Catherine Kousmine

Catherine Kousmine (September 17, 1904 in Hvalynsky, Russia - August 24, 1992) in Lutry, Switzerland) was a scientist, physician and thinker who devoted her life to understanding and treating diseases of civilization.

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 Supérieure of Lausanne where she graduated in sciences. She then went on to medical school. Upon graduation in 1928 with mention, she moved to Zurich, in professor 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.

At the age of 83, when she published her last opus, Sauvez votre corps! (Save Your Body!), she was still energetically treating hundreds of people in her clinic.

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 not only provides all the nutrients that the organism needs to function properly, but also that does not contain the contaminants associated with the processes of mass production. 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.

Methods

Dr Kousmine's method, in her own terms, has four pillars; like a chair, it can not work if one of the pillars or legs is missing.

Fresh, organic, whole food

Although the Budwig cream has become virtually synonymous with the Kousmine method, it was, for Dr Kousmine, barely a strategy ("ruse de guerre") to ensure that her patients remain on a diet made of fresh, organic and unprocessed food without hassles.

Considering food as a complex mixture of nutrients and naturally occurring chemicals with still unproperly characterized effects (or functions), she judged that the only sensible approach to nutrition science was to value foods that had unaltered chemical properties and compositions. For Kousmine, much of the extraordinary results that she obtained were simply due to the fact that still unknown properties of foods had been given a chance to exert their effects.

Kousmine considered that reductionist science (see Systems biology) had the burden of proof in nutritional science: it had to prove that food is nothing but calories, protein, fiber, micronutrients and so forth. Still a very alert scientist in 1987, she provided examples of food components that did not fit in in common categories and, in doing so, questioned the very scientific value of the reductionist paradigm.

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 (320°F - 392°F), the only goal of which was to produce half again the quantity of oil. The extraction with hexane, a hydrocarbon solvent with carcinogenic properties, 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, omega 6 and in vitamin E, it is possible to reduce the permeability of the intestine 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 and rheumatoid arthritis.

She proclaimed the importance of organic sunflower oil and of whole grains. Her prescriptions for her patients included: Dr Johanna Budwig's "crème Budwig" (Budwig Cream, a mixture of freshly ground cereals, flax and sunflower seeds, of fruits, of cold pressed sunflower 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 during 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, 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 benefited from her method, providing they follow the treatment to the letter for the rest of their life, the orthodox medical community scoffed at her for many years, inaccurately reducing her theory and methods to the Budwig Cream and to vitamin and mineral pills. Some cancer specialists even went so far as stating that their critically ill patients that followed her treatment and that went into complete remission, some of them for more than thirty years, had been simply "misdiagnosed". Today, physicians who treats 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.(5)

Awards

In 1985, the Société d'Encouragement au Progrès - whose headquarters are in Paris (France) - gave her the Médaille de Vermeil for her outstanding accomplishment with multiple sclerosis.

In 1989, she was made a 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". (6)

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'à 80 ans et plus (Be well till 80 and beyond), éditions Sand, 1980, ISBN 2710701588

La sclérose en plaque est guérissable (Multiple sclerosis is curable), éditions Delachaux et Nestlé 1983, ISBN 2603005022

Sauvez votre corps (Save your body), éditions Robert Laffont, 1987, ISBN 2290336327, is a sequel to Soyez bien dans votre..., with more cases and in-depth explanations.

References

1.2.3.4 Sauvez votre corps (Save your body), éditions Robert Laffont, 1987
5. MS Quebec, vol.28, no.105, June 2004, Nutrition and MS, [1]
6. Le régime de la Doctoresse Kousmine (The diet of Dr. Kousmine), in EcoEtSanté2010, [2].