Coffee to drink or use it as edema

Stress is a major factor in disorders such as anxiety, insomnia, depression, ulcers, rheumatoid arthritis, headache, hypoglycemia, asthma, herpes, hypertension and heart disease. And yet hospitals provide coffee and tea, which put your body into stress!!!

DHEA is our vitality hormone. Decreased levels of DHEA is a cause of aging. Caffeine consumption leads to DHEA deficiency.

Caffeine lowers the stress threshold in virtually everyone. That is, if you have had caffeine, it will be easier for you to suffer from emotional stress. (Therefore, when research is done that is designed to show how safe caffeine is, any test subject who is under significant stress is removed from the study).

Caffeine is implicated in ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome: GABA is produced in the intestinal tract, where it calms anxiety and stress. Caffeine disrupts the normal metabolism of GABA.

Caffeine disrupts sleep. Deep sleep is CRITICAL to good health. When there's caffeine in your bloodstream, you are unlikely to experience deep sleep at all!

Caffeine AT ANY TIME of the day can cause sleep problems, especially if you are under stress.

Malnutrition is one of the most well-defined effects of habitual caffeine intake.

A single cup of coffee can reduce iron absorption from a meal by as much as 75%.

People do not develop a tolerance to the anxiety-producing effects of caffeine. Rather, people simply become accustomed to the feelings of stress, irritability and aggressiveness produced by the drug.

Caffeine contributes to depression in well-defined ways. This is particularly due to the withdrawal effect, which can cause headache, depression and fatigue, even in light users (p. 111). Cherniske reported that 90% of people who came to him who suffered from depression and gave up caffeine completely for 2 months reported that their depression went away!

If you are a coffee (or tea or cola) drinker, you may be thinking, "Well, I drink coffee and I'm not depressed." It's necessary to state that everyone is different, and also that depression can be subtle. Throughout the book, Cherniske suggests that you will never know the full effect the drug is having on you until you experience what life is like caffeine free (which takes two months to do). Over the years, Cherniske has heard similar responses from hundreds of clients: "Wow, I never realized that caffeine made me so (select one: anxious, depressed, irritable)."

Students the world over use caffeine not only to stay awake, but also they believe the drug will improve their performance on exams. Solid research, however, illustrates that as little as 100 milligrams of caffeine (one cup of coffee, two cups of cola) can cause a significant DECREASE in recall and reasoning.

When people are relaxed and given caffeine, caffeine does not raise blood pressure significantly. But how many people are relaxed? When people are stressed and given caffeine, blood pressure is raised significantly.

Women who consume more than 24 ounces of coffee (6 moderate cups) per day had almost twice the risk of heart attack compared to non-coffee drinkers. Moderate coffee drinkers with high cholesterol had more than seven times the risk of heart attack, while heavy coffee drinkers had eighteen times the risk of non-coffee drinkers!

Caffeine depletes your supplies of thiamin and other B vitamins, calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron and zinc.

Caffeine increases calcium loss and risk of osteoporosis.

In one large study, the risk for hip fracture for those women who consumed the most caffeine was 300% greater than it was for the group that consumed little or no caffeine.

Take the Challenge! Most people have no idea what life would be like without the background of caffeine and stress hormones coursing through their veins. Even if you're only having a few cups a coffee, chances are your personality is affected in ways that may be too subtle for you to associate with caffeine. I want to encourage you to conduct a trial period without caffeine. You owe it to yourself.

Coffee edema

From The Cancer Chronicles #6 and #7
© Autumn 1990 by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

The most controversial alternative procedures has to be the coffee enema. Along with other detoxification routines, the coffee enema is a central part of both the Gerson and the Kelley programs. It is always good for a laugh: "with milk or sugar?" This bizarre-sounding treatment can also be used to scare people away from alternatives in general.

No quackbusting article these days is complete without a reference to "enemas made from roasted coffee beans." So what's the story? Is the coffee enema crackpot faddism or is there some rationale behind this procedure?

An enema is "a fluid injected into the rectum for the purpose of clearing out the bowel, or of administering drugs or food." The word itself comes from the Greek en-hienai, meaning to "send or inject into." 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.

The Greeks wrote of the fabled cleanliness of the Egyptians, which included the internal cleansing of their systems through emetics and enemas. They employed these on three consecutive days every month said Herodotus (II.77) or at intervals of three or four days, according to the later historian Diodorus. The Egyptians explained to their visitors that they did this because they "believed that diseases were engendered by superfluities of the food", a modern-sounding theory!

Enemas were known in ancient Sumeria, Babylonia, India, Greece and China. American Indians independently invented it, using a syringe made of an animal bladder and a hollow leg bone. Pre-Columbian South Americans fashioned latex into the first rubber enema bags and tubes. In fact, there is hardly a region of the world where people did not discover or adapt the enema. It is more ubiquitous than the wheel. Enemas are found in world litreature from Aristophanes to Shakespeare, Gulliver Travels to Peyton Place.

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.Could this have been the source of the Sun King's sunny disposition? For centuries, enemas were a routine home remedy.

Then, within living memory, the routine use of enemas died out. The main times that doctors employ them nowadays is before or after surgery and childbirth. Difficult and potentially dangerous barium enemas before colonic X rays are of course still a favorite of allopathic doctors.

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 open the bile ducts and stimulate the production of bile in the liver of experimental animals.

Dr. Max Gerson used this clinically as part of a general detoxification regimen, first for tuberculosis, then cancer. Caffeine, he postulated, will travel up the hemorrhoidal to the portal vein and thence to the liver itself. 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. And while coffee enemas can relieve constipation, Gerson cautioned:

"Patients have to know that the coffee enemas are not given for the function of the intestines but for the stimulation of the liver."

Coffee enemas were an established part of medical practice when Dr. Max Gerson introduced them into cancer therapy in the 1930s. Basing himself on German laboratory work, Gerson believed that caffeine could stimulate the liver and gall bladder to discharge bile. He felt this process could contribute to the health of the cancer patient.

Although the coffee enema has been heaped with scorn, there has been some independent scientific work that gives credence to this concept. In 1981, for instance, Dr. Lee Wattenberg and his colleagues were able to show that substances found in coffee–kahweol and cafestol palmitate–promote the activity of a key enzyme system, glutathione S-transferase, above the norm. This system detoxifies a vast array of electrophiles from the bloodstream and, according to Gar Hildenbrand of the Gerson Institute, "must be regarded as an important mechanism for carcinogen detoxification."

This enzyme group is responsible for neutralizing free radicals, harmful chemicals now commonly implicated in the initiation of cancer. In mice, for example, these systems are enhanced 600 percent in the liver and 700 percent in the bowel when coffee beans are added to the mice's diet.

Dr. Peter Lechner, who is investigating the Gerson method at the Landeskrankenhaus of Graz, Austria, has reported that "coffee enemas have a definite effect on the colon which can be observed with an endoscope." F.W. Cope (1977) has postulated the existence of a "tissue damage syndrome." When cells are challenged by poison, oxygen deprivation, malnutrition or a physical trauma they lose potassium, take on sodium and chloride, and swell up with excess water.

Another scientist (Ling) has suggested that water in a normal cell is contained in an "ice-like" structure. Being alive requires not just the right chemicals but the right chemical structure. Cells normally have a preference for potassium over sodium but when a cell is damaged it begins to prefer sodium. This craving results in a damaged ability of cells to repair themselves and to utilize energy. Further, damaged cells produce toxins; around tumors are zones of "wounded" but still non-malignant tissue, swollen with salt and water.

Gerson believed it axiomatic that cancer could not exist in normal metabolism. He pointed to the fact that scientists often had to damage an animal's thyroid and adrenals just to get a transplanted tumor to "take." He directed his efforts toward creating normal metabolism in the tissue surrounding a tumor.

It is the liver and small bowel which neutralize the most common tissue toxins: polyamines, ammonia, toxic-bound nitrogen, and electrophiles. These detoxification systems are probably enhanced by the coffee enema. Physiological Chemistry and Physics has stated that "caffeine enemas cause dilation of bile ducts, which facilitates excretion of toxic cancer breakdown products by the liver and dialysis of toxic products across the colonic wall."

In addition, theophylline and theobromine (two other chemicals in coffee) dilate blood vessels and counter inflammation of the gut; the palmitates enhance the enzyme system responsible for the removal of toxic free radicals from the serum; and the fluid of the enema then stimulates the visceral nervous system to promote peristalsis and the transit of diluted toxic bile from the duodenum and out the rectum.

Since the enema is generally held for 15 minutes, and all the blood in the body passes through the liver every three minutes, "these enemas represent a form of dialysis of blood across the gut wall" (Healing Newsletter, #13, May-June, 1986).

Prejudice against coffee enemas continues, however. Although this data was made available to Office of Technology Assessment it was largely ignored in their box on the procedure. They dismissively state "there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that coffee enemas detoxify the blood or liver."

No medical procedure is without risk and OTA is quick to point out alleged dangers of the coffee enemas. For instance, they cite one doctor's opinion that coffee "taken by this route is a strong stimulant and can be at least as addictive as coffee taken regularly by mouth." This may indeed be true. Yet one wonders where the data is on this, and whether OTA would issue a similar warning about the perils of coffee drinking.

Another potential danger, they say, is physical damage to the rectum–"fatal bowel perforation and necrosis" which have been associated with "various other types of enema." The risk of perforation comes from the insertion device used. At the Gerson clinic, for instance, they use a short nozzle which couldn't inflict much harm; Gonzalez uses a soft rubber colon tube. In neither case would this caveat seem to apply. On thin evidence, OTA also suggests enemas can cause colitis.

The agency also cites the case of the two Seattle women who died following excessive enema use. Their deaths were attributed to fluid and electrolyte abnormalities. One took 10 to 12 coffee enemas in a single night and then continued at a rate of one per hour. The other took four daily. As OTA points out, "in both cases, the enemas were taken much more frequently than is recommended in the Gerson treatment."

In general, coffee enemas are an important tool for physicians who try to detoxify the body. This is not to say they are a panacea. They certainly require much more research. But coffee enemas are serious business: their potential should be explored by good research–not mined for cheap shots at alternative medicine or derisively dismissed as yet another crackpot fad.

Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. is the author of eight books and three documentaries on cancer-related topics. He is an advisor on alternative cancer treatments to the National Institutes of Health, Columbia University, and the University of Texas. He researches and writes individualized Healing Choices reports for people with cancer. For information on Healing Choices, you can contact coordinator Anne Beattie in the following ways:

...The use of coffee in enemas for detoxification purposes has been a well known and used practice for many years. There is no better stimulant for bile production and its subsequent flushing out than coffee. This is due to a number of pharmacologically acting substances in the coffee. The combination of theobromine, theophylline and caffeine stimulates the relaxation of smooth muscles causing dilatation of blood vessels and bile ducts. Hence bile flow is increased. Also increased are the number of toxins which are conjugated in the bile. This is due to the activity of other substances in the coffee, the palmitates, which activate the enzyme system, glutathione-S-transferase, seven-fold. This enzyme system, which is selenium-dependent, is responsible for grabbing toxins, free-radicals and bilirubin (breakdown product of red blood cells) and delivering them to the bile where they are carried out in the bile acids. The mopping up of free-radicals effectively inhibits the formation of carcinogens and therefore this enzyme performs a protective role against cancer...

This article demonstrates the physiological effect of certain components of coffee.

Coffee for Gallstones

Several metabolic studies suggest that coffee might affect cholesterol lithogenesis. The popular brew is known to stimulate cholecystokinin release; it increases gallbladder motility and perhaps that of the large bowel, too. For its part, caffeine inhibits biliary cholesterol crystallization, decreases gallbladder fluid absorption, and increases hepatic bile flow.

The available epidemiologic studies have largely failed to assign coffee any significant Benefit in preventing gallstone disease. The studies have, however, been criticized for inadequate size and control of confounders, and also for imprecise assessment of coffee consumption.

In an attempt to correct these limitations, Harvard University epidemiologists analyzed the data of the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, in which the participants were 46,008 men, aged 40 to 75 years and without a history of gallstone disease as of 1986. At baseline and during the ensuing decade, the subjects' intake of coffee and other caffeinated drinks was assessed three times. Newly symptomatic gallstone disease was diagnosed by ultrasonography, x-ray, or cholecystectomy. Of 1,081 subjects in whom symptomatic gallstone disease developed, 885 required cholecystectomy.

The adjusted relative risk for those who consistently drank two to three cups of regular coffee per day was 0.6. For those who drank four or more, it was 0.55. All coffee brewing methods showed decreased risk. The risk of symptomatic gallstone disease also declined with increasing caffeine intake (p=.005). In contrast, decaffeinated coffee was not associated with decreased risk.

Finally, some evidence of a concrete health Benefit for coffee lovers, who have long been willing to trade its alleged--and mostly unsubstantiated--evils for its blessed boost to alertness and efficiency through a long day, and often night. But let's see the data for the fair, fat, and forty opposite sex. 

While we certainly do not agree with much of L. Ron Hubbards teachings, the following contains documented references to certain detoxification procedures. 

Cancer and alternative medicines

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