Robert Crayhon, M.S.
Interview with Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez
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.
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