Peanut Butter & Jelly

There are many things in life that go well together:  Peanut Butter & Jelly, Chips and Salsa, beer and wings, etc. (If you think of others, leave them in the comment section below).  When it comes to healing the Gerson way, good nutrition and coffee enemas are two sides of the same coin.  Not only are coffee enemas good for a laugh ("With milk or sugar?"), but this bizarre-sounding treatment is very effective in stimulating the liver and expelling toxins from the body.

The enema has been called one of the oldest medical procedures still in use today.  Tribal women in Africa, and elsewhere, routinely use it on their children.  The earliest medical text in existence, the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, (1,500 B.C.) mentions it.  Millennia before, the Pharaoh had a "guardian of the anus," a special doctor one of whose purposes was to administer the royal enema.  (would that be considered a royal flush?)

There is hardly a region of the world where people did not discover or adapt the enema.  In pre-revolutionary France a daily enema after dinner was de rigueur.  It was not only considered indispensable for health but practiced for good complexion as well.  Louis XIV is said to have taken over 2,000 in his lifetime.

But why coffee? This bean has an interesting history. It was imported in Arabia in the early 1500's by the Sufi religious mystics, who used it to fight drowsiness while praying.  It was especially prized for its medicinal qualities, in both the Near East and Europe. No one knows when the first daring soul filled the enema bag with a quart of java.  What is known is that the coffee enema appeared at least as early as 1917 and was found in the prestigious Merck Manual until 1972.  In the 1920s German scientists found that a caffeine solution could stimulate the liver and gall bladder to discharge bile.

Dr. Max Gerson used this clinically as part of a general detoxification regimen, first for tuberculosis, then cancer. Gerson noted some remarkable effects of this procedure. For instance, patients could dispense with all pain-killers once on the enemas.  Many people have noted the paradoxical calming effect of coffee enemas. 

If you would like to learn more about coffee enemas, you can click here.  For now, it’s time for another “coffee break.”

Grace,
Dhondi