stuff.
DF: I’ve always loved the idea that we’re flooding our bodies with what it needs to heal itself. And when I’ve been at the clinics, I’ve been struck by how much food we eat, and in fact, it was a little shocking to me the sheer amount of healing food that people require to do the therapy.
JL: Okay, so we covered the food, the diet, we covered the juices, which we’ll come back to. What is the third part?
Enemas
NF: So, the third part is probably one of the more controversial ones in that is the enemas.
JL: Everybody wants to know about the enemas, Nicole.
NF: Yes-
DF: More than the juice.
JL: Even when they don’t want to, they want to.
NF: Yes, the number one thing people ask right away is about the enemas. So, there’s two types on the therapy, the main one being the coffee enema. And so that’s taken in a ratio with the juice, it’s usually in a ratio about three juices to one enema. And basically what the coffee does is basically enhancing the glutathione S-transferase process in the system. And people are kinda surprised because they, you know, really the coffee kind of goes through the small intestines, large intestines and then colon.
And what it does is it binds to the bile and it stimulates more bile production, binds to it and gets it out. So, it’s basically binding to all those free radicals and toxins and getting it out of the system. And that’s because with the juice, with the diet, your body’s also excreting all of those toxins and all the things it doesn’t need from the cells.
And so Dr. Gerson actually found in the very beginning that without the coffee enemas his patients were still getting sick because they still had all of that stuff in their system, just recirculating. Through the literature he found out about coffee enemas and tried them out and they have been a requirement of the therapy ever since.
JL: And an interesting note about coffee enemas is that when I was in Tijuana and we were trying them, I noticed that I was probably more energized doing the coffee enema than I was when I was actually drinking coffee. And they’re like, “Of course, because it’s being absorbed faster because it’s going through the colon,” which is why you’re not supposed to do vodka enemas, it’ll kill you. So, not that anyone’s doing vodka enemas right now. Don’t do ’em.
DF: Not part of the therapy!
JL: Yeah, definitely not part of any therapy, that is not recommended. Okay, I didn’t know there were more than one. So, what’s the second enema that you could do?
NF: So, the second one is a castor oil enema, and that one is usually done maybe every other day, but generally you’re working with a Gerson practitioner. And so they will really personalize that for when you wanna add that in because it is very intense. So, the castor oil is, it’s basically just like a big, another big sweep of getting things outta your system and it is really fast. So, for a coffee enema, you hold it for 12 to 15 minutes, a castor oil enema, maybe a few minutes, really just as long as you can. And it just wipes everything, kind of more residuals out.
JL:Wow.
NF: So, you do take a little bit by mouth and then you follow it up with an enema. Yeah, but those are a lot more intense. Those are not daily like the coffee enema.
JL: I know in Western medicine, that’s what they would give people to clean them out just by drinking it. So, again, to go from that direction. And I think it’s interesting too, just on this video to remind people that before there was a lot of Western medicine that enemas were very common and it was a typical method for healing. And and the minute you saw someone with a cough or a sniffle, I mean that they would bring out the enemas. And that is very, that was very, very common for my mother. Like, so ’20s and ’30s, even 1900s, that was very common.
So–and I love the story about the coffee enemas, which was part of the World War II treatment, because they ran out of all other medicine and they were just trying to relieve sort of pain. And they actually found that not only does coffee enemas increase the glutathione, but it helps with pain management, too.
NF: Yes, yeah, big pain management. So, in addition to just the regular coffee enemas that people do on the therapy, if they’re experiencing a healing reaction like headaches, things like that, you would do an extra enema and basically goes away, you know, pretty quickly. But yeah, it’s really fascinating how the coffee enema started and how Dr. Gerson found out about it and incorporated it.
Even speaking to that with castor oil, my grandma talks about when she was younger, they got sick, you know, immediately they were given castor oil by mouth, so it’s these kind of tried and true modalities that get hidden behind Western medicine, but there’s still things that still work today. Same principles.
JL: Okay, what’s the fourth?
Supplements
NF: So, the fourth prong are supplements. Now, these aren’t just like any supplements, like, “Oh, I’m gonna take some vitamin D,” they’re specific supplements that push and drive certain metabolic processes or just help with the overall approach of the therapy.
So, the three main supplements are like we talked about the potassium compound. So, that’s in powder form and you put it in water to dissolve it, and that gets added to juices.
And then next is Lugol’s solution, and that balances out thyroid. Now, thyroid glandular, the supplement on the therapy is not given to correct a thyroid imbalance or a thyroid problem necessarily, but it’s really to push metabolism. So, that with the Lugol’s together really drives that process.
And then there’s other supplements like niacin, acetyl, and things to help with just in general, more helping with digestion.
JL: Gets me so excited, it makes me wanna order them. We need to get some on the site too so that we can get the potassium and add it to our juices, David, what do you think?
DF:I actually love the idea of doing that.
NF: Yeah, yeah.
DF: I think it would be great if we had a supplement section.
JL: Yeah, approved by Gerson Institute, of course. Well, that’s great. So, it’s diet, it’s juice. And juice, we talked about three juices, but I think when I was down there, orange juice was allowed too, but not for everybody. Is that the case? And it’s pretty high in potassium. My understanding is potassium in oranges is even higher than in bananas.
NF: Yeah, maybe. I mean, the orange juice is a usual part for breakfast, but it’s not one of the core juices. But a lot of times people will have either orange juice or if they’re diabetic or anything, it’ll be like a grapefruit juice.
JL: Got it.
NF: But if either of those don’t work, just Gerson juice.
JL: Got it, got it. So, diet, juice, enemas and supplements.
It’s very simple and it’s very common sense, right? I mean, it’s just going back to like you were mentioning with your grandma going back to what mothers knew all along as far as how to keep people healthy.
NF: Yeah, definitely. And that’s one thing I really liked about the Gerson Therapy is that it’s really stripped down, because you see a lot of different types of holistic therapies and treatments and diets and all of that out there. And although there are, it’s very specific and there’s a lot of different components, it’s still really stripped down. It’s three juices, a really clean diet, specific supplements, and then a detoxification. So, you’re not incorporating everything under the sun, everything’s working for a specific purpose.
JL: So, I wanna shift over to David. When you first met Charlotte Gerson, you were showing her and demonstrating the two-stage juicer. Can you share that experience, and then we’ll dive a little bit more into two-stage juicing, but tell us what it was like to meet her and what the experience was like?
The Gerson Family and the PURE Juicer
DF: So, we went to Southern California with, I believe, with two juicers. They were prototype juicers and Peggy Strauss, who’s Charlotte’s daughter, had invited us, it was about two weeks before Thanksgiving, to come for lunch and to bring the juicer and to demonstrate the juicer. And so we got to go to the Gerson family home. And Charlotte at this point, I believe was 91. She was already quite old. And so we had a beautiful lunch. Charlotte sometimes was asleep, sometimes was awake, but at one point we actually actually got up and juiced on the PURE, and we do have a photograph, a wonderful photograph of her smiling, dropping a carrot into the PURE. Howard was there as well. There’s some beautiful photographs of Howard. And so we got to show a brand new two-stage juicer to the Gerson family.
And Peggy said a really interesting and wonderful thing to me. I was like, “I’m just an engineer. I never expected to be part of the healing community.” And she said, “Dr. Max used to say that people would get grabbed by the collars and just pulled in by Gerson whether they wanted to or not.” And that it was a fairly regular experience for people like myself who never expected to be a part of this, to be brought in to help and to be a part of the Gerson community. So, it was really a very wonderful lunch.
JL: I love that, I love that.
NF: Well, and how cool for them too, to see, because for the longest time the Norwalk was the only two-stage juicer out there, and Dr. Norwalk and Dr. Gerson were contemporaries, so they were alive at the same time. So, how cool to see generations later that you come in with another model of that type of juicer.
DF: And Peggy said a really wonderful thing, and she said, “I’ve used the Norwalk juicer for my entire life,” which was, at that point she’d probably been juicing for 60 years. And she said, “It’s never changed.” They’ve never addressed any of the things that, the famous things like the blow back or, I mean– I’m not here to denigrate, the Norwalk juicer is great, but she was just saying, “It’s never changed. This is great, we finally have something new that addresses all of these things.” So, yeah, it’s a really big deal.
JL: Yeah, and I mean, but the key pieces that make it a two-stage juicer didn’t change. And Nicole, I’m wondering if you’d like to talk about the protocol and the importance of two-stage juicing, and then after that, let’s also talk about, when you and I first met, we were talking about why he created his therapy in the first place, which was, in a sense it was for things that were not so severe.
But let’s, I’m just teasing people with knowing that piece is coming. But let’s talk about two-stage juicing and the importance during these protocols.
The Benefits of Two-Stage Cold Press Juicers
NF: Yeah, definitely. So, Dr. Gerson really emphasized and felt strongly that the juice needs to be made with a two-stage cold press juicer. Part of the reason is because other types of juicers, like centrifugal ones, they use electricity and conduct electricity in order to do part of the process. And that kills off active enzymes and a lot of the living, not the right word, but his biome that you need and get from the juice, because that really is your medicine. So you really, really want to maximize that.
And so, I mean, as staff we’ve seen it ourselves. A lot of us would have, just like I started on a Breville, you know, and then going to the institute and tasting a juice from a PURE, a two-stage juicer is totally different.
You get a richer juice and one that, again, you really have to see the pulp left over to really understand between the two types of juicers. Because that is bone dry, there’s not a drop left. So, you are really getting every single ounce, every microscopic thing that you can from the juices.
And again, being that you’re drinking so much juice on the therapy for such a long period of time, you also want a machine that is durable and gonna be able to handle that volume.
And also the type of produce that you’re juicing too. So, yeah, it’s really, really important to use a two-stage. And again, even a lot of patients tell us all the time, they’ll start out with a Champion or something, which is fine if you’re just juicing for overall health in general.
But they say, “Man, what a difference when you use a two-stage juicer, it’s just completely different. The taste is better. You really feel like you’ve gotten a lot more from the juice. It’s hard to explain, but there, it’s such a huge difference between the two.”
JL: It’s interesting, because it is, when when we say it’s silky smooth, we’re actually working on trying to define exactly what that means, because silky smooth means it’s thicker, and people are having a stronger healing experience with the two-stage juicer. Whether that’s soluble fiber, whether that’s smaller microparticles, whether we’re able to bring in more bacteria that is good for our microbiome and the health of our gut for metabolism, which is the definition of health.
There’s so many different pieces out there, but we are seeing that even in the modern day, that it’s, whether it’s on Gerson or whether you’re switching juicers, that the healing effects and the benefit is noticeable.
And we hear stories every day, kind of like you. And we share some of the stories from Gerson with you too, just because, we work together as partners on this, and we’re really grateful for that.
David, do you have any thoughts on that with the two-stage juicing and the process?
DF: Yeah, I mean, what I’ve heard over and over from people is that when they switch from whatever juicer they’re using to a two-stage juicer, they tell me their healing reaction speeded up, and that the quality of the juice was different and they noticed it almost right away. And we hear that over and over again.
JL: And again, the whole purpose of juicing isn’t to drink juice. It isn’t just for hydration. It is literally to take what you would normally chew and digest, you would be able to drink it and have a greater healing effect with less work done by your body.
It’s not to just drink juice, it’s not just to just drink sugar. It’s not any of those pieces, it’s literally the nutrients, the potassium. I know potassium is huge with the Gerson Diet, which you’ve mentioned with supplements, but a lot of the greens and the carrots, all of that have potassium in there. So, you’re getting it far more than just supplements. You’re getting it from real food too.
NF: Exactly, and Dr. Gerson emphasized that too. He said, “Supplements shouldn’t be taken in place of actual living food. They’re there to just sort of, again, push certain things, especially when your body is in a crisis dealing with disease, but really it needs to come from living active food.
JL: Things that are close to the sun. Nicole, tell us about the center, the Gerson Institute and then the center at Tijuana? Tell us how people can participate in Gerson, not just if they need to go someplace, but how can they actually use Gerson if they’re using it almost as a prevention or from healing from things that are less severe?
Everyone Can Benefit from Gerson
NF: Yeah, definitely. So, the Gerson Institute were a training and education nonprofit founded by Charlotte Gerson in 1978.
So, we are training doctors and providing education and support to patients and just kind of the public at large. And we licensed two clinics. So, there’s one in Tijuana, Mexico, which is Health Institute de Tijuana, which is the only licensed clinic in Mexico.
And then we have one in Europe over in Budapest, Hungary. And that clinic was founded by a recovered Gerson patient as well, Dr. Nagy, who recovered from breast cancer using the Gerson therapy and then opened the clinic.
So, people who are interested, you can visit our website, www.gerson.org. We’re also on Facebook and Instagram just at Gerson Institute. Phone number is posted. We have an email form, so you can give us a call. We’ll have to leave a voice message, but we get back within one to two days. And then, or you can send an email as well. And yeah, we’re happy to answer questions or help people navigate.
If people are interested in learning about Gerson, just like you said, for preventative or overall help, all of our education materials can still be applied to those people.
So, we have our online course, which is Gerson Basics Online. That’s over 18 hours of video lectures, including those from Charlotte Gerson, how-to videos, like step-by-step instructions on everything from juicing and cooking to the coffee enema, which is very useful for people. And our course comes with lifetime access. So, even, after you’re healed and well on your way, it’s something that people love to revisit over and over again.
And especially while they’re on the therapy, it’s a really, really motivating and grounding thing to continue to watch. It really is a reminder of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. And then we have our books, the Gerson Basics Manual, which accompanies the online course, and then The Gerson Therapy Cookbook, which is our pride and joy of over 150 Gerson-approved recipes from breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, snacks, soups, sauces.
We have, it has all kinds of stuff in there. Equipment recommendation, sample shopping, menus and lists and stuff. So, those are really great educational resources that you can also share. You can give the cookbook to somebody and see if maybe they glean a few things that will kind of help move them towards that healthier eating lifestyle.
And also, through our website you can sign up for our e-newsletter and you’ll get updated on news and different educational articles and updates and things going on in the community, which we’re really excited to be working on some new content for that.
JL: And I know you’ve been training in certifying professionals, medical professionals, so I believe there’s a list of medical professionals on the site as well, and or you contact Gerson Institute and they will put you in touch with someone, is that correct?
NF: Yes, yeah, that’s correct. So, in addition to our two licensed clinics, we also have a web-based case management service. So, over the last, really kind of more focused, in the last eight to 10 years we’ve been really training more doctors.
And so we are about to, we have about 20 right now certified representing about 10 countries, six states in the United States, A few more are gonna be graduating this year, so it’s putting us over funny or some providers that are licensed medical professionals. And they’ve successfully passed a program, which is two to three year program.
So, it’s not like someone takes an online course for six months and they’re certified. It’s two years of actual case management and really intense learning from our faculty that combined 50 plus years of Gerson experience among the faculty, which we’re really, really grateful and lucky too. So, that’s another option if people can’t go to the clinic, or even if you just have minor health issues, but you still want more specific guidance, that’s another great option as well.
JL: That’s amazing, that’s amazing. Well, we’re running out of time, but I would love to just suggest that we start to break down the elements of healing and so that we have time to talk about them more with you and to hear real stories of patients. HIPAA of course, like we’ll just tell stories that don’t have actual names. But there’s just so many incredible stories of people in healing with the Gerson protocol and I really want to dive into that. So, are you open to doing that in the future?
NF: Absolutely.
JL: All right, fantastic. All right, I’ve got it on recording, so I just wanted to make sure. I can replay it if we forget.
David, any last parting thoughts before we close up here on this fantastic interview with Nicole?
DF: I think my biggest thought is that when people need to heal, that the most important thing is that they begin the journey and it’s less important what juicer you select – but that the most important thing is that you prioritize yourself, you focus on your healing, and you have plenty of time to learn and transition on your journey.
JL: I love it, I love it.
Well, Nicole, thank you so much for your time. It was such an honor, and I adore you. I’m just so grateful that I’ve been able to meet you in person. And like I said, we just need to do a few more interviews because there’s so many more things that I wanna talk about with you and share with our community and anyone else who’s watching this, but for another time.
And until then, thank you so much.
NF: Thank you, guys.
DF: Thank you.
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