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The Foundation of Health — It Is Our Own Choice
Published in Vitamin News, July 1957.
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Health is what we make it, says Dr. George W. Heard. Our body is made from what we eat, if it fails to function as Nature intended, we have failed to eat the food Nature provided, for the one thing that no human body can do is to survive under continued malnutrition. It simply cannot make something out of nothing. When we select our food at each meal, we are selecting our future health. It can be good, it can be bad.
Dr. Heard’s ideas were impressed into his own consciousness by his own experience. After discovering that the perfect teeth that 95% of the residents of Deaf Smith County, Texas were due to the better mineral pattern of the food locally produced, (not due to the one part per million of fluorides in the water, a mistake gone too far) he realized that his own palsy and arthritis were the result of his own carelessness in selecting honest food. When he followed the rules of common sense and confined his food pattern to complete, natural, unrefined and uncooked food, his shaking palsy and arthritis left him completely. (Read his own story in his autobiography, Man vs Toothache, $3.50 from Lee Foundation, Milwaukee).
Every now and then another doctor reports his discoveries of a similar nature. Here is Dr. Hunter McGuire Doles of Norfolk, Va. who lectured the Norfolk Cosmopolitan Club in connection with National Heart Month (February 1957), reported by Carl Cahill in newspaper releases.
Dr. Doles finds that a deficiency of Vitamin K lowers the prothrombin blood levels, predisposes us to coronary thrombosis. He finds that the general use of frozen vegetables creates a vitamin K deficiency where it was relatively non-existent. Coronary thrombosis jumped in 1933, after the first introduction of deep freeze foods, and has been increasing to the present, so that in 1955 it had jumped 3260% (thirty-two fold), in the state of Virginia.
Negroes were less affected than white persons. In Norfolk city the increase was 4510% from 1920 to 1956.
Dr. Doles said that since applying this information he has had only one patient experience a recurrence of a heart attack. He recommends the use of fresh or canned “spinach, cauliflower, cabbage, tomatoes, lettuce, collards, string beans and corn.” Canning does not destroy vitamin K (though it does destroy some other vitamins) as it is protected from oxidation by exposure to air which is the destructive influence to frozen foods Dr. Doles said that in six hours the use of fresh vegetables will take a patient out of danger. The estimation of the prothrombin level is the indicating method for determining the possibility of recurrent coronary attacks. Dr. Doles believes the prothrombin level of the blood is far more important than the cholesterol level, in predisposing to coronary disease. It is probable that the cholesterol excess (due in the main to the use of hydrogenated fats, having lost the protective vitamin F found in all natural oils), is more responsible for hypertension, cancer, gall bladder disease and arteriosclerosis. (See Applied Trophology, May 1957, for review on Cholesterol–free copy on request).
Dr. Doles said he was writing a book for presenting his findings to the public, to be available soon.
Dr. Ernest Klein of New York, of the Blood and Plasma division of University Hospital, Bellevue Medical Center was first to call attention to the low prothrombin time and the shortened coagulation time of potential victim of a coronary attack, reported in the New York Times, July 12, 1949. He was summarily discharged for his announcement of his findings, and the idea of a deficiency cause back of coronary disease ridiculed by his superiors. Dr. Klein later published his conclusions in Prevention magazine, “A New Theory of Diet and Coronary Thrombosis.” Both the Times article and the Prevention article are available on request from us as reprints.
We call attention to Dr. Doles’ statement that “synthetic vitamin K will not do the job like the vitamin in its natural form.” Alfalfa is a good vegetable source (other than corn silk), but loses its potency in 90 days by oxidation, unless protected by air. Evidently we had better get it in tomato juice, it is not lost in the bottle or can, where air is excluded completely.
To recall more on misinformed experts with authority, I might refer to the statement of a great nutritionist of his day, Dr. Graham Lusk, Professor of Physiology of Cornell University, an author of The Fundamental Basis of Nutrition (Yale University Press, 1914) where he, in his remarkable state of overeducated ignorance, believes that the only measure of a food is its calorie rating, comments:
“If, through the medium of the schools and the press, everyone knew that a man of sedentary occupation required 2,500 calories and a laboring man 3,000 calories and more, no one suffering from want would spend his money for a can of tomatoes which is little else than flavored water.”
He ridicules eggs as a food, since on the calorie rating, (Page 42) it would cost 24 dollars a day to feed a family. It is hard to realize how a college professor could become so completely brainwashed by self-hypnosis. It is fatal to give a plausible theory to an uncritical professor. He is as bad as the fellow with such an open mind that his brains fell out.
Mineral oil is known to block the assimilation of vitamin K (as well as that of other fat soluble vitamins) so there seems no doubt that the wide use of this once favorite laxative has taken a terrific toll in human life.1 The user a “Walking invitation to disaster” (See last issue of Vitamin News) as expressed by Dr. Hugh M. Sinclair of Oxford University in commenting on the vitamin F deficient patient. No wonder responsible corporations gracefully withdrew from all promotion of mineral oil back in 1933, after discovering some of the effects on their customers.
Vitamin K naturally occurs, like all other vitamins, as a complex vitamin, forms up to K5 now being known.2
One important characteristic of the K Complex is that it inhibits fungus and fermentation. In this way it protects us against such diseases as athlete’s foot and tooth decay. Raw sugar cane juice is a good source, and sugar cane is known definitely to prevent tooth decay.3
Editor’s note: Since the era in which this article was written, society’s understanding of respectful terminology when referring to ethnic and cultural groups has evolved, and some readers may be offended by references to “Negroes” and other out-of-date terminology. However, this article has been archived as a historical document, and so we have chosen to use Lee’s exact words in the interest of authenticity. No disrespect to any cultural or ethnic group is intended.
References Cited:
- The Vitamins, Eddy and Dalldorf, Sec. Ed. p. 439.
- Ann. Rev. Biochem., Vol. 18, p. 421.
- The Vitamins in Medicine, page 688, Bicknell and Prescott.