The Love Story That Kept a Cancer Protocol Alive

TV Show Host, True Health: Body, Mind, Spirit

Founder, President & Treasurer, The Nicholas Gonzalez Foundation
- Discover how the Gonzalez protocol uses personalized nutrition, pancreatic enzymes, detoxification, and lifestyle changes to support the body’s ability to heal from cancer.
- Understand why metabolic individuality matters, and how identifying your unique dietary needs can play a critical role in both prevention and recovery.
- Learn how patient participation—through daily habits, detox routines, and commitment to healing—is essential in achieving meaningful outcomes beyond passive treatment models.
Full Transcript
Mary Bethu2019s Introduction and Nicku2019s Passing 0:00
But yes, Nick died very unexpectedly in our home in New York City in my arms in July of 2015. I suddenly inherited all of his research papers, all his unpublished books, which he'd been working on furiously for years. There was no succession plan. I was left to pick up the pieces. Guess I could have just shut it all down. But I did not want Nick's voice to be silenced. And I knew I couldn't just put his cure for cancer in a storage unit. This is Doctor Talks. Well, I am so honored to have Mary Beth Gonzalez with me today.
She is wife of late Nicholas Gonzalez. Marybeth, this is such an honor, such a pleasure to you here today! Well thank you so much for inviting me. So talk to me a little bit. What your late husband, Dr. Gonzalez, did, I mean, he changed so many people's lives that were struggling with cancer. Do you mind just kind of sharing a little bit how you two met and then also what you got to witness being there kind right by him, right, by his side throughout this whole process? I'd be happy to. I met Dr.
Gonzalez, probably the only way that somebody would ever meet Dr Gonzalez and that is in his office. So I didn't have cancer, but I was trying to help a family member who did have a cancer who had already tried all these different conventional treatments and they weren't working. And so I was in my effort to find a solution. I started Googling and of course, Dr. Gonzalez's name kept coming up and up, and for all these, all the alternative treatments. And I. Convinced that that's where we had to go because the conventional work had already not.
helped her, she had bladder cancer. So I called his office, tried to make an appointment and was told, okay, you need to send in an application and your medical files and, and it seemed like a, uh, at the time, a long, involved process. And I said, you don't understand. We don' have this kind of time. I would have to get the hospital to provide all this. Can we just talk and see if she would be a good candidate? And they said no, we need to apply. Hung up the phone, very nicely hung up. Well, I wasn't going to take no for an answer.
Had already told my brother I was going be able to find a solution. So I went out on my lunch hour the next day and I showed up at Nick's office. Now, for those who know Nick or know anything about this protocol, you know that seeing Nick is usually like a three or four hour appointment. It's not a quick little office visit because he goes through so much information at the time when he sees with you. So he probably only saw like three patients a day because he spent so much time with them. Well, just as I was knocking on the door, one of his patients was leaving and that was the sign.
I just slipped in the. And he was standing right there. He had just said goodbye to his patient. So I walked right in and I started talking about how I wanted him to help my brother's new mother-in-law and he must have.
How Mary Beth Met Dr. Gonzalez 3:34
You know, liked what he heard and he felt like he could help because after just a couple of minutes of me explaining the situation, he said, I definitely want to help, but I have another patient coming. I need to go have my lunch. So why don't you leave your name with the receptionist and I'll call you and we'll get together for dinner. And then he turned on his heels and walked down the hallway. And I thought, oh my goodness, did I just hear that? Did he just ask me to go out to dinner? And. I said, I don't think he normally does that.
And so I asked the receptionist and she said no, that's never happened before. Well, sure enough, he did call that night and asked me. To have dinner to further discuss my brother's mother-in-law and her situation. Long story short, we got together a couple of days later and we fell in love. at dinner and I think we were there for like four or five hours and in the cab ride home, I called my then boyfriend. I broke up with him and Nick and that started dating and we engaged six weeks later. Love it.
What a cool story. Well, the thing that I realized really quickly is that everything he said to me at that dinner and during our courtship really rang true. And this is something that we hear from people all the time when we first explain what the Gonzales Protocol is. They say, it just makes so much sense. Why would you do anything else? So I was really enamored, obviously. He was quite dashing. But I just believed in what he did. And then we were married for 15 years. Michael, I witnessed so many incredible miracles, and he would come home and You know, when you're married to someone like Nick Gonzalez, his work really is his life.
So that's what we talked about at home. And I quickly realized that this was work that was really important. so when he passed, so suddenly and unexpectedly, it was. Really important to me that his word carry on. Yeah, I mean, it's such a powerful, powerful work that your husband was doing. Yeah. It's incredible. He, do you mind sharing? Cause he was kind of really setting out to discredit Dr. Kelly, you know, way back when that was working with the pancreatic enzymes. And by doing so, he came closer to that this was really something that is real.
Yes, so when Nick was doing his residency, a journalist friend of his approached him and said, you know, I keep hearing about this crazy dentist in Texas who says he's curing cancer and I can't make heads or tail of it because I don't have any medical background. Could you please help me, Nick, and meet with him? Nick said no four times. But this friend was very persistent. So Nick agreed to meet with Dr. Kelly in New York. And within minutes, he realized that this man was not a blowhard who was just egotistical and making things up.
He was actually quite humble, soft-spoken, and brilliant. The next day, Nick returned with Doctor Kelly to Texas. and started doing what he called an investigation of the work. Before he went to medical school, he was an investigative journalist at Timing. And so he put on his investigative journalists hat and he started reviewing all of Kelly's files, thinking that he was going to discover that it really wasn't true. Here he is, Nick was working at Sloan Kettering under the guidance of the president of Sloane Kethering, Dr.
Robert Good, at the time. And Good had encouraged Nick to go to Kelly home and office to review everything, and thinking he would learn a lot from the experience. Well, what Nick learned, not only from going through the files, but then interviewing hundreds of Kelly's patients, is that it really rang true and that he had developed a cure for cancer that's based on nutritional enzyme therapy and metabolically typing patients so that different patients had different diets, customizing a detoxification routine for patients.
And then of course, stressing the importance of faith and spirituality. So yes, he started thinking he was going to discredit him and it turned into a five year project. And after those five years, was he still over at Sloan Kettering? So he, He was no longer at Slone Kethering. He, Robert Good went on to, to go to another hospital in Florida and Nick decided to write up his results because he wanted to get them published. Again, being a journalist and he was a great writer, he thought, okay, I'm going to document all these results.
So he wrote a very lengthy monograph about Kelly's work called One Man Alone. And he tried to get it published. There wasn't a publisher in town who would give any attention to it. They thought it was impossible, even though it with purely everything was documented. Nick took the 50 best cases and he actually included all the medical records along with his analysis and. He just couldn't get it published. So.
Dr. Kelly Investigation and the Origins of the Protocol 9:42
Typical Nick, he just put it aside, started his own private practice to prove the work worked, and then later, I think it was around 2011, He self-published that book because it is so important to him that Dr. Kelly's work live on. And that's the book that is available now for the public? Yes, it's called One Man Alone and we sell it through our small book publishing company called New Spring Press. And you can find it there. It's also featured on our Nicholas Gonzales Foundation website, which is thegonzalesprotocol.com.
Tell me a little bit about what you experienced. What did you see? I mean, it must have been some phenomenal cases that you got to experience. Do you mind just kind of giving me little a bit of a flavor of the power of this therapy that Nick was doing? Sure. Formally, with several of his patients, when we got engaged, a lot of these New York City patients were just astounded. And so they would invite us to dinner, and then they were telling me their stories. So I would hear firsthand of patients with thyroid cancer and breast cancer, personally telling their story of how Nick had healed them.
And then there we were at our wedding, and it was a rather small wedding. It was shortly after 9-11, so a lot of people weren't able to fly in. If you remember that time, all the planes were grounded. But we had two full tables of NICS patients who came to the wedding And at one point, Nick turned to me and he said, yeah, that's the table full of pancreatic cancer patients. Look at them. They're all dancing. Some of them are alive 10, 12, 15 years from diagnosis. And I have to say, they looked like some of the healthiest people at that party.
Big smiles, glowing skin. It was really wonderful to see. My question is, what was the dessert that they ate? Well, we always had berries, fresh berries and fresh whipped cream. That was our favorite dessert. Uh, that's the best dessert right there. Right. So, but that was my experience with, with seeing and meeting with his patients. But then I went on the protocol myself for preventative reasons. And it was not only curious, when we got married, Nick said, well, you know, I live my lifestyle at home, and so we would need to keep a completely non-toxic, healthy home and all the food that I eat is homemade." And he said, like, I just want to make sure that that's okay with you before, you know, move in.
And I said okay, with me, that sounds fabulous. So he put me on the program, a little preventative program. And, and I saw things change in my life that I had had all, you know, throughout my whole adult period. Like, for example, I used to get migraines and. I found my migraine go away and eventually a bunch of my girlfriends all went on to protocol for prevention reasons. So I was witnessed to a lot of different things. So what did the program look like for you? What did it all entail? So even the prevention program includes a customized diet to your metabolic type.
Unfortunately, Nick and I were the same metabolic types that made it easy for cooking. It included a small supplement plan. And by small, I mean I was still taking the the pancreatic enzymes for prevention and digestion that his cancer patients were taking, but I just didn't take them in the high doses. And then he prescribes certain supplements to help balance my own nervous system. So in my case, it was magnesium, potassium, and calcium. And I always did the detox routines, which are quite controversial, those coffee enemas, but boy, you can't take those away from me.
I love them. The same, I know my wife and I can't tell you how many patients that when I tell them that, well, you don't have to do the coffee enemas every day anymore. And they just said, Well, a lot of I feel so good when doing that. I felt so clear in my head. Energy is great. Yeah. Just feel clean, not inflamed. You know, so people really fall in love with the Coffee Animas once they get over that initial learning curve. Exactly. You know, people are always saying to me now, maybe you could do like a video, Mary Beth, of you doing a coffee enema so people will be more comfortable doing it.
And I was like, are you kidding me? Yeah, that'd be something, right? I don't think I need to do that. Just take my word for it. I had a couple of good friends of mine, you know, she actually does the coffee and my with her husband, so that's how close they are. We've done them all over the world. Nick used to lecture at a few different conferences a year. And some were as far as Germany and London, and we would literally set up our whole coffee enema system in the bathroom, travel with our own little coffee pot.
And it was not always easy to find a place to hang the enuma bag, but it all worked out. Yeah, exactly. If there's a will, there is a way. You'll figure it out, right? Exactly. So how did the reason for the initial dinner between you and Nick, how does your family member do? Well, unfortunately, by the time the next day that we reached out to the hospital and they sent the records, which really was only like a five day period, she passed away. And so Nick and I used to always say that God basically gave us a 5-day window to meet.
And so she became the catalyst, I mean, for something that created history after. So that's, that so wonderful. How, so diet wise, you're talking about the diet being a kind of personalized for the individual. So how is that done? I mean, what, how, do I know what I'm supposed to eat versus you eat? You know, because you have, Keto, some people, yeah, have some, people do the plant base. You have. Some people kind do of the middle thing. you know how would you, know. what direction to go. Well, there are several different ways.
And let me just pause for a minute now and thank you for interviewing Dr. Andre Williams and Dr Marina Yanover, two of our Gonzales guardians who are carrying on this work with the Nicholas Gonzalas Foundation.
Patients, Results, and Mary Bethu2019s Preventive Use 16:58
And in their podcast, Interviews They Did With You, they did talk in more detail about the science of metabolic typing and why different people need different diets. So I'll focus on how you figure out what your type is. And there's several different ways. So first of all, if you are a patient on the Gonzalez protocol, either having seen Nick or now seeing one of our Gonzalez guardian doctors, we have very specific diagnostic tests that we run that are proprietary, but There's a series of questions that Nick used to always ask in his medical intake sessions.
And so those are the questions. The doctors ask now and that can. Knowing what one's diagnosis is, and then by asking a couple key questions about. their food cravings and how they feel about certain different activities and also knowing their country of origin can help give them the doctor direction and they become like little detectives and then they figure out what the right type is. Now it's important to say that, you know, sometimes somebody starts at one type and kind of moves into another neighboring type after a few months.
And that's, it, yeah, not unheard of. It's not very common, but it does happen. One of the things that. I realized though early on is that if my goal here with the Nicholas Gonzalez Foundation is to educate people about the protocol, I can't expect that everybody is going to become a patient, but we still have a lot of value to offer people. So I partnered with Dr. Kelly's team and took a metabolic typing questionnaire that he had published in like a book that was about an inch and a half thick.
And I combined it with a questionnaire Nick had and we put it all online and, you know, working in partnership with the doctors that have, that had been helping me bring the Gonzales protocol back to life, so to speak. We now have an online questionnaire called the Gonzalez metabolic type test. And it's a hundred questions, multiple choice that results in one of seven different Gonzales diets. And that's, that a great place to start. And this is available on the Gonzales Foundation website. TheGonzalesProtocol.com.
It's usually a coupon available. On the site for it. So that's another way. But the third way Nick would famously say this when he would give lectures is that. You know, your body knows what food it really needs. And we're not talking about chocolate because everybody craves chocolate, right? But your buddy knows when it craze a steak that it needs a stake. Your body know when a crazed leasy vegetables that, it need those leafy vegetables. So listen to your body and pay attention to what you are interested in and what makes you feel full and helps you keep, be energized.
And when you don't feel that way, if you certain eat certain foods. So if. Don't want to take the test and you want see one of the guardians, just find ways to get more in tune with your. We have a really simple PDF that Nick wrote called what diet is best for me. and we also offer that on our website. And I think that's like $6. That's great. That was fantastic. And so obviously with Nick passing, that was tragic and you know, the world lost a really a hero with what he was supporting and bringing forth to the World and all the people that has been helping.
What, I mean, what was the next step in your, you're talking about this foundation. what have you done in order to be able to make sure that all of this work is not lost and people still can benefit from it? Well, I have to say it was an incredibly painful time in my life. Now, you know, nine years ago, which is still so hard to believe. It feels like it, like, it just happened some days. Um, but yes, Nick died very unexpectedly in our home in New York City in, my arms in July of 2015. And. I suddenly inherited his medical practice, all of his research papers, and all his unpublished books, which he'd been working on furiously for years.
And there was no succession plan. Now I say that, that's not entirely true. Nick had a verbal succession plan agreement, but it wasn't in writing. It wasn' sealed, signed and delivered. And so it was never implemented. So. You know, when someone is. When someone's perfectly healthy and really busy, you don't make signing a will or drafting a succession plan a priority. And so that's what happened and I was left to pick up the pieces, or not, I guess. I mean, guess I could have just shut it all down.
You know, and you know I had a very successful career in media marketing in New York City. But it never even occurred to me at the time. I did not want Nick's voice to be silenced. And even though I didn't have many answers at the time that he died, I knew I couldn't just put his cure for cancer in a storage unit, right? So with the help of devoted doctors who were his colleagues, some of my friends, and some his wonderful past patients. We founded the Nicholas Gonzalez Foundation in December of 2015, so just a few months after he died.
And our plan was to secure his legacy, further his research, and educate other doctors in how to do this, not just for his current patients who needed a doctor, right, but for more people who we knew were going to be diagnosed and needing this protocol in the future. So that's the mission of our nonprofit, 1C3 Foundation. We're here to conduct research and education and make sure that this work is available. And I have to tell you, Michael, I had no idea how I was going to do it at the time.
Metabolic Typing and Diet Personalization 23:38
It was one of those things where I just thought, okay, let's figure it out. I rolled up my sleeves and again, had a lot of really great help and a couple of years later, we were able to put together a very comprehensive curriculum. And, you know, I'd love to tell you more about that if you're interested. Well, so, yeah, what, that must be so overwhelming when something is so sudden and you, yes, when you share stories when he comes home from work, but you are out there doing your work somewhere else, focusing on other things, and then all of a sudden, You're it.
I mean, you're the one. You have to kind of keep this legacy alive and try to figure out, bring all these different pieces together in a cohesive fashion to then try what was in his brain naturally just kind existed there so that that is implemented strategically for the benefit of patients. I Again, like I didn't have a plan when I decided to do it, and so I just had to get started. And thank God, you know, Nick was a very prolific writer. So he left us all the breadcrumbs that we needed. One of the first things I did was complete the publishing of these cancer case books that he was working on.
Again with the help of several doctors who reviewed the cases, The first thing I did is I published those two books. They're called Conquering Cancer, volumes one and two. There were 112 different examples of his patients who survived miraculous cancers. And that was the starting point. Then when we decided that we were going to create the curriculum, I had doctors move into my home and help me go through 300 boxes of NICS files. It was crazy. But we cracked the code and we were able to actually write a 700 page textbook that was only ever published for the few doctors that we trained.
And we put together a really extensive educational seminar. I knew from being so close to Nick for so long that he would be very particular about who he will allow to carry on this work, even when in his lifetime. And please understand that like the topic of almost every dinner conversation was, gosh, Nick, maybe you should train somebody else to do this work. And I was always thinking, because that will make it easier for you, honey. You won't have to carry this burden and you could share some patience and it would be so much easier.
you can go on vacation, right? And have somebody step in. So I knew firsthand the kind of criterion that he would have placed on the right type of doctor to learn this work. So with that in mind, we met with over a hundred doctors who applied and we chose 12. And I thought 12 was a good number, like the 12 disciples. They studied for 10 months. I gave them all the books and other documents and they had really detailed exams that they had to take. I think Dr. Williams mentioned the training a little bit in his interview with you.
And I just got to say, I knew it was hard, but it should be hard because we wanted to make sure they understood how to do this properly. We wanted make that sure that were in it for the right reasons. So at the end of The 10 months we met for 10 days during COVID in person and there were a series of exams and I didn't really expect this, but several of the doctors didn' t pass. It was that hard. And I guess in hindsight, you know, it's. turned out to be a really good thing because you need, once the doctors are back off in their practices, they need to understand how to do it.
They don't have somebody holding their hand. So those few doctors who didn't pass, despite the commitment they had made, were not able to, to certified in the protocol. And then we focused our attention on the ones that were moving forward with us and servicing their patients. Love that. So how many are there that have gone through this process? You started with 12 and how, how are many there as a resource for people that need this kind of care? So we currently are working with four, excuse me, five doctors and, and it's now been three years of them seeing patients.
And one of those doctors is also overseeing all the medical files. So every doctor has to submit their cases for review to make sure that things are being done properly. And that serves as kind of a continuing education for the doctors. We get together at least once a month, but we've all become good friends at this point. I'm in touch with them constantly. Then I have a Second company called the Gonzales Guidance Group, who is in charge of helping patients who might want to be on this program. And so all the applications go through that centralized team.
It's the same people who used to work for Nick and do that screening in his office. So they have many years of, helping people learn about the Gonzalez protocol and assessing whether we think the protocol can help them.
Preserving Nicku2019s Legacy Through the Foundation 29:38
So on our website, there's a section on how to apply to meet with one of these Gonzales guardian doctors. And the application process is really to serve the patient because we don't want anyone to show up. You know, so say you show up in Dr. Diller's office in Istanbul or London, and if that's the first time you realize you have to be doing coffee enemas twice a day, you're going to pretty disappointed, right? So we go through the whole program and make sure they understand what's going be required of them.
This is not the kind of protocol that you just, sit back and have your doctor do to you. As Dr Yenover said in her interview with you, Michael, It's the kind of protocol that you really need to do by yourself at home with your doctor as your guide, your coach. So we want to make sure that the patients are capable of doing that. And that's what we discussed in the application process. That's perfect. Yeah. And that's the thing is that a lot of people, they're so used to going to the doctor and then the doctors just, They do something to them.
Rather than them being engaged in their own healing journey. It's generally here, take this pill or here let's go and cut this out. Instead of them, being kind of actively engaged, doing the different things. Like the coffee enemas, like the sun, taking the pills, eating the way that they should eat. all the different lifestyle changes that comes along with this type of a protocol. Exactly. And for that reason, we know that this protocol isn't for everybody. For some people, conventional treatment might be their best solution for another alternative program.
If once you realize and change the way you think about healing and realize that, you know, God really gave you the ability to heal yourself and we're going to teach you how to do that. You know the lights just go off in so many people's heads and they're like, okay, how do I do it? Let me get started. Yeah, that's great. That's so great! So how do you feel about the future of Nick's legacy? I mean, do, you, feel that it is in good hands and then people have a good, great resources where his work can truly carry on fully with the doctors that you work with?
Sure, so I appreciate you asking that question. I am thrilled with the doctors that we're working with and the success that they've seen. You know, if we've only healed one more person, you know this has all been worth it, right? But we held a lot more than one. And we have also been continuing to assist past patients of Dr. Gonzales' which is really important to me because they committed so much during his lifetime and I wanted them to be able to continue to heal. So I'm feeling really great about that.
We do want to educate more practitioners in the future. In order to do that, I really need us to have a medical director in place who will oversee all of that. We learned a lot of lessons in our beta example of our 12-person seminar. So that's something that we are fundraising for so we can have somebody leading those educational efforts. And in the meantime, You know, I just keep trying to publish as much wisdom and information on our website and through our newsletter so that anybody can learn some of these techniques and do them at home.
And the future is really complicated, by the fact that so many people are getting diagnosed with horrible diseases these days. And my biggest wish is that more people are aware that this protocol can help them early enough in their decision-making process so that they can actually be healed. I mean, if they wait too long and they've done so much other conventional work and come to us as kind of a last resort, it's a lot harder for them and us. So, you know, without a large marketing budget, so appreciative of opportunities like you're giving me here to spread awareness of our work so that we can heal more people.
Yeah, I agree. And that's the thing that this kind of knowledge, you don't want to just to kind disappear and go out in the ether. Want to develop, it's proven itself over decades and decades, and it touched so many people's lives. So I'm really grateful that you stepped up because this is a big ordeal. I mean, It's a Big, big thing. You stepped out and you really moved this work forward. And then allowing other or enabling other doctors to be given the tools that they need in order to able to. Be effective and get the results that we want and people are needing what we're dealing with nowadays.
That's something that I really learned from Nick. He took very seriously what he felt was his responsibility, his obligation to share this work with as many people as possible. to much, whoever much is given, much as required. And so I feel that I have been given so much here and it is my responsibility now to share it with the world. You're doing a wonderful job. Thank you so much, Maribeth. I really appreciate everything you're do. The power of the pancreatic enzymes and appropriate detoxification, appropriate nourishment, you can't say enough about it.
So thank you for doing this and continuing Nick's work. Well, thank so you much for the opportunity. Thank you for tuning into Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks dot com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks, real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.
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