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Catherine Kousmine
(September
17,
1904
in Hvalynsky, Russia - August
24,
1992
in Lutry,
Switzerland) was a scientist who devoted her entire life to
showing that good health depends on a healthy diet. She was an
outstanding physician of Russian origin and is a pioneer in
nutritionally based medicine. Kousmine focused her research on
the following diseases: Cancer,
Multiple
sclerosis,
Rheumatoid
arthritis,
and other auto-immune
diseases.
Life
Born in 1904 into a well-to-do family in
Russia, Catherine Kousmine and her parents fled the country in
1918 during the Russian revolution. They settled in Switzerland,
on the shores of Lake Geneva. The young Catherine went to the
Ecole Sup Guido
Fanconi's
unit, to specialize in pediatrics,
then worked in Vienna, Austria, where she got her degree in
pediatrics.
Back in Switzerland, she had to resume her
work as a general practitioner because her degree in pediatrics
was not recognized by Swiss authorities. Dr. Catherine Kousmine
spent most of her life in Switzerland. She set up a foundation
in her name in Lutry,
Switzerland, to promote her methods (Fondation Catherine
Kousmine). This foundation has sister foundations in France,
Germany and Italy. There is also a Kousmine Medical Center in Vevey,
Switzerland.
Research
She decided to conduct research in cancer,
mostly because of the death from it of two children in her care
while she was working as a general practitioner. For seventeen
years, working in a makeshift laboratory in her kitchen, she
studied a special breed of mice that develop mammalian cancer at
four months of age. She discovered a striking correlation
between a healthy
diet
and a remission
of their cancer and became convinced that the cure for diseases
sometimes labeled "incurable" involves the return to a
healthy feeding habit - one that provides all the nutrients that
the organism needs to function properly. Consequently, she
focused her attention on healthy diet. In 1949, she treated with
success her first of many cancer patients, this one suffering
from reticulo-sarcoma,
thanks in part to the use of a healthy diet.
Her work on cold pressed (virgin) oils
Catherine Kousmine took a particular interest
in vegetable
oils
because their quality had been greatly altered during World
War II.
Producers used new methods of oil extraction with heat (320hexane,
a hydrocarbon solvent with carcinogenic
properties, [citation
needed]
allowed the production of almost twice the amount of oil.
The major problem with these methods,
compared to the cold
pressed method that
produces what is commonly called virgin
oil,
is that the quality is poor in every respect: many of the cis
molecules are transformed into the infamous trans
molecules.
Dr. Kousmine became a strong opponent of processed
food,
white sugar, refined flour and refined oil, margarine
and butter, each of them being harmful to the body cells and
providing only "empty calories", as she called them.
Following up on work of the Foundation
Catherine Kousmine, the trans-fatty acids have been the object
of several studies worldwide. These studies showed that, even at
small doses, the trans molecules are a health hazard. These
studies lead some countries (Canada, USA, France for example) to
make health recommendations. In 2003, Denmark reduced the
proportion of trans-fatty acids to 2 grams per 100 grams of
cooking oil. Trans-fatty acids were forbidden in New York in
2006. In the Netherlands, following an advertising campaign in
the eighties, the amount of trans-fatty acids in margarine went
from 50% down to 2% today.
Theory about cancer
Her novel approach was to understand what
would cause a tumor
to form and invade healthy cells, and NOT HOW TO DESTROY a
tumor. After many extensive studies on mice, she came to the
conclusion that cancer is a need of the organism to ward off a toxic
aggression.
Briefly put, a tumor, first benign,
then malignant,
is just a particular form of a defense mechanism of the body. A
tumor is not a freak and isolated accident, but a coherent
reaction to a state of alarm. Her method focuses on how to
disengage the source of the cancer and make it useless.
Basic treatment
"The measures that I recommend start to
be effective after about two months, and develop their full
benefits only after two years,"
Dr. Kousmine noted that by consuming RAW
virgin vegetable oil such as cold pressed flaxseed
and sunflower
oil rich in omega-3
and omega-6
fatty acids and in vitamin E, it is possible to reduce the
permeability of the intestinal membrane and to prevent toxins
from invading the blood and overloading the kidneys and the
liver, thus preventing the formation of a tumor and reducing the
severity of any degenerative disease, like multiple sclerosis or
rheumatoid arthritis.
She proclaimed the importance of organic
sunflower oil and of whole grains. Her prescriptions for her
patients included: Dr Johanna
Budwig's
"Cr"
(Budwig
Cream,
a mixture of freshly ground cereals, flax and sunflower seeds,
fruit, cold pressed sunflower or flaxseed oil and cottage
cheese) along with essentials
vitamins
(C, E, F, etc.), alkalizing
minerals
to restore immunologic
balance in ill patients, all of them suffering from acidic
blood, chamomile enemas to clean the intestines followed by an
instillation of organic sunflower oil, and in some cases
(rheumatoid arthritis), vaccines.
"If the patient is too ill, it is
better to prepare him for surgery over a few weeks or months
with the described measures. We then observe that the tumor
stops growing, that it even shrinks in size, and that the
general state of the patient improves, sometimes dramatically.
Then, the result of delayed surgery or radiotherapy can be
excellent."''
On one hand, her diet approach generally
seems quite easy and pleasant to follow to ensure a daily hygiene
and nutrition
for a healthy person. On the other hand, for a patient with a
sever pathology,
doctors and patients agree that the whole treatment
requires a tremendous personal investment and a life-time of
strict discipline.
Criticism
"It is important that the treatment that
I recommend is a beneficial COMPLEMENT to current medical
treatments."
Dr. Kousmine herself stated many times that
eating Budwig
Cream
and taking vitamin pills weren't the magic
bullet
to cure a disease like cancer. Contrary to what some critics
have said, she always insisted that her method was a complement
to, and not a substitute
for mainstream treatments. Advocates of her method claim that it
dramatically improves the results of chemotherapy
and reduces its side-effects.
Even though countless people have benefited
from her method, providing they follow the treatment to the
letter for the rest of their lives, the orthodox medical
community scoffed at her for many years, inaccurately reducing
her theory and methods to Budwig Cream and vitamin
and mineral
pills. Some cancer specialists even went so far as to state that
their critically ill patients who followed her treatment and
then went into complete remission,
some of them for more than thirty years, had been simply
"misdiagnosed".
Today,
physicians who treat patients with her method are still not well
viewed by the orthodox medical community. |
Dr. Kousmine repeatedly stated that the
dramatic results (long - term remission, dramatic improvement of
the quality of life for the most desperate patients) were not miraculous,
but instead the result of a holistic
approach to the disease, compared to the limited approach in
orthodox medicine that focuses on the symptoms
of the disease, providing the patients only with palliative
treatments.
At the time of her death, criticism included
that the benefits of raw, whole foods and cold pressed vegetable
oils were not supported by scientific literature at all and that
her theory has never been scientifically proven. Other critics
say that her monitoring of patients with MS was not scientific.
Her study rested on no control group nor did she ever test her
diet on healthy people to determine any protective effect.
Awards
In 1989, she was made
an honorary citizen of the City of Lutry,
Switzerland.
Books
Her books contain
remarkable and detailed, easy-to-read for the non-specialist,
accounts of patients with severe pathologies, documented with
complete clinical
and anamnesis
of the patients and their kin, the treatment provided and its
results, successes as well as failures.
These books also
provide explanations about intestinal flora and processed food,
with chapters about instinct
and ancestral
feeding habits and an hypothesis on the connection between
cancer, toxins
and stress.
Critics say that the
explanations are too simplistic and complain that some rants
against chemical products are caricatural and/or lack any solid
data (for example aspartame
and milk). Experts also complain that her books give the feeling
that doctors don't understand anything "except me".
These books, that
include a full description of her method, are available in
French but have not yet been translated into English.
Soyez
bien dans votre assiette jusqu'
(Be well till 80 and beyond), ISBN
2710701588
La
scl
(Multiple sclerosis is curable), ISBN
2603005022
Sauvez
votre corps
(Save your body), ISBN
2290336327,
is a sequel to Soyez bien dans votre..., with more cases and
in-depth explanations.
Testimony
Here is the translation
from French of the testimony of one of her students. It gives a
good overview of the Kousmine method and Dr. Kousmine's
commitment and personality.
I had a sharp critical
sense, and I was using it in my research on alternative
therapeutical approaches. I always disallowed a priori
assumptions about a new approach that I didn
One day, one of my
patients walked into my practice: a woman whom I had tried to
help with her rheumatoid arthritis many times earlier, to no
avail. She was feeling well and for the first time, she wasn
Several weeks later, I
found myself in Dr. Catherine Kousmine's practice in Lutry,
Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva, to learn about her
method. For four consecutive days, I watched Dr. Kousmine work.
The majority of her patients had severe pathologies, for which
current medicine had only palliative and symptomatic remedies.
Since the first consultation, I realized she obtained, most of
the time, spectacular therapeutical results.
Dr. Kousmine was
extremely scrupulous, doing every time a complete clinical
examination, and writing down certain details. Among them: skin
quality, color of the tongue, state of nails, regularity of
intestinal transit.
She asked her patients
to test the pH (acidity) of their urine every single day and to
write it down in a little notepad they brought along with them
at each consultation. In this notepad were also written all the
medicine used and their respective posologies.
Her first approach when
confronted with a life-threatening disease was to modify as soon
as possible the intestinal flora. Dr. Kousmine believed that a
modern diet has a toxic action on this flora: modern, processed
food would transform it into an aggressive flora that would
allow the toxins secreted by this flora to permeate the
intestinal wall.
First, Dr. Kousmine
imposed a hypo-toxic diet, preceded by a short period of
half-fast (fruit and vegetable juices were allowed), and then
enemas twice a week. During this period, she would
systematically prescribe essential vitamins, both orally and by
injection. Dr. Kousmine believed that an organism that has
reached an advanced state of chronic pathology is in much
greater need of a daily supply of vitamins and minerals than a
healthy one.
Finally, she prescribed
alkaline salts as a complement to a healthy diet to correct the
chronic acidity in her patients' blood. This last prescription
quickly diminished the fatigue and the pain. This phase
corresponded, as she put it,
Dr. Kousmine prescribed
only conventional medicine. During this first part of the
treatment, which could last from a few weeks up to four months,
depending on the individual, she would stick to essential and
indispensable medicines, in order to avoid overloading the
organism with superfluous medicines, and so as not to tamper
with the liver's detoxification.
It is true that when
the precepts were followed to the letter, the symptoms would
start to disappear quickly and the general condition of the
patients would improve dramatically.
It was only at this
point that she would start the second phase of her method:
administration of vaccines for the rheumatic pathologies,
autoimmune pathologies, migraines, chemotherapy, radiotherapy or
surgery for cancer. She used to say that, except in few cases,
if we do a rush job to remove malignant tumors, metastases would
undeniably come back. But if we take time to prepare the
patient, the latter doesn
Dr. Kousmine was very
strict with her patients. When one of them didn
The message was crystal
clear! It is true that following each single stage of her method
could give results. To omit just one meant, in her opinion, to
compromise the whole treatment.
Until her death, I saw
her many times and I could observe that her method was capable
of curing pathologies that were known as incurable, despite the
very progress of modern medicine. Other pathologies were
stabilized for several years, as long as the patients followed
her nutritional rules and lifestyle to the letter.
Its biggest handicap
might be that her method requires a tremendous personal
investment. The return to health demands a big effort, and this
effort is perhaps difficult to make when one is in a state of
extreme fatigue and, above all, in a state of distress when one
learns that he/she has a life-threatening illness.
To this effect, the
most psychologically fragile patients are advised to join
structures put in place by Kousmine associations in France,
Italy, Germany or Switzerland that can help them put into
practice the Kousmine method. |