Vitamins vs. Disease

[Guest guest]

[HH_Newsletter] Vitamins vs. Disease

 

 

http://doctoryourself.com/vitamin_disease.html

 

 

VITAMINS AGAINST DISEASE

Many persons want to know what scientific substantiation there is that

vitamins and diet can be as effective in treating illness as nature-cure

authorities maintain. In this article we will review some classic research

papers supporting vitamin therapies for curing disease. There is nothing new

about vitamin treatments, as I wish to demonstrate by including these

decades-old studies. Still, this information may be news to you, and almost

certainly will be news to most physicians.

 

Let's begin at the end, so to speak, and consider a paper that was

published in the Journal of the American College of Proctology before the second

world war entitled " Vitamins and Their Relationship to Deficiency Diseases of

the Alimentary Tract. " The author of this undated article, Edward A. Johnston,

M.D., says that vitamin deficiencies are usually multiple deficiencies, which

show up over a long period of time. " These deficiencies occur despite a balanced

diet, " says Dr. Johnston, " the balance of which is usually determined by older

knowledge of nutrition, and influenced by conditions in commercial preparation

and preservation. " This is what naturopaths have been saying for years: we eat

a lopsided diet of way too many processed, cooked, devitalized foods and we are

not going to get our vitamins from any balanced collection of such imbalanced

foods.

 

What does deficiency of this or that vitamin result in? Dr. Johnston

says that " Vitamin A deficiency, by its action of increasing epithelial

irritability and infectibility, can be an important factor in the cause of

ulcers " and that " other instances of vitamin A deficiency, are often found in

conjunction with infections of the intestinal tract, are infections of the eyes,

tonsils, sinuses, lungs, buccal and lingual mucosa, and the skin. " The eye,

ear, nose and throat specialist, or the allergist, may be a professional whose

job can be eliminated. Do your part to put them out of work by being sure you

get plentiful vitamin A. Fruits, salads, vegetables, and multiple vitamin

preparations will contain " A. "

 

As to the B-vitamins, the paper states: " Vitamin B deficiency can be

considered an important factor in the cause of hemorrhoids... The enlarged

flabby colon and esophagus are due to deficiency of B by its resulting loss of

muscle tonicity, partial failure of elimination, with obstipation as the end

result. " Loss of bowel action and the resulting constipation caused by

B-vitamin deficiency was also discussed by Dr. Louis Gross in 1924 in the

Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology in his paper, " The Effects of Vitamin

Deficient Diets on Rats, With Special Reference to the Motor Functions of the

Intestinal Tract In Vivo and In Vitro. " Dr. Gross noted that B-vitamin

deficiency also produces damage to kidneys, spleen, pancreas, testes, ovaries

and liver. Since so many persons have health problems centered in these areas,

we may reasonably suspect population wide vitamin B deficiency. Naturopathic

authorities suspect exactly this. B-vitamins are lost rapidly by the body when

it is under stress. Since most of us are indeed under stress, B-vitamin

deficiency is almost assured without supplementation. Dr. Johnston says:

 

“Cancer having a particular affinity for the rectal and intestinal tract

may be caused by a systemic deficiency, lowering the resistance to a point where

the degenerative process begins. Vitamin deficiencies may be a factor worthy of

consideration in infections, degenerations, and malignancies...The diet should

contain quantities of fresh vegetables, eaten as nearly in the natural state as

possible and few refined foods should be allowed in the regimen. Concentrates

of the vitamins are a valuable aid in correcting the acute stage in which the

patient is found when symptoms develop...I have had very good results in a

number of patients on a group vitamin concentrate tablet with all the vitamins

present. This is effective and is not too expensive to the patient. It

behooves every medical man to study and observe the merits of vitamin

therapy.E(p. 48)

 

This is nature-cure. Here is a doctor who researches vitamins, tries

vitamins, and cures with vitamins. Here's a doctor who prescribes whole, raw,

natural foods, and discourages refined foods. Yet there are so few medical

doctors who hear what he's saying, and fewer still who try the effective,

natural approach with their patients. This is another reason why you have to be

your own doctor: to make sure you and your family have the advantage of such

knowledge, you may have to apply it yourself. Then you decide.

 

B-complex vitamins and heart disease are discussed in a 1934 paper

entitled " Maintenance Nutrition in the Pigeon and its Relation to Heart Block "

by Cyril W. Carter of Oxford University. The graphs shown are particularly

interesting. B-vitamin deficiency seems to actually cause heart trouble,

because B-vitamins actually cured it. In one case, an eight-week long heart

block was cured in four days with B-vitamins; this was with a person, not a

pigeon. The same white rice, white flour diet that made experimental pigeons

sick also makes people sick. Whole grain foods (and not just naturally titled,

dark colored white flour breads and cereals) can reverse illnesses and prevent

illnesses.

 

Ever since Dr. Linus Pauling began publicizing the value of megadoses of

vitamin C in the early 1970's, there has been an undertone of medical suspicion

that vitamin C may cause kidney stones. Kidney stones (what doctors call " renal

calculi " ) can be cured by vitamin C, says Dr. William J. McCormick, M.D., of

Toronto, Canada. One among his many excellent papers appeared way back in 1946

in Medical Record, stating the following:

 

“I have observed that a cloudy urine, heavy with phosphates and

epithelium, is generally associated with a low vitamin C status, as determined

by titration with dichlorophenal-indophenol (Hoffmann-LaRoche); and that as soon

as corrective administration of the vitamin effects a normal ascorbic acid

(vitamin C) level the crystalline and organic sediment disappears like magic

from the urine. I have found that this change can usually be brought about in a

matter of hours by large doses of the vitamin, 500 to 2,000 mg, oral or

parenteral. " (p. 411)

 

This sediment or crystalline matter in the urine is what makes up kidney

stones. Please also note that 500 to 2,000 mg is much more than the U.S.

Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin C of 60 mg/day. The U.S. RDA is

not enough vitamin C. Dr. McCormick clearly indicates the need for large

quantities of this vitamin, not just a daily drink of orange juice.

 

In what might be seen as a display of almost too much therapeutic

versatility, Dr. McCormick also found that calcareous deposits of the eye and

cornea " may be cleared away in a few days by correction of vitamin C status, and

I find also that dental calculus (tartar on the teeth), which lays the

foundation for so much dental havoc, can be quickly suppressed and prevented by

an adequate intake of vitamin C. "

 

With vitamin C, " adequate " means abundant. Americans do not get abundant

amounts of any vitamin in their fast-food, convenience food, sugar-laden,

meat-and-starch, over-cooked diet. They certainly do not get much, if any,

vitamin C. Dr. McCormick believed, and not alone, that nine out of ten people

in this country are vitamin C deficient. In a 1954 paper, " Intervertebral-Disc

Lesions: A New Etiological Concept " printed in Archives of Pediatrics, Dr.

McCormick says:

 

“It would seem almost unbelievable that in this day and age, when fresh

fruits and vegetables are so plentiful, any of our population should be found

deficient in vitamin C; but during the last fifteen years of the writer's

practice as a nutritionist, more than 5,000 qualitative chemical tests for

vitamin C status in clinical cases have been made, and less than ten percent of

adult subjects have been found to be at optimal level in this respect. The

writer has found, in clinical and laboratory research, that the smoking of one

cigarette neutralizes in the body approximately 25 mg. of ascorbic acid, or the

equivalent of the vitamin C content of one average-size orange. On this

basis, the ability of the heavy smoker to maintain normal vitamin C status from

dietary sources is obviously questionable, and this alone may account for the

prevalence of vitamin C deficiency in our modern adult population.E(p. 32-33)

 

Note that Dr. McCormick said this in 1954, at a time when physicians were

literally endorsing cigarettes in magazines and on TV commercials.

 

It is important to keep in mind that non-smokers are subjected to

cigarette smoke also, in homes and public places, and that air pollutants and

stress also cause the body to lose quantities of vitamin C.

 

Can this widespread deficiency of vitamin C be behind more than just

kidney stones? Dr. McCormick says yes, for he thinks that calculi in other

parts of the body can be cleared up by plenty of vitamin C, including those in

the biliary tract (gallstones), the pancreas, tonsils, appendix, mammary glands,

uterus, ovaries, prostate and " even the calcareous deposits in

arteriosclerosis. " Think of the surgery that could be avoided here.

 

This is just the beginning. In his series of papers, Dr. McCormick

further demonstrated that vitamin C deficiency is the essential cause of

numerous communicable illnesses. Let's consider " The Changing Incidence and

Mortality of Infectious Disease in Relation to Changed Trends in Nutrition " from

Medical Record, September 1947. Citing mortality tables as early as 1840, it is

shown that tuberculosis, pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping cough,

rheumatic fever, typhoid fever and more are due to vitamin C deficiency brought

about by poor nutrition. It is shown in graphs that the mortality rate for

these diseases decreased over the years regardless of immunization, inoculation

or medication. The rate of decline in death rate for almost every disease cited

was about as fast before immunization as it was after immunization. Public

health records show that by the time inoculations became available, few people

were dying of these diseases anyway. Dr. Howard H. Hillemann (1960) drew

similar conclusions in " The Illusion of American Health and Longevity " published

in Clinical Physiology. He showed that polio was already almost eliminated

before polio vaccine was available.

 

Vitamin C seems to be especially important. Perhaps we can see a lack of

vitamin C as the basic cause of kidney stones and such, but what of plentiful

supply of vitamin C as the basic cure for the named infectious diseases? Can we

say that disease trends in history might be understood as waves of lack of, or

waves of abundant intake of vitamin C? Apparently we can.

 

Dr. McCormick explains vitamin C's properties and says that " by reason of

its chemical action as a reducing agent, and sometimes as an oxidizing agent,

vitamin C is also a specific antagonist of chemical and bacterial toxins. "

Furthermore, in " Ascorbic Acid as a Chemotherapeutic Agent " (McCormick, 1952) he

states:

 

" Vitamin C is known to play an essential part in the oxidation-reduction

system of tissue respiration and to contribute to the development of antibodies

and the neutralization of toxins in the building of natural immunity to

infectious diseases. There is a very potent chemotherapeutic action of ascorbic

acid when given in massive repeated doses, 500 to 1,000 mg. (hourly), preferably

intravenously or intramuscularly. When thus administered the effect in acute

infectious processes is favorably comparable to that of the sulfonamides or the

mycelial antibiotics, but with the great advantage of complete freedom from

toxic or allergic reactions. " (p. 151)

 

There is increasing evidence that vitamin C in large, frequent doses can

effect cure of what are usually called infectious diseases. To establish that

these diseases are actually vitamin C deficiency diseases, though, we should be

able to prevent them by regular, abundant supply of the vitamin. This is

exactly what can be done. Dr. McCormick states:

 

" Once the acute febrile or toxic stage of an infectious disease is brought

under control by massive ascorbic acid administration, a relatively small

maintenance dose of the vitamin will be adequate in most cases to prevent

relapses, just as in fire protection small chemical extinguishers may be

adequate to prevent fires in their incipiency, whereas when large fires have

developed, water from large high-pressure fire hoses becomes necessary. " (p.

152)

 

Here is an excellent example of preventive health care, and very powerful

prevention at that, by using a vitamin. Vitamin C isn't just for colds any

more. We're talking here of nothing less than the cure and prevention of serious

illness with a vitamin that anyone can buy and take on their own.

 

And we're not going to stop there. We're going to take on the biggest

killers of modern times: heart disease and cancer. Can they be conquered?

Consider this summary of facts brought out by Dr. McCormick in the papers cited

above, and from " Coronary Thrombosis: A New Concept of Mechanism and Etiology "

(McCormick, 1957):

 

1.) Four out of five coronary cases in hospitals show vitamin C

deficiency.

 

2.) Cancer patients have vitamin C deficiency averaging 4,500 mg.

 

3.) Smoking is known to predispose a body for cancer and heart disease;

smoking is also known to rob the body of its vitamin C.

 

4.) The symptoms of classic vitamin C deficiency disease, called scurvy,

are identical with the symptoms of some types of leukemia and other forms

cancer.

 

Scurvy is generally supposed to be extinct. Yet cancer is all too

prevalent today, and the signs in development of cancer and scurvy are similar.

Can they be the same disease under different names? In " Have We Forgotten the

Lesson of Scurvy " (1962), Dr. McCormick reviews the literature in this regard:

 

" As long ago as 1609, Martini cited by (scurvy research pioneer) Lind

stated that scurvy is nearly allied to the plague, as it occasions carbuncles,

buboes and cancer. In an effort to clarify this relationship we published two

papers in which we advanced the hypothesis that deficiency of vitamin C, by

bringing about disintegration of epithelial and connective tissue relationships,

owing to liquefaction of the intercellular cement substance collagen) and

disintegration of the connective tissue of the basement membrane, results in

breakdown of orderly cellular arrangement, thus acting as a prelude to cancer. "

(p. 5)

 

After citing the work of eleven more researchers, Dr. McCormick says:

 

" Our major effort should be directed toward prevention of the cause of the

cellular disarrangement - collagenous breakdown of epithelial and subepithelial

connective tissues - as manifested in open sores or fissures that fail to heal

readily, and unusual or easily produced hemorrhage. Such lesions may be early

warning signs of future cancer. They likewise are early signs of scurvy. " (p.

10)

 

He also cites a description of leukemia from a 1905 edition of

Northnagel's Encyclopedia of Practical Medicine which, curiously enough, equated

leukemia and scurvy.

 

In short, we may be a nation suffering from a scurvy epidemic under the

current name of cancer. The symptoms, progress and results of the two diseases

are the same: the cause is the same (vitamin C deficiency); the treatment of

each is the same: vitamin C in large quantity. If all this is true, then cancer

patients should get better when treated with large doses of " C. "

 

They do. Dr. Linus Pauling (1976, 1986), Nobel prize-winning chemist,

researcher, and author collaborated with cancer surgeon Ewan Cameron, M.D.

(1973, 1993) in directing the treatment of patients with very great quantities

of vitamin C with very great results. An undated letter in my possession from

the Linus Pauling Institute says:

 

" Our work on nutrition and cancer, in collaboration with Vale of Leven

Hospital in Scotland, is showing significant promise. We recently reported

that daily ingestion of 10 grams (10,000 mg.) or more of vitamin C extends and

improves the quality of life of patients with terminal cancer. These studies,

published in the October, 1976 issue of The Proceedings of The National Academy

of Sciences, are based on a comparison of 100 patients with advanced cancer who

received 10 grams of sodium ascorbate (vitamin C) per day - and 1,000 other

patients, ten matched controls for each of the ascorbate-treated patients (same

kind of cancer, same age, same sex). The 1,000 control patients were given the

same treatment as the ascorbate-treated patients except they did not receive

vitamin C. The ascorbate-treated patients have lived, on the average, over five

times as long as the matched control patients. Although all 1,000 controls have

died, thirteen of the 100 ascorbate-treated patients are still alive and seem to

be free of the disease. "

 

Thirteen out of one hundred may not seem like a staggering number, but

that would have been 130 out of a thousand, or 130,000 out of a million. Also

bear in mind that Ivan Illich says in Medical Nemesis (1977) that there is no

significant increase in survival rate for most cancer patients with conventional

medical or surgical treatment. The five year survival rate for most cancer

patients is unaffected by any medical therapy; it is the same whether they are

treated or not. With vitamin C, we appear to have what may be, statistically,

the most effective known cure for cancer. " Dr. Pauling believes that the death

rate from cancer in the United States can fall from twenty per cent of all

deaths to only two percent, " says the Institute.

 

What vitamin researchers seem to keep finding is that if a deficiency of

one or more vitamins causes a disease, the plentiful administration of that same

vitamin or vitamins will cure the disease. That makes sense. More important,

this theory is proven by its clinical success. Surely that's the best part of

any research: when it works, when people get well.

 

One of the functions of vitamin C, in addition to keeping your cells

together, is to maximize " the oxygen-carrying capacity of red (blood) cells so

the heart is called upon to do much less work, " says Dr. Royal Lee in the

undated pamphlet " Clinical Nutrition: Food vs. Drugs. " It is interesting that

vitamin E has a similar effect: it increases oxygen availability to the heart.

If that's true, one might expect vitamin E deficiency to cause heart trouble.

Evidently it does, and " 122 independent reports have been published in the

world's medical journals in support of vitamin E " according to an uncredited

article in Popular Science Digest... from 1953!

 

Wilfrid and Evan Shute, both medical doctors, with Dr. Arthur Vogelsang,

traced a national vitamin E deficiency back to the turn of the century when the

milling of flour and consumption of this and other refined foods increased

greatly. They saw an increase of heart disease parallel the increase of refined

foods. In Coronet there appeared an article by J. D. Ratcliff (1948) entitled

" For Heart Disease: Vitamin E " that described this work.

 

" The Shutes and Vogelsang note that heart disease is almost unknown among

primitive peoples - until they start eating civilized man's food. Further, they

emphasize that in 1910 - before our national diet had become too refined - heart

disease was the fourth cause of death instead of the first as it is today

(1948); and that the rate of heart deaths is up 250 per cent in this period. "

(p. 31)

 

The Shutes described this phenomenon in their books, particularly in

Vitamin E for Ailing and Healthy Hearts (1969). The more refined, de-natured

foods eaten, the more heart disease. And what is refined out? Among other

things, the vitamin E that helps keep the heart prospering, and you alive.

 

Since the 1940's, cardiovascular disease has continued to be our biggest

killer disease. But also since then, certain doctors have treated tens of

thousands of coronary patients with vitamin E. Drs. Wilfrid and Evan Shute have

personally supervised vitamin E therapy for over 30,000 heart patients, making

them the world's most experienced cardiologists. You would think that the

medical profession would be most enthusiastic about their success with vitamin

therapy.

 

That has not been the case. The Canadian, British, and American Medical

Associations have not voiced serious support for vitamin E against heart

disease. Why not? " The Fight Over Vitamin E " (Hutton, 1953) discusses the early

stages of the controversy in detail. The article also expands on vitamin E's

therapeutic uses:

 

" The Shutes' theory about vitamin E is this: it is not specifically a

heart medication... The chief effect of vitamin E is to reduce the amount of

oxygen which the cells and tissues of the body and its organs require for

efficient, healthy functioning. Heart diseases happen to be the most dramatic

example of the result of vitamin E deprivation, and vitamin E's effect, simply

stated, is to condition the tissues involved so that they are able to function

normally, or at any rate to survive, on the greatly reduced amount of oxygen

available to them when a coronary clot cuts down the oxygen-bearing blood supply

reaching them. The Shutes' and other investigators claim it is effective in a

wide variety of other conditions: burns, wounds, radiation damage, gangrene,

ulceration, phlebitis... diabetes and its complications, nephritis, eye

diseases, psychoses, post-surgical shock, plastic surgery and

post-poliomyelitis. " (p. 4)

 

Much controversy comes out of the wide application that these scientists

claim for vitamin E. However: A nutritional substance that cures many ills is

a substance whose deficiency causes many ills. This is the case with any

vitamin deficiency: the deficiency of one vitamin may show up as many different

disease symptoms. One person lacking in vitamin E may develop arteriosclerosis;

another may develop diabetic gangrene; another might just have poor skin;

another might drop dead of heart attack. This is because a vitamin is important

for the entire organism, in all its organs and functions. No vitamin works just

in or for the heart or any one sector. Each vitamin is essential to total body

health, and all the vitamins collectively are needed for freedom from disease.

 

Copyright C 1999 and prior years Andrew W. Saul. From the books DOCTOR

YOURSELF, QUACK DOCTOR and PAPERBACK CLINIC, available from Dr. Andrew Saul,

Number 8 Van Buren Street, Holley, New York 14470.