Dear friend, dear friend,
For several days, a news item has been making headlines.[1,2,3]
Naturopath Eric Gandon has been indicted. He was remanded in custody. He is blamed for the death of a person who participated in one of his fasting courses in August 2021.[4,5]
It is not known whether the deceased 44-year-old woman had any particular frailty.
This decision was announced on January 12 by the prosecutor of Tours, Grégoire Dulin.[1,2]
Eric Gandon is prosecuted for “manslaughter”, “abuse of weakness”, “endangering the life of others” and “illegal exercise of the profession of doctor and pharmacist”.[1,2]
His son is also being prosecuted. The latter helped his father in the organization and promotion of his activity.
Both defendants deny the facts. As long as no judgment has been pronounced, they are presumed innocent.[1,2]
What happened ?
According to the press, Eric Gandon organizes courses in young water regularly for years.[4,5]
These internships last between one and six weeks.
“Water fasting” is the strictest form of fasting and therefore the most taxing on the human body. We only drink water and nothing else. This type of fast deserves to be monitored by a medical team if it extends beyond one day.
Unfortunately, on August 12, 2021, a 44-year-old woman died during a water fasting course organized by Eric Gandon.
The prefecture of Indre-et-Loire issued an order to ban him from his internships.[1,2]
But he would have continued to do so online, according to the press[16].
Justice has opened an investigation and would have discovered four victims of Eric Gandon’s internships.
One of the patients notably died of terminal liver cancer, a month after a fasting cure in 2020.
All of these charges are very serious.
And the facts are particularly sad.
Bad news for naturopathy and natural medicine
In this kind of situation, my first thought is for the victim.
While this woman hoped to regain her health, she died during her internship.
It is a real tragedy.
It is up to the inquest to determine the cause of death.
Even if the causes of this death were to be linked to something other than the practice of fasting, the fact that it took place during the course raises suspicions about the practice itself and the person who proposed it.
This discredits the entire profession, which is already struggling to be accepted and recognized.
Naturopathy aims to enhance vitality
The media that reported the facts, such as Le Parisien or BMFMTV[1,5]generally add that naturopathy is a pseudo-medicine and that fasting is not a therapy recognized by medical authorities.
Both of these statements are incorrect.
Naturopathy is not medicine. It is more about prevention.
Its purpose is not not to heal but to prevent healthy people from getting sick.
Naturopaths are, moreover, considered as “health educators”.
They don’t heal you but help you better understand and use your body’s strengths.
In other words, no naturopathic course can be curative.
It is about “well-being” or “well-being”.
The naturopath is there to help his client – who is not a patient – to regain vitality, energy.
Clearly, the role of the naturopath is to help you adopt a protective lifestyle and a feed healthy.
It can help you keep your good resolutions, help you find the right herbal teas to accompany your daily life.
He can also help you accompany your stress.
No one should hope to be cured by following a naturopathic course, although for some people this may be the case.
This sector is still very vague. And deserves not only to be better framed but also to be recognized.
State responsibility in this case
However, in France, these wellness activities are tolerated. However, they are neither really authorized nor supervised.
All training – and some of it is of high quality – is private.
And there is little or no dialogue between the authorities and this sector of activity, which remains very limited.
Yet the demand is growing for these services.
Today’s citizens are beginning to understand that a large part of their ills come from their way of life.
Seeing a naturopath can be a helpful way to try to stick to your resolutions.
There is therefore a responsibility on the part of the authorities who refuse to accept the development of a sector that exists in other countries.
In Germany and Switzerland, hygienists or naturopath are recognized[6]in Belgium and the United Kingdom, herbalists can do their job.[7,8]
Only osteopaths have obtained the right to practice in France.[9]
Other welfare professions would also deserve to be accepted by the authorities.
The legal framework would be clearer and clients would know more precisely what they would be entitled to expect from each of these professions.
Moreover, this would make it possible to better warn certain patients against certain practices.
Water fasting is a very demanding cure for the body. It is not to be practiced if one is ill or weakened and certainly not, in any case, without medical supervision.
But the responsibility of the authorities does not stop there.
If patients go to therapists who are not doctors, it is also because having a medical appointment has become impossible.
Official medicine is bad
Medical deserts are increasing. Many caregivers are suspended.[10]
It can sometimes take weeks before you can see a doctor.[11]
And confidence in the medical system is crumbling because of the scandals that regularly break out.
One of the highlights of recent months has been the Lancet Gate.[12]
A study in which 100,000 patients were purely and simply invented has been validated by the scientific committee of one of the largest medical journals in the world.
When the deception was revealed, the researchers who had put their names on the study dissociated themselves from the commercial company which had been paid to produce this scientific work.
But the damage was done.
Obviously, the causal link between the tragedy that took place in Touraine and the chronic dysfunction of the medical system is not direct.
But still, how is it that no doctor could prevent or warn a patient with end-stage liver cancer from taking a course of water fasting?
You may tell me that the patient did not tell his doctor. It’s possible. It is therefore a problem of confidence in the medical system.
In Germany, fasting is a therapy offered by doctors
In Germany, some medical institutions quite officially offer fasting cures.
One of the best known is the clinic Buchinger–William which celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 2020 and whose reputation is worldwide.[13]
It is located on the shores of Lake Constance in the south of the country.
The clinic’s founder, Dr. Otto Buchinger, suffered from polyarthritis acute very disabling that he would have succeeded in curing after following a fast.
Convinced of the benefits of fasting, he decided to devote his life and skills to it.
Result: a century later, the institution is still there and is highly respected.
However, the fast practiced is done with a medical follow-up and is done gently.[14]
Patients receive two herbal teas and two broths a day. This is not a water fast.[14]
They receive all the nutrients they need on a daily basis.[13,14]
The entry into the fast, and the exit, are very supervised.
Finally, the clinic insists on the “preventive” aspect of the cure.
This does not prevent some patients from hoping to cure their ailments by going to the clinic, but the caregivers are very clear about the objectives of the fast. It’s about getting better.
It’s due welfare supervised by doctors.
There are other centers offering fasting cures such asCharité hospital in Berlin.[15]
For Dr. Andreas Michalsen, head of this service, these cures can be useful to accompany certain diseases of civilization such as diabetes or hypertension.
This time, fasting is offered as a therapy.
Lessons to be learned from the drama of Noyant-de-Touraine
When a person dies on the occasion of a benefit of well-being or health, it is obvious that the responsibility of the therapist must be questioned.
And if there is an offense or recklessness, it is up to the courts, aided by scientific expertise, to determine the possible responsibilities of each party.
The question for society and for the future is to know how to prevent this type of accident.
There are two possible answers to this.
The first is to prohibit naturopathy and well-being professions, which amounts to the status quo since, to date, these professions are not authorized.
The second is to create a real well-being business sector with identified trades and skills and duly trained professionals.
This would make it possible both to meet the public’s demand for real qualitative well-being services, while introducing limits and frameworks for the exercise of these activities.
Ideally, this sector of the well-being would be in permanent contact with the health sector without being confused with him.
Everything exists for this sector to see the light of day. All that is missing is the political will.
Fasting is not magic therapy
By way of conclusion, I would like to insist on the ambivalent aspect of fasting.
Although it is an exceptional prevention tool and is sometimes useful in certain patients, it remains a demanding exercise for the body.
Every time I discuss it with Bénédicte Van Craynest, nutritionist, she reminds me how much it is not recommended for patients with fragile digestive systems.
For her, fasting, especially water, is too violent for the body.
To those who ask her to skip one meal a day, she recommends either not doing so and eating smaller meals, or cutting out the evening meal.
For Bénédicte, breakfast is essential.
For his part, Jean-Pierre Marguaritte, osteopath, prefers mono-diets which rest the intestine without imposing an austerity cure.
At the same time, some of my readers enjoy fasting once a year for a few days.
In this case, don’t forget to talk to your doctor or get help from experienced professionals like those at the Buchinger-Wilhelmi clinic.
Naturally yours,
Augustine of Livois