One of the core principles of The Gonzalez Protocol® is that by nourishing your body with the right foods, your body can heal itself. This nutritional enzyme treatment empowers you to take care of yourself versus expecting a doctor to do it for you. It all starts by changing the way you think about healing and realizing that God gave your body the ability to heal.
Your road to healing starts from inside of you, but you need the right road map. The late Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D. (1947- 2015) believed that it isn’t the same map for everyone. Dr. Gonzalez was an ivy league educated Cornell Medical School graduate and a conventionally trained Immunologist who worked at Sloan-Kettering before starting his private practice. He offered The Gonzalez Protocol® in New York City for nearly 30 years and treated people with all types of cancer as well as degenerative diseases.
Food as Fuel for Life
Dr. Gonzalez believed that the diseases we fear the most such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease are not the inevitable cost of just being human, but are largely the result of poor food choices in our lives. It’s not your DNA that makes you sick, it is your dinner.
Nutrition isn’t one size fits all. Food is our fuel. Dr. Gonzalez understood that people feel best when they provide the right fuel for their bodies, that is, the right food, and feel less well when they eat the wrong foods, taking in the wrong fuel. Some people thrive on popular diets provided by experts such as Drs. Atkins, Pritikin, Ornish and the Ketogenic diet. But some people have also gotten sick on those diets. Dr. Gonzalez believed that this is because these diets do work for some people but not for every person. Everyone is unique. Individuals respond differently to the same food. Based on your genetics, your specific medical condition, and your current diet, you will need to consume different foods than other people.
Through his research of several great scientists, Dr. Gonzalez realized that different people need different types of diets to heal and thrive. He studied the work of scientists such as Dr. Weston A. Price, Dr. Francis Pottinger Sr., Dr. Ernest Gellhorn and Dr. William Donald Kelley.
- In the 1930s, Dr. Weston A. Price traveled the world for nearly 10 years in search of the secret to health. He studied groups of people in 14 different countries and concluded that when people were introduced to modern foods (white flour, sugar, canned goods, processed meat, and refined vegetable oils) signs of health degeneration became quickly evident. People who enjoy a traditionally based diet were healthier, more active, and happier than their modern-diet counterparts. They incorporated raw, unaltered proteins from meats, seafoods, and raw dairy, and consumed foods naturally rich in body-building nutrients, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables.
- The research scientist Dr. Francis Pottenger, Sr. suggested in his book, Symptoms of Visceral Disease, first published in 1919, that humans could be categorized by their state of autonomic balance.
- During the 1940’s and 1950’s, the physiologist Dr. Ernst Gellhorn documented the same – that humans fall into three general autonomic categories – Sympathetic, Parasympathetic and Balanced. Both Dr. Pottenger and Dr. Gellhorn believed that much, if not all disease occurs when the autonomic branches are not in balance, and health requires the equilibrium be restored.
- Dr. Kelley took these pioneering ideas and outlined an entire system of disease and treatment based on autonomic imbalance.
While The Gonzalez Protocol® recommends different foods for different people, fortunately, to make it easier, there are basic dietary guidelines that apply for everyone:
- Whole foods, non-toxic organic foods are best.
- All grains must be 100% whole grain – no white flour, no white pasta, no white rice.
- No sugar or agave or artificial sweeteners.
- No soy.
- No canola/corn/safflower or sunflower oils.
- No vegetables from metal cans.
- Only real, full fat dairy and in fact, raw dairy is best.
- Only organic and grass feed meat. No processed meat.
- Only wild-caught seafood – no farmed.
What is Your Gonzalez Metabolic Type?
To determine the right diet and healing path for you, The Gonzalez Protocol® first determines your personal metabolic type. Dr. Gonzalez often explained that our autonomic nervous system and its two branches, the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches, run our bodies. Depending on the food that we ingest into our bodies, we can change our autonomic balance for better or for worse. When our sympathetic and parasympathetic branches are brought into balance, our body can heal.
Dr. Gonzalez learned how to categorize metabolically types by studying with Dr. Kelley. Originally, Dr. Kelley had a 3,600 question self-test in the 1960’s which evolved into Dr. Kelley’s Self-Test for the Different Metabolic Types, published for College Health Stores by Kettle Moraine Publishing. Dr. Kelley came to believe that some people are born with an overly developed sympathetic, and a correspondingly weak parasympathetic nervous system and vice versa. Now, in collaboration with Dr. Kelley’s team, The Nicholas Gonzalez Foundation offers a 100 question online test to determine your Gonzalez Metabolic Type and provides an 18-page customized nutritional plan. This simple, multiple-choice test provides you with very specific direction on what foods are best for you, what foods you should avoid and how to shop for and prepare your food.
Associated Diseases by Metabolic Type
People who are sympathetic dominants tend to have highly developed organs that are normally stimulated by the sympathetic nerves, such as the heart and the skeletal muscles, along with the various endocrine glands. Their tissues that are normally prodded into action by the parasympathetic nervous system – such as those of the digestive system – tend to be inherently weak, slow to act and inefficient.
Conversely, people who are parasympathetic dominant, seem to be innately possessed of a hyperactive parasympathetic nervous system, and a weak sympathetic nervous system. In these people, all the tissues and glands normally activated by the parasympathetic nervous system – such as the organs of digestion – tend to be very efficient, while the heart, the skeletal muscles, and the various endocrine glands tend to be slow to respond and physiologically clumsy.
For people who have a balanced autonomic nervous system with a balanced autonomic set of nerves, both the sympathetic and parasympathetic can fire as needed with equal efficiency, and all the tissues, organs, and glands each regulates will be equally developed and equally responsive.
Dr. Gonzalez specifically associated certain illness with specific metabolic types, as seen in the following guidelines.
- Sympathetic dominant types suggest digestive diseases such as ulcer disease, colitis, or irritable bowel. Such people can be predisposed to anxiety, but rarely suffer from depression, and rarely report allergies.
- Parasympathetic dominant types, with their very efficient gut, typically escape most digestive problems, but are subject to allergies, asthma, chronic bronchitis, hypothyroidism, and chronic fatigue.
- Balanced types are in between and rarely get seriously sick.
In my next article, I’ll explain more about the different Gonzalez metabolic diets for healing. God provided us with food not just to nourish our body, but to delight our soul.
I was familiar with Gonzalez’ wisdom long ago HOWEVER I don’t recall if fasting or time-restricted eating was part of that – and if not that is a HUGE omission. I will explain and prove it. Dr. Satchin Panda of the Salk Institute proved about 7 years ago that late eating – after sundown – is very pad. In an interview 6-7 years ago (on Youtube) the microbiologist scientist, Dr. Rhonda Patrick asked him a hypothetical about late eating and his answer was: “Sadly it is BETTER to eat an UNHEALTHY meal during the day because eating LATER in the EVENING turns even nutritious food into JUNK (it causes “excess circulating glucose” WHICH THEN causes inflammation, first to the endothelial lining of all blood vessels and can spread to surrounding tissue depending on what is consumed, when, etc. And inflammation is at the root of all illness – cause and or effect. And in the 1920’s Dr. Otto Warburg proved that cancer cells thrive best in (1) somewhat lower levels of oxygen; (2) somewhat higher acid levels (inflammation is acidic); and (3) with sugar/glucose as its preferred fuel. Per the above late eating provides ALL THREE with excess glucose, inflammation of the endothelial lining and beyond AND lower oxygen because the endothelial lining is where oxygen has to pass and it is inflamed. I told this wisdom to a man I didn’t know what age 73 and an “insulin-taking-often” Type II diabetic for over 20 years. “I had nothing to lose so I stopped eating after sundown that day. At the end of the first week I noticed that my AM glucose chart showed a consistent, slight but steady DOWNWARD TREND – that was unprecedented and it motivated me to continue. I am heard today to tell you that my glucose this morning was 78. I haven’t seen SUCH a low number in a VERY long time.” Hippocrates wrote 2k+ years ago: IF YOU are sick and still eating, YOU are feeding your illness. Stop eating and you will heal.” The historian Josephus recorded that people in the Roman Culture (1st C.E. AD – TIME of Christ) “ate one meal a day around noon.” THe Benedictine monks ate one meal around 3PM for centuries. Need one more? In the autobiography by a former British Lieutenant, Henry Timberlake, who lived with the Cherokee for a few months in 1762, Indian women even in their 60’s and 80’s were “doing things that I am not physically capable of.” He was a very fit 35 year old soldier. Do you think the Cherokee were eating after sundown – not likely – because the American indian warriors were documented in writing by British military to “stop eating at least 24 hours before going into battle – and would (could) sustain that fast for several more days.” They knew NOT to eat for high performance when it truly counted. To your health