Catalysts, Hormones & Vitamins

A catalyst is best defined as a factor that stimulates chemical or metabolic change. Vitamins are the catalytic factors in foods. Hormones are the catalytic factors made within the body by the endocrine glands. We would probably not be far off if we said that vitamins are the hormones of plants.

Various estrogenic and androgenic effects (male and female sex hormones) are now being found in wheat germ oil in addition to the tocopherol effect, which seems to be only that of an anti-oxidant to protect the more important factors. Here is where there appears to be a true overlapping action of vitamins and hormones. This work is in progress and soon will be published.

Life-Shortening Effect

There seems to be no doubt at this time about the life-shortening effect of such vitamin deficiencies. If a man becomes old and senile at 65 or 90, no special attention or alarm is aroused. But if a dog or valuable animal, race horse or prize record-breaking milk cow suddenly loses its physical integrity long before its time, the owner looks for some reason.

I recall the instance where a chicken rancher in the West consulted his phy­sician because his veterinarian could not find the cause of an 80% drop in egg production, attended with many sick and dying hens. The doctor, after a few questions, found that the grain being fed was a new lot. On investigation, the new grain was found to have been steam-treated to kill weevils, pasteurized in effect! On restoring grain feed that was uncooked, by a germination test, the hens immediately responded with their normal health and productivity.

Unfathomable Doings

We certainly do not take such care to look into the bad nutritional background of many diseases of human experience. We simply accept it as the unfathomable doings of Providence. The hens just mentioned were deprived of calcium for their bones and eggshells by the loss of phosphatase, destroyed in the grain by heating.

We calmly drink pasteurized milk and eat bleach-treated flour and cereal products that have lost both the enzyme and vitamin content, and do not even wonder why we lose our teeth just like any test animal does when put on the same diet.

In fact, the test animals also become constipated, get peptic ulcers, gastritis, liver diseases, colitis, heart disease, arthritis and nervous disorders exactly like our friends and neighbors. Still we do not realize what is the cause, but gullibly continue to eat what some food processor has, after great research, discovered how to make worse so he can sell it for less.

Sir Robert McCarrison, back in 1921, told us how the endocrine glands were the first structures to atrophy (shrink) or degenerate following vitamin and mineral deficiencies. The adrenal glands, now looked to as the source of the wonder hormone cortisone, stopped functioning and soon became atrophied.

We know today that the adrenals must have the vitamins A, B, C and G to perform properly. The pituitary, which stimulates the adrenals to action by its ACTH factor, ceases function also in the face of similar deficiencies. And if the E-complex is lacking, the sex glands fail to activate the pituitary.

Hybrid Corn

The new hybrid corn that affords many more bushels per acre is a good example of quantity vs. quality as a means of judging production. It is no longer capable of functioning as a seed, so many of the normal seed elements are absent; one, for example, being the new vitamin of organically-combined cobalt, vitamin B-12, so essential to prevent pernicious anemia.

The alcohol makers have already found hybrid corn unsatisfactory by reason of its inability to support yeast life. But we will be eating beef and beef liver for a long time before it is discovered to aggravate pernicious anemia and various new diseases yet to appear, no doubt, in the bovine and human species.

Hydrogenated Fats

Hydrogenated fats, processed so that all traces of vitamin E or other essential factors are removed and destroyed, are actually castrating our population wholesale, by degrees. You do not have to wait until premature menopause arrives for both sexes to see the effect. Here it is. Boys and girls now cannot be distinguished from one another if lined up nude, face to the wall. The broad shoulders of the men and the shorter, broader-hipped physique of the female of the species has actually disappeared.

In tests of the relative effect of butter and oleo in feeding adolescent groups, it was definitely proved that this effect was taking place, by growth rates and measurement figures. Girls grew taller than boys instead of vice versa, and were made to gain weight faster. What happens when such females become mothers you can imagine. Childbirth now becomes a real ordeal.

Price is Paid

We fail to realize how these things work until it is brought home to us. But the price we pay for departure from the principles of sound nutrition is the same, even though those principles are not well known because of commercial propaganda and its influence.