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Advances In Clinical Nutrition
Published in Herald of Health, September 1957.
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We hear a Iot today about Cortisone and the pituitary adreno-corticotrophic hormone (ACTH). The drug makers are working overtime to find methods of synthetically making imitations of the natural product, for the natural sources cannot possibly supply more than a small fraction of the amount that is apparently needed.
But why do we need these hormones? Why do the endocrine systems of the people of this country fail to supply these life-sustaining factors, which, like insulin, are becoming increasingly important?
Dr. Roben McCarrison in 1921 gave us the answer in his book Studies in Deficiency Disease (now available from Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, Milwaukee, Wisconsin). He said that in his test animals, when fed on refined foods like white flour and sugar, the first effect was damage to the endocrine organs, the adrenals, thyroid, thymus, pituitary, and gonads. The gland reacted either by a swelling or atrophy, with ultimate complete loss of function. The adrenals were in all cases severely damaged.
Now we find that if we make an adrenal extract, cortisone, we can treat a whole multitude of diseases, including cancer, arthritis, cardiovascular degenerations, rheumatic heart disease, and the atrophic diseases of the muscle and nerve systems.
Without any possible doubt, these diseases are more properly classified as the result of our use of white flour, refined sugar and the oceans of soft drinks made of refined and synthetic materials.
The only reason these diseases have not been openly classed as the result of starvation is the influence of food and drink manufacturers on the people who write textbooks and teach pathology and materia medica in our colleges and universities. Even our respected Federal Government will leap to attention and relentlessly prosecute any food maker who tells his customers that he has a product that will compensate for the shortcomings of the average diet. It is a major offense today to claim that there is anything wrong with the foods we customarily eat.1 Government experts have been saying, for ten years, as supreme authorities in such proceedings, that a diet deficient in minerals and vitamins will not undermine the health, and that neither a functional, infectious, degenerative disease, nor diseases of metabolism can be caused or aggravated by any vitamin deficiency.2,3
These men, of course, are protecting the makers of white flour, refined sugar, and soft drinks. Can you imagine the kind of warning label that these products would carry if the enforcement officers were really interested in protecting the public health?
Do not forget that when the State University of Minnesota put 28 cattle on a feed schedule for 12 months that had the vitamin E removed, half of them subsequently died of heart failure, although they continued to gain weight and showed no external signs of disease until they dropped dead.4 Now, to offset the loss of vitamin E in our cereals and oleo we are to wait until we show some sign of disease and then buy cortisone if we can get it, to compensate for our failure to get what was once in our food, but was taken out in processing.
The ability of the adrenals to make its multiplicity of hormones depends upon a similar multiplicity of vitamins and minerals. We know that pantothenic acid is mainly important by reason of its need by the adrenals; the vitamin E complex as an antioxidant certainly is important because the most vital enzyme of the adrenals is an oxidase, first described by the father of endocrinology, Dr. Sajous, in 1911.5 The latest word of the moment is that a new member of the vitamin B complex, and possibly the most important, B15, is also an oxidase. We know that in case of a lack of the E complex, the oxidative activities of the tissues may step up as much as 200%.6 Certainly, the heart will be quick to break down if called upon to pump blood much faster to take care of such a demand for oxygen.
The high content of vitamin C in the adrenals is another reflection of the oxidation control activities centered in this organ. The vitamin C is necessary for the metabolism of tyrosine7 and it is known that tyrosine is a precursor of adrenal hormones. Further, tyrosinase is a normal accompaniment to vitamin C in mushrooms and potatoes; in fact we feel it is a part of the C complex, and appears to add greatly to the potency of vitamin C concentrates.
It is easy to see here why synthetic imitations of natural vitamins have been so disappointing clinically. If the new B15 is the most important fraction of the B complex, certainly the assemblies of three or four synthetic fractions are no more to be considered as the real vitamin than a steering wheel, frame and four tires make an automobile. We have just begun to appreciate B12, now available from natural sources, after several synthetic false alarms have been tried out and failed as anti-anemic factors.
Several conclusions may be made at this point. One is that there is no substitute for honestly made whole grain bread and butter. The bleach chemicals used in flour are all oxidizing agents, and destroy vitamins. They are used in whole wheat flour and bread also as protectors against bug infestation, in several times the amount necessary in white flour as a bleach, so commercial whole wheat products are far more dangerous to use than white, test animals dying far quicker on whole wheat bread than white.8 These tests showed, too, that “enrichment” caused a quicker death than no enrichment, confirming the work of Dr. Morgan at Berkeley, California, in 1941.9
Another conclusion is that we are far from being able to list all the essential factors we need in our diet, much less be able to get them back into a refined and devitalized food.
To consider another class of food deficiencies, we are being bombarded with commercial appeals to save our teeth with fluorine, or ammoniated tooth pastes, etc. Just why do we need to use these things to save our teeth? We all certainly are being subjected to the influence, dietary or otherwise, that causes tooth decay.
Back in 1923 it was known that tooth decay was a result of a lack of activity of a protective enzyme in the mouth and that an impaired endocrine system was of major importance in bringing on the condition.10 Now we can complete the picture. The salivary enzyme is UREASE, and the endocrine factor is the gonad-adrenal system that supplies the arginase that is necessary to the constant supply of urea in the saliva.11 Urea plus urease equals a constant minute supply of AMMONIA in the saliva, and we know today that this is the state that means immunity to dental caries. The fluorine idea can now be tossed out the window. It should never have been given much credence anyway, for there are many geographical areas where dental caries is not common, but where there is no fluorine.
Urea availability is dependent upon the protein elements of the diet, so it is reasonable to find a high carbohydrate diet inimical to the teeth The use of candy and soft drinks to satiate the appetite is an inexcusable barbarity, the more so now that it is known that sugar in the diet REDUCES blood sugar availability, and renders us more susceptible to infections, and lowers our ability to work, causing fatigue, both physical and mental. The patient becomes “high-strung, easily tired, the body goes on a sit-down strike.”12,13 It seems that starches that require conversion to sugar within the body are different than the glucose we get in corn syrup, and form what is termed Alpha-glucose in the liver. This is the kind that the muscles can use to best advantage. Again we find that a synthetic product that we have been told is the same as the natural turns out to be otherwise, and is really a counterfeit food, sold under false pretenses. Probably it is the presence of these exogenous sugars that make us susceptible to poliovirus, for it has been shown that test animals become immune to polio if they have no such sugar in their bodies.14 Hot weather and soft drinks seem to be a good combination to promote the disease.
Polio is at the present time the most rapidly increasing disease. Dr. B. P. Sandler of Asheville, N. C., announced in 1948 in a United Press release that he had proved that excessive use of foods containing glucose and sugar increased susceptibility to polio.14 He recommended that no soft drinks, ice cream or canned fruits or other sources of glucose and sugar be used during the months of polio epidemics. This publicity was apparently well assimilated in North Carolina, for the number of polio cases in 1949 dropped to less than one tenth the number reported in that state in 1948 (214 as against 2402 cases).
Dr. Sandler first reported his discovery in the American Journal of Pathology, January 1931, but it was no doubt the influence of the glucose and soft drink interest that has kept the news from more general distribution. A ten year delay on a matter of this kind has meant millions of dollars more for the soft drink and glucose people. This is very good evidence of how our food and drink racketeers control the distributions of information that would injure their business, with the able assistance of 90% of the publishers of our medical journals.
We must consider what course we are to take. Do we want to continue to use counterfeit foods and try to patch up the physical breakdowns after they take place, leave our offspring a poorer and poorer endowment of health in each generation and depend for health on synthetic drugs and surgery; or do we want to get good food first, and build health like the farmer produces prize-winning livestock–by careful selection of every item of food we use, avoiding all cheats and counterfeits like white sugar, bleached flour, oleomargarine or glucose-loaded canned goods, candy and ice cream?
It may be a lot more simple than trying to compensate for all the side reactions that will follow the use of the trick hormones that are being promoted to cure the deficiency diseases that are still officially looked upon as “acts of God,” in the process of protection of the MEN who live by promoting counterfeit foods.
References Cited:
- Food and Drug Judgement No. 27151. “Common food can be relied upon to supply vitamins and minerals for normal health.”
- U. S. District Court of D.C., Civil Action No. 5208-48, October 1949. Testimony of Elmer Nelson, Chief of Division of Nutrition of the Food and Drug Administration. “…there hasn’t been sufficient scientific work done to permit the general conclusion that a person who is well fed is less susceptible to disease.” (The three judges in this Court differed with this opinion, and Nelson lost his case. The U. S. Supreme Court later AGREED WITH NELSON and reversed the decision. This in spite of the fact that one of the judges, in questioning Nelson in the lower court, forced him to admit that there was less disease among people that have the best diets. Simply shows how powerful the food rackets are. For more information send for booklet, How Our Government Subsidizes Malnutrition and Disease, Royal Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 2023 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee 3, Wis.
- Food and Drug Case No. 32917, Federal Court of Eastern District of Wisconsin. Testimony of Medical Experts called to establish the consensus of opinion of the Medical Profession. (1939) (Among them were Prof. Edwin B. Hart, Elmer L. Sevringhaus, M.D., and Elmer M. Nelson; men who SHOULD know better.)
- Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 52, Art. 3, October 1949, page 258.
- de M. Sajous, Chas. E., The Internal Secretions and the Practise of Medicine. Philadelphia; F. A. Davis Co., 1911.
- Hummel, J. P., and Basinski, D. H., Jol. of Biol. Chem., 172:417-240, February 1948.
- Moss and Schonheim, Jol. Biol. Chem., 135:415, 1940.
- Riggs and Beatty, Jol. of Dairy Sciences, 29:821-829, 1946.
- Morgan, Agnes Fay, Science; March 14, 1941.
- Lee, Royal, The Systemic Causes of Dental Caries. 1923. Reprints available on request. (Lee Foundation.)
- Lee, Royal, Vitamin F and Carbamide in Calcium Metabolism. 1945. Reprint on request. (Lee Foundation.)
- Sandler, B. P., and Berke, R., “Treatment of Tuberculosis With a Low Carbohydrate Diet.” Amer. Rev. Tuberc., 46:238-261, 1942.
- Newsweek, July 17, 1950, page 45. Report of work of Drs. Sidney A. Portis, I. H. Zitman, C. H. Lawrence.
- United Press release from Asheville, N. C., dated Thursday, August 5, 1948, reporting experiments of Dr. B. P. Sandler.