GNM TESTIMONIAL
Joseph Henkes
Belgium / Nieder-Emmels
July 13, 2004
"My gout has completely disappeared"
In May of 1980 I suffered my first flare-up of gout. It happened on a Sunday morning. I had such pain in the joint of my left toe that I could barely walk and had to use crutches.
My first thought was that I must have made some kind of wrong move with my ankle. Next morning, when I told my colleague of my suspicion, he asked to see my foot. I showed it to him and he at once blurted out, "You've got king's foot!" -- for me an unknown expression.
He explained that he meant gout. He knew of a female rheumatologist with whom I quickly made an appointment to determine if that was indeed the problem. She came to the same conclusion -- it was indeed gout. Blood tests revealed that the uric acid values were at 14 mg/dl, whereas the normal values for men are supposed to be at less than 7 mg/dl.
The doctor prescribed medication to stop the painful episode right away. I was to take a daily pill for lowering my uric acid parameters in order to prevent any further flare-ups. Aside from that, she advised me to change my diet - i.e. no red meat, certain kinds of cabbage, innards, all types of sausage, red wine, hard liquor, etc.
After a while, another flare-up occurred despite my regular intake of the medication. The medical explanation was that I could not have been following the special diet carefully enough. I couldn't really deny that - who, after all, does not commit a culinary indiscretion once in a while?
According to conventional medicine, gout is a disease of affluence - too much good food and drinks, too often. It sounded plausible to me that, because of the high amounts of uric acid in the blood, crystals were getting deposited in the joints, which causes the terrific pains I'd been experiencing.
During a family-vacation on the Belgian coast in 1985, we had met a South African doctor who had done his studies at the University of Brussels. I asked him for advice regarding my gout and the popular opinion that it was probably due to my faulty eating and drinking habits.
He strongly disagreed with me and said that it had nothing, at all, to do with eating and drinking. In South Africa, he explained, lots of people die of hunger, and they are certainly not eating meat or drinking red wine – yet gout is one of the most prevalent diseases there. This made me think. But what else can one do if one has no alternatives, other than to swallow medications.
Upon the advice of the rheumatologist I took medication to lower the uric acid on a daily basis, and additional medication during acute gout flare-ups. But the flare-ups kept on reoccurring time and time again - maybe 5-6 times a year.
Gout - according to German New Medicine
With gout, two types of conflicts are present:
1. A physical self-devaluation conflict, affecting the skeletal part involved (in the healing phase)
Gout comes on when the physical self-devaluation was resolved and the existence/abandonment conflict is still active.
In 1997, the subject of gout had been addressed during a GNM seminar. Dr. Hamer asked me whether I would allow my case to be analyzed by him in public. I agreed at once. (I had already arranged for a CT scan to be done beforehand). The gout was located in the left big toe joint.
Dr. Hamer looked at the CT scan and immediately concluded that I must have suffered a self-devaluation conflict in the left foot as well as an existence conflict. That's when we all started to search our memory for when such a SDC-conflict could have occurred -- my wife and youngest son were also participating. We all expressed our respective opinions.
When my son said, "You never played soccer but only did some orienteering runs", a light went on for me. My father had forbidden me to play soccer at age 17 after my older brother broke his leg during a soccer game. That left us with the orienteering run.
Dr. Hamer asked: "And what happened then?"
In 1975, my wife and I had our first son, who later accompanied us on these runs – my wife always used to come along. When our second son was born, it just became too difficult to take along both children, and my wife was obliged to stay at home with them. It was not the most interesting occupation for her -- to baby-sit two kids while I was amusing myself elsewhere. Peace in the house often suffered - and I can fully understand that.
There came a day when the fights at home became too much for me, and I got so angry that I in fact cancelled my membership in the OR (Orienteering Runs) club. That happened on 30.12.1979, and since then I have never again participated in any runs.
That event turned out to be the source of my physical (sports) self-devaluation conflict. The abandonment conflict was that I had to leave my wife at home.
I said to Dr. Hamer, "I can follow your logic so far, but why did I only get gout in the left toe and not in the right one, as well? After all, I am right-handed and, according to GNM, shouldn't I have gotten gout in the right toe -- my partner-side?"
We carried on with our mental search like a bunch of detectives, until Dr. Hamer asked us why my wife had been required to stay home. "Because of the children, of course", we said!
And, bingo, that statement confirmed why my gout had to be located in the left toe - my mother/child-side - because I am a right-hander. With a left-hander it would be the exact reverse.
The existence/abandonment conflict affects the kidney collecting tubules and causes water retention. Now I can also understand what the South-African doctor had wanted to tell me when he had earlier said that gout has nothing to do with opulent food. After all, many people in Africa have existence conflicts for the very good reason that they have practically nothing to eat!
Ever since I have come to understand these two connections, my gout has completely disappeared, even after I began to eat normally again.
That is why I want to take this opportunity to once more thank Dr. Hamer for his discovery of German New Medicine and for his advice to my family and myself.
Translated from the original German document
Disclaimer: The information in this testimonial does not replace professional medical advice.
  Return to Testimonial Index Page |