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Well-Fed and Ill-Nourished
Published in Let’s Live, February 1, 1980.
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A graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (1935), John A. Myers, M.D. began his studies with an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins.
Dr. Myers is also coauthor, with Karl H. Schutte, Ph.D., of one of the classic works of nutritional science: Metabolic Aspects of Health–Nutritional Elements in Health and Disease.
Much time and effort has been expended to define what we call an “adequate diet.” The term “adequate diet” obviously refers to supplying the body with all the elements of nutrition that are required to keep it in a state of good health. The fact is, however, we do not actually know what constitutes an adequate diet. As Dr. Roger Williams points out: “There are at least 40 items that have been identified that enter into the formula that make up an adequate diet composed of amino acids and vitamins and minerals.”
The items of an adequate diet are easily supplied by eating a variety of foods after they are digested and assimilated. Digestion is a process that is well understood and most people have digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid in sufficient amount to completely digest the food that enters the stomach. We sometimes perform this digestion in a bottle in a laboratory. This type of digestion in a bottle is called an “artificial stomach.”
We find immediately that there is a great difference in the digestibility of food under the standardized conditions in the artificial stomach. Foods are prepared in various ways and fed to an animal or a person. At specific times the food is removed from the stomach after allowing it to digest for a certain length of time and its state of digestion is determined. It is then placed in the artificial stomach and further treated with more hydrochloric acid and pepsin to the point of complete digestion.
This experimentation shows that cooked food requires more digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid to digest the food than many people have available. Because of this decreased efficiency of digestion, an adequate diet becomes inadequate. The incompletely digested food cannot be absorbed from the intestine into the blood.
A group of elderly women living in a retirement home in the San Diego area went to their dentists with mouths and tongues so sore that they could not wear their dentures. The dentists, who were nutritionally-minded, immediately recognized the excoriated mucous membrane and irritated tongue as a vitamin B deficiency–pictures of which they had seen many times to illustrate the condition in their textbooks. They supplemented the patients’ diet with what they felt was an adequate B-complex, but without success. By a clever bit of intuitive thinking they added hydrochloric acid to the patients’ diet without the addition of the vitamin supplementation, and the patients became completely well.
The subjects of this experiment were elderly patients. Immediately one accepts this as an understandable situation for old people. I have found, however,that this is not only true for elderly people–it is also true for young people, and sometimes even babies. The conditions of early childhood known as colic, bloating, abdominal distress, alternate constipation and diarrhea, and an irritable disposition are frequently eliminated by the use of a digestive enzyme with hydrochloric acid. Sometimes the hydrochloric acid is too strong and too irritating for a child, and sometimes even for an adult. In these cases I use an equal part of vinegar and honey solution. Vinegar is 4 percent acetic acid.
In a paperback book entitled Folk Medicine by Dr. J. C. Jarvis, he made much of this honey-and-vinegar supplement to the diet. He also claimed great value for the potassium in apple cider vinegar. Without going into a detailed controversy, I would like to say that in my work the honey-and-vinegar has been a cheap and easy way of acidifying the pepsin in the stomach. It has served as an excellent help to children and adults of all ages to relieve indigestion, bloating and all the other symptoms of poor digestion.
This product is simple to make with equal parts of vinegar and honey. The honey is slowly poured into the vinegar and stirred into solution. If the vinegar tastes too strong and sour, more honey can be added to reduce the sourness. The solution is kept in the refrigerator and one or two tablespoonfuls are taken with each meal.
Strangely, I learned of the value of this procedure when I was very young. I attended a banquet where they served a quarter of a head of lettuce marinated in sweet pickle vinegar. I was amazed at the comfort I had from eating this salad. All my life I have had this severe bloating and indigestion after meals. Since then I have enjoyed hearts of lettuce salad with oil and vinegar known as Italian dressing.
This problem is not limited to the elderly. When babies belch and eructate their meals, it is amazing sometimes that a small amount of vinegar and sufficient honey to make it pleasing will completely eliminate this condition.
The production of hydrochloric acid in the stomach, one of the strongest mineral acids known, is a miracle of physiology. The dog has sufficient hydrochloric acid in his digestive system to be able to dissolve bones. You seldom hear of a dog having a gastric ulcer. However, our lay literature and television screens are constantly bombarded with antacids to prevent the “burning” sensation due to the hydrochloric acid in the stomach. This of course is to sell an antacid.
The fact is that the burning action is still present after the vagus nerve has been cut to prevent the secretion of acid into the stomach. The so-called “burning” of indigestion has nothing to do with hydrochloric acid. It has to do with a sympathetic nerve irritation and must be treated with the proper amino acids, vitamins, and minerals for its alleviation.
The “burning” that comes after a person has a gastric ulcer is an entirely different matter. When small areas of the protective mucus detach from the stomach wall and leave a bare surface called an “ulcer,” hydrochloric acid comes in contact with the nerves and muscles and carries on its digestive action as it should. But it is not the hydrochloric acid that burns a hole in this protective mucus. The small areas of protective mucus detach from the stomach wall because of the lack of vitamins and minerals to maintain the integrity of the mucus-secreting cells. The hydrochloric acid must be neutralized to prevent this type of pain and irritation in the ulcer.
After the food is digested it must be absorbed from the small intestine. Much experimental work shows that this is a variable action–some foods being easily absorbed and others poorly absorbed.
Fats, for instance, must be emulsified and made water-soluble. They must also be broken into smaller units.
Some minerals are absorbed only after chelation; that is, they have to be attached to an organic molecule before they can traverse the intestinal wall. There are times when this absorption process goes on in a very effective way. There are other times when it does not proceed well at all. What would be a normal diet suddenly produces diarrhea and hyperperistalsis, and the patient appears to be suffering from what looks like food poisoning.
As an example of my own experience, many years ago I attended several large dinner parties at the Surf Club in Miami Beach, Florida. After a beautiful day of relaxation on the beach, the golf course and tennis court, we would gather at the Surf Club about 9 p.m. Of course there was the usual round of cocktails before dinner, as well as previous rounds of them from 4 to 6 p.m. Guests would sit down to a sumptuous nine-course dinner around 10 p.m. in great glee and everyone in full dress for the dance after dinner.
About halfway through the dinner two or three people out of about twelve at our table would become ill. Being the doctor, I would have to take care of them–watching them vomit, settling their stomachs, and seeing them arrive home safely. This got to be a very distasteful and disturbing routine.
I decided that this situation revolved around the elimination of the digestive enzymes. By drinking sufficient alcohol this completely extracted the hydrochloric acid and pepsin from the intestinal mucosa. Three ounces of 7 percent alcohol is regularly used by doctors as a “test meal” to determine how much hydrochloric acid could be produced by these gastric secreting cells. These guests had much more alcohol than this. Consequently they had already performed the alcohol test meal on themselves probably several times before they sat down to dinner, and had used their digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid.
I decided to supply them with this deficient chemical. Before anyone sat down, I placed a digestive enzyme tablet called “Plurizyme” in front of everyone’s plate. About halfway through dinner I would announce that everyone should swallow the tablet. I never again had to take a sick person home.
Another illustration showing how anxiety disturbs the digestion occurs on airplanes. Many people are so frightened that their sympathetic nervous system will not allow the digestive system to function. They often regurgitate the undigested food that they have eaten.
I give them something to quiet their sympathetic nervous system and tell them to eat food and follow it with a digestive enzyme. It has never failed. And strangely, no one ever refused to take the material, even though they did not know I was a doctor.
At both ends of life digestion and absorption are frequently difficult. It is often necessary to help babies and elderly people with this problem of nutrition. One of the best things that I have found is predigested brewers yeast. This product was manufactured by a major brewing company, during the 1930s at the request of the Armed Services to supply a nutritional product that could be stored indefinitely in sealed cans and reconstituted when necessary with only water. In the First World War the British used small white potatoes, but these were stored in water. The aforementioned brewer produced this dehydrated nutritional yeast completely digested, under the name of Basamin. The name, of course, means “Basic Amino Acids.” This material, dissolved in water, produced a clear solution that looked like caramel soda. In this completely predigested state the product was absorbed almost as rapidly as if it were given by intravenous injection. I added it to the formulas of newborn babies with remarkable results. I also added it to the diet of elderly people. It was something that they could drink. The results were excellent.
The late Dr. Krause of the Washington University in St. Louis carried out the experimental tests for Basamin. It is difficult in nutritional experimentation of this kind to find examples that are spectacular enough to make claims of superiority for such a product. For this reason the FDA would not allow the company to make claims for a superior product so that they could charge a sufficient price to pay for its manufacture; and so, it disappeared from the market.
There is now a great need in our growing elderly population for an easily digested nutritional product. Because there are others on the market now, this old product is being renamed Autolyzed Yeast Extract to distinguish it from the rest. This product, I believe, will be one of the most satisfying foods for the sick, the bedridden in nursing homes, and anyone who needs to supplement his diet with easily absorbed total nutrition. The brewers yeast that is now available in the diet shops is not a substitute for this predigested nutritional yeast product. (For maker’s name, send S.A.S.E. to Let’s LIVE.)
It is important to remember that in developing the yeast from culture in a large vat of nutrient fluid, the brewer that originated it has to supply the trace elements necessary for the growth of this nutritional product. Therefore, when it is broken down into its basic parts it gives the patient a goodly supply of trace elements, amino acids, polypeptides and enzymes–all ready to be absorbed through the intestinal wall without modification or digestion.
The average values for amino acid and mineral analysis of the AYE (Autolyzed Yeast Extract)1
AMINO ACIDS | Grams % |
Alanine
Arginine Aspartic Acid Cystine Glutamic Acid Glycine Histidine Isoleucine Leucine Lysine Methionine Phenylalanine Proline Serine Threonine Tryptophan Tyrosine Valine |
5.3
0.9 7.1 0.6 9.1 3.3 1.6 3.4 4.6 5.0 1.1 2.7 2.5 3.0 2.5 1.1 1.8 3.8 |
MINERALS | In P.P.M. |
Aluminum
Boron Calcium Chromium Cobalt Copper Iron Magnesium Manganese Phosphorus Sodium Zinc Protein (N x 6.25) Carbohydrate Fat Ash Salt (as Cl.) Sodium |
5.17
5.27 792.00 1.74 1.73 9.71 60.90 .32% 12.90 2.20% .80% 100.80 75% 13% 1% 11% 0.3% 0.6% |
In my experience with babies this material added to the formula gave it a very deep meaty flavor and eliminated the sweet sugary taste that perverted the babies’ tastebuds. When this material was continued throughout their early years, these children did not like sweet products. They refused them. It was only in later years when birthday parties, cakes and ice cream became so prevalent that they developed a sweet tooth. The same is true of food for cats and dogs. Food that would be turned down by these animals would be quickly accepted when the Basamin powder was sprinkled over it: The animals seemed to go wild over the flavor.
One of the most spectacular cases came to me as a patient who had been operated on for cancer of her uterus. She was 54 years old and the surgery had been performed at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D. C. After the operation she was irradiated across her pelvis in back, and across her lower abdomen in front with deep X-ray.
Her skin was burned to leather. The radiation had affected her system so that her mouth was so swollen she could not open it to eat anything, and the saliva was so thick that her mouth seemed glued shut. Her left leg had developed phlebitis and was twice its normal size. She was a Christian Scientist and when her husband brought her to me, she still maintained that she could not take medication. I asked her if she would consider taking a nutritional product that had been prepared from natural yeast. She agreed that she could.
I dissolved three ounces of the dry Basamin powder in a glass of water and had her sip it through a straw. She swallowed with great difficulty, but said that it was satisfactory and caused her no difficulty in taste and flavor. I had her take this amount of Basamin five times a day, and within a month the leather-like condition of the skin of her abdomen and back had changed to almost normal. Her mouth was back to normal. She could now eat and swallow regular food, and the phlebitis of her left leg was down to about one-half its size. When she returned to the radiologists at George Washington University Hospital, they could not believe the remarkable changes that had taken place from using the Basamin.
It was Dr. Krause’s statement concerning his experiments at Washington University that no matter when or for what reason he gave Basamin to his elderly patients, it always improved their plasma protein level and their general nutrition. Elderly people who had previously refused to eat any more food would easily swallow this liquid Basamin and almost double their protein intake.
In short, it is one of the best products I have ever used in my practice, whether for a baby, an elderly person, or a sick person being rehabilitated. Used as supportive nutrition after surgery, plasma protein level is maintained without using blood transfusion. From infancy to old age–from the cradle to the grave, these basic amino acids obtained from hydrolyzed nutritional yeast serve as an excellent support to health both in normal growth and rehabilitation.
References Cited:
- Table Courtesy Anheuser-Busch, Inc.