Along with a specific diet plan, I recommend individualized nutritional supplement plans to all my patients. Some require a wide variety of high-dose supplements, but not all, since each patient’s protocol is individualized. I find, for instance, that vegetarians need different supplements than carnivores.

Vegetarians tend to do well with potassium, magnesium, a lot of the B-vitamins, and Vitamin C. They don’t do well with Vitamin E. Carnivores have great results with calcium, zinc, selenium and Vitamin E, but don’t do well when they take magnesium and potassium. They also don’t do well with most B-vitamins (except for B-12 and a few others), large doses of Vitamin C and D, manganese and chromium, whereas vegetarians tend to do well with the latter minerals. Balanced people are somewhere in-between and do well with all kinds of vitamins, minerals and trace elements.

The approach that conventional medicine takes to researching nutrients and their effects upon people is nonsensical. The conventional approach yields results that are “all over the map.” For instance, when testing the effects of selenium upon the body, researchers will give the same dose of the same type of selenium to everyone, but a vegetarian needs a different dose of selenium than a carnivore, so the results will be skewed because of this factor. Also, doing tests this way doesn’t take into account a person’s entire system. In my practice, I prescribe different forms of calcium, depending upon the patient’s metabolism. Nutrients facilitate every reaction in the body, and they are extremely powerful, for good and for bad. The wrong dose of the wrong nutrient to the wrong person will cause chaos in the body, which is also why the “one-size-fits all” studies are crazy. They also don’t make sense because their results are assessed independently of the impact that the particular tested nutrient has upon other nutrients in the body. Thus, the overall effect of a given nutrient upon the body cannot be accurately determined in isolation. Nutrients work together with other nutrients; for example, Vitamin E protects selenium and selenium protects Vitamin E; Vitamin C protects both Vitamin E and selenium, so if I give a patient Vitamin C with selenium and vitamin E, I don’t need to give high doses of any of them, because they are  preserving the effects of each other. So there are very complex interactions between all of the nutrients and vegetarians need different supplements in different doses than carnivores do, so it’s important to give the right supplements to the right people. When this principle is respected, and patients are prescribed a proper diet, every system in the body works better, from the neurological system, to the endocrine system, to all the others.

It’s important to support the entire body and all of its systems, so that it can better fight cancer, and I do this in my practice. Conventional oncologists don’t do this though. They don’t care if their patients eat ice cream, but I do. I worry about everything, because I want every system in my patients’ bodies working well and functioning as close as possible to 100% capacity. Only then can they effectively fight cancer.

The supplements that I prescribe to my patients include a variety of vitamins, herbs, anti-oxidants, trace minerals and glandular formulas. I am big on glandulars, which are comprised of concentrated animal glands and organs that contain minute amounts of hormones and other beneficial factors to heal and balance the body. All of my glandular formulas and other animal products come from New Zealand, a country that has never had mad cow disease and which remains the cleanest, most unpolluted place on earth. New Zealand has the strictest cattle-raising laws in the world, so they have been able to avoid mad cow and other diseases. Some of the glandular formulas that I use include freeze-dried heart, adrenal glands, dried ovaries and lungs, which are effective for supporting the body in a variety of ways. For instance, if patients have weak lungs, I might give them a lung glandular formula. Some of my colleagues laugh at me for doing this kind of therapy, but I tell them that it really works, because, for instance, there are growth factors in the freeze-dried lung of an animal that heal human lung tissue. In the 1940’s, doctors used to treat heart failure with beef heart, and it worked. Then, after World War II, pharmaceutical companies began to really push drugs and everyone forgot about these old folk remedies, but they really work! So I use a lot of glandular products in my practice, along with vitamins, minerals and trace elements.

In summary, I try to get every system in our patients’ bodies to work right, by giving them the right diet and supplements, and by making sure that they aren’t taking the wrong ones. It’s just as important to get the wrong supplements and foods out of the diet as it is to bring in the right ones.  - Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D.

For more information about nutrition and supplementation, Dr. Gonzalez wrote the award-winning book, "Nutrition and The Autonomic Nervous System: The Scientific Foundations of the Gonzalez Protocol."