Vitamin B Notes to Date

A year ago in these pages attention was called to the fact that a deficiency of Vitamin B resulted in such reactions as enlargement and undoubted malfunction of a list of organs including adrenals, thyroid, thymus, pancreas, gonads, spleen, heart, liver, kidneys, stomach and brain.

The effect on the pancreas was further discussed in the May 15th issue, showing that a deficiency of Vitamin B can cause diabetes mellitus and that an improvement usually follows the use of concentrates of that vitamin.

The enlargement of spleen, stomach and heart because of “B” deficiency is explainable on the grounds of muscular dystrophy, known to be a specific consequence of “B” deficiency. It is that muscular weakness of the stomach walls that causes the lack of appetite in the “B”-deficiency child. The spleen has recently been demonstrated to be (before senile atrophy) a muscular organ acting as a reservoir for blood, so that a loss of muscle tone in that organ can act to cause its enlargement as well as a loss of vascular and tissue tone that is dependent upon such an “elastic” reservoir, not to speak of the loss of vascular tone due to the direct action of the deficiency on the muscular layer of the vessel walls.

The intestinal walls also lose their contractile power in “B” deficiency with resultant constipation and stagnation. The flow of digestive juices is inhibited. (Pernicious anemia can be brought on mainly because of degeneration of the blood forming tissues in the bone marrow.) In Vitamin B deficiency in rats “Marrow elements are destroyed and replaced by reticular tissue supporting widely dilated congested blood vessels” (Shipley, McCollum and Simmonds, Journal of Biological Chemistry, 49, 399).

There is some mutual action between Vitamin B and Vitamin E. Too much “B” (yeast extract) has been demonstrated to be a cause of sterility in rats. Too much “E” (spinach extract) has been known to cause anemia. Probably these two vitamins each require the complementary presence of the other in metabolism, and overdosage of one without the other can thereby cause an acute deficiency of the missing principle.

We have had reports of cases in which our “B” concentrate caused such vascular contraction as to produce coldness of extremities and contraction of the pupils. Normal persons have no such reaction, and in all probability it is due to deficiency of some cooperative principle, possibly “E.”

Hyperthyroidea causes an excessive requirement for Vitamin B (Cowgill). Possibly this is because of the pancreatic demand, in that more oxidation of carbohydrate requires an increased pancreatic secretion, which we have seen is dependent on the “B” intake. At any rate it is well established that the “B” requirement is parallel with the metabolic rate.

The dietary habits of recent times, in which we ingest large amounts of carbohydrates–white flour and refined sugar–without the Vitamin B necessary to the normal assimilation of the carbohydrates has without reasonable question been the basic cause of the constantly increasing incidence of diabetes mellitus in all civilized countries.

White flour and refined sugar, lacking Vitamin B and the minerals they once contained, cannot be considered fit foods either for the adult or child. The sale and use of such foods is excusable, if at all, only on the grounds of ignorance. The crime is particularly inexcusable because of the irreparable nature of the pathology produced. Dental caries, maldevelopment of bone–80 % of rickets is due to the phosphate deficiency (occurring because of our failure to include in the diet the outer portions of cereals) according to a London laboratory report–low resistance to infective disease (that causes often a permanent endocrine disorder), stunting and delay of growth, heart pathology starting as muscular weakness, arteriosclerosis and other pathologies due to the excessive accumulation of calcium carbonate in the tissues (otherwise prevented by the phosphates lost in flour milling), to say nothing of the diseases directly due to disorders and malfunction of any one of the list of organs given at the beginning of this paper, that could occupy volumes, were we to go into detail.

The facts are becoming so obvious that it is incredible that there should be such an apathetic attitude shown by the general public toward the situation. New laws are urgently needed for the protection of all against the minority who find it necessary because of competitive conditions to denature food products–not exactly for profit, but because if they do not, they will soon be bankrupt. A higher price is necessary to cover losses due to the greater perishability, and unless we have uniform laws requiring all to maintain the same standard, the business will go to those who denature, bleach and refine their products to prevent loss and quote a lower price.

The low price certainly fails to benefit the consumer who pays ten or a hundred times the amount saved for medical services, and has his life shortened fifteen or twenty years besides.