Vitamin Dependency

[Guest guest]

http://www.doctoryourself.com/dependency.html

 

The Body's Keen Need for Vitamins

 

 

VITAMIN DEPENDENCY

 

by Andrew W. Saul

 

(Editorial published in the Journal of Orthomolecular

Medicine, 2004. Vol. 19 No. 2, p. 67-70. Reprinted

with permission.)

 

" Man is a food-dependent creature. If you don't feed

him, he will die. If you feed him improperly, part of

him will die. " (Emanuel Cheraskin, MD, DMD)

 

Dependency is a fact of life. The human body is

dependent on food, water, sleep, and oxygen.

Additionally, its internal chemistry is absolutely

dependent on vitamins. Without adequate vitamin

intake, the body will sicken; virtually any prolonged

vitamin deficiency is fatal. Surely this constitutes a

dependency in the generally accepted sense of the

word.

 

Nutrient deficiency of long standing may create an

exaggerated need for the missing nutrient, a need not

met by dietary intakes or even by low-dose

supplementation. Recently (1), Robert P. Heaney, M.D.,

used the term " long latency deficiency diseases " to

describe illnesses that fit this description. He

writes:

 

" (I)nadequate intakes of many nutrients are now

recognized as contributing to several of the major

chronic diseases that affect the populations of the

industrialized nations. Often taking many years to

manifest themselves, these disease outcomes should be

thought of as long-latency deficiency diseases. . .

(I)nadequate intakes of specific nutrients may produce

more than one disease, may produce diseases by more

than one mechanism, and may require several years for

the consequent morbidity to be sufficiently evident to

be clinically recognizable as " disease. " Because the

intakes required to prevent many of the long-latency

disorders are higher than those required to prevent

the respective index diseases, recommendations based

solely on preventing the index diseases are no longer

biologically defensible. "

 

There are at least two key concepts presented here:

 

The first is, " Inadequate intakes of specific

nutrients may produce more than one disease. " This

exactly supports Dr. William Kaufman's statements to

this effect 55 years ago, when he wrote that, in

considering " different clinical entities one cannot

exclude the possibility that they may be caused by the

same etiologic agent, acting in different ways. For

example, in experimental animals, it has been shown

that the lack of a single essential nutrient can

produce a variety of dissimilar clinical disorders in

different individuals of the same species. . . (O)ne

might not suspect that the same etiologic factor, lack

of a specific essential nutrient, was responsible for

each of the various clinical syndromes of the same

tissue deficiency disease which is permitted to

develop at different rates in different individuals of

the same species. " (2)

 

While amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, progressive

muscular atrophy, progressive bulbar palsy, and

primary lateral sclerosis are not all the same

illness, they and the other neuromuscular diseases may

have a common basis: unacknowledged, untreated

long-term vitamin dependency. Therefore, each may

respond to an orthomolecular approach such as that

successfully used by Dr. Frederick R. Klenner (3) for

multiple sclerosis and myasthenia gravis, half a

century ago.

 

The second key point Dr. Heaney makes is that vitamin

" intakes required to prevent many of the long-latency

disorders are higher than those required to prevent

the respective index diseases. " This confirms Dr.

Abram Hoffer's observations to this effect some 40

years ago, when he treated prisoners of war presenting

severe, protracted nutrient deficiencies.

 

Dr. Hoffer wrote (4) that when released, after as much

as 44 months of captivity, " only 75 percent had

survived. They had lost about one-third of their body

weight. In camp they suffered from classical scurvy,

beriberi, pellagra, many infections, and from protein

and calorie deficiency. They were rehabilitated in

hospitals and were given doses of vitamins that were

then considered high. Since then these Hong Kong

veterans have suffered from a variety of physical and

psychiatric conditions. " However, " the history of a

small sample, about 12, is much different, for they

have been taking nicotinic acid (niacin) 3 grams per

day. These 12 have recovered and remain well as long

as they take this quantity of vitamin regularly.

 

" About 35 years ago (in the 1930s and 1940s) it was

reported that some chronic pellagrins required at

least 600 milligrams per day of vitamin B3 to prevent

the return of pellagra symptoms. This was astonishing

then and unexplainable since pellagra as a nicotinic

acid deficiency disease should have yielded to vitamin

(small) doses. Today the concept of vitamin-dependency

disease has developed. It is based upon the

realization that there is a much wider range of need

for nutrients than was believed to be true then.

 

" A person is said to be vitamin dependent if his

requirements for that vitamin are much greater

(perhaps 100-fold greater or more) than is the average

need for any population. The optimum need is that

quantity which maintains the subject in good health,

not that quantity which barely keeps him free of

pellagra. From this point of view the Hong Kong

veterans have become vitamin B-3 dependent as a result

of severe and prolonged malnutrition. It is likely

that any population similarly deprived of essential

nutrients for a long period of time will develop one

or more dependency conditions. "

 

Thirty years ago, in another paper (5), Dr. Hoffer

made this statement:

 

" The newer concept of vitamin-dependent disease

changes the emphasis from simply dietary manipulation

to consideration of the endogenous needs of the

organism. It comes within the field of orthomolecular

disease. . . The borderline between vitamin deficiency

and vitamin-dependency conditions is merely a

quantitative one when one considers prevention and

cure. " (p. 251)

 

The differentiation between deficiency and dependency

is dose. Every patient that was ever helped by

high-dose nutrient therapy lends support to the

concept of vitamin dependency. By the same token,

symptoms resulting from inappropriate and abrupt

termination of large doses of nutrients provide

equally good evidence for vitamin dependency. While

deprivation of low doses of vitamin C causes scurvy,

abrupt termination of high maintenance doses may cause

its own set of problems. Called " rebound scurvy, " this

includes classical scorbutic symptoms, as well as a

predictable relapse of illness that had already

responded to high-dose therapy.

 

Writes Robert F. Cathcart, M.D.:

 

" There is a certain dependency on ascorbic acid that a

patient acquires over a long period of time when he

takes large maintenance doses. Apparently, certain

metabolic reactions are facilitated by large amounts

of ascorbate and if the substance is suddenly

withdrawn, certain problems result such as a cold,

return of allergy, fatigue, etc. Mostly, these

problems are a return of problems the patient had

before taking the ascorbic acid. Patients have by this

time become so adjusted to feeling better that they

refuse to go without ascorbic acid. Patients do not

seem to acquire this dependency in the short time they

take doses to bowel tolerance to treat an acute

disease. Maintenance doses of 4 grams per day do not

seem to create a noticeable dependency. The majority

of patients who take over 10-15 grams of ascorbic acid

per day probably have certain metabolic needs for

ascorbate which exceed the universal human species

need. Patients with chronic allergies often take large

maintenance doses.

 

" The major problem feared by patients benefiting from

these large maintenance doses of ascorbic acid is that

they may be forced into a position where their body is

deprived of ascorbate during a period of great stress

such as emergency hospitalization. Physicians should

recognize the consequences of suddenly withdrawing

ascorbate under these circumstances and be prepared to

meet these increased metabolic needs for ascorbate in

even an unconscious patient. These consequences of

ascorbate depletion which may include shock, heart

attack, phlebitis, pneumonia, allergic reactions,

increased susceptibility to infection, etc., may be

averted only by ascorbate. Patients unable to take

large oral doses should be given intravenous

ascorbate. All hospitals should have supplies of large

amounts of ascorbate for intravenous use to meet this

need. " (6)

 

This need is especially serious for the cancer

patient, whose exceptionally positive response to

mega-ascorbate therapy, and dramatically negative

response to ascorbate deprivation, is the very picture

of vitamin dependency. Linus Pauling colleague Ewan

Cameron, M.D., wrote:

 

" Ascorbate, however administered, is rapidly excreted

in the urine, so that administration should be

continuous or at very frequent intervals. Furthermore,

exposure to high circulating levels of ascorbate

induces over-activity of certain hepatic enzymes

concerned with its degradation and metabolism. These

enzymes persist for some time after sudden cessation

of high intakes, resulting in depletion of circulating

levels of ascorbate to well below normal

unsupplemented values. This is known as the rebound

effect. It causes a sharp decrease in immunocompetence

and must be avoided in the cancer patient. Clinical

experience has shown that the best responses are

observed when vitamin C is administered intravenously,

so insuring a high plasma level. However, because

long-term continuous intravenous administration is

impractical, we recommend an initial intravenous

course of ten days duration, followed by continuous

maintenance oral regimen. " (7)

 

In short, the body only misses what it needs. That is

dependency.

 

The destructive consequences of alcohol and other

negative drug dependencies are taught in elementary

schools. At the same time, the consequences of

ignoring our positive nutrient dependencies go largely

undiscussed even in medical journals. Vitamin

dependencies induced by genetics, diet, drugs, or

illness are most often regarded as medical

curiosities. The Hoffer-Osmond discovery that

schizophrenics, forming about one or two percent of

the population, are dependent on multi-gram doses of

niacin, remains a psychiatric heresy. The Irwin

Stone-Linus Pauling idea of population-wide,

genetically-based hypoascorbemia has received negative

attention, when it has received any attention at all.

Yet, writes Dr. Emanuel Cheraskin, " hypovitaminosis C

is a very real and common, probably epidemic, problem

which clearly has not been properly viewed and surely

not adequately reported. " (8)

 

This is not a total surprise. It took decades for

medical acknowledgement that biotin and vitamin E are

actually essential to health.

 

Simple cause-and-effect micronutrient deficiency, a

doctrine long enamored of by the dietetic profession,

is not always sufficient to explain persistent

physician reports of megavitamin cures of a number of

diseases outside the classically accepted few. Perhaps

it is a law of orthomolecular therapy that the reason

one nutrient can cure so many different illnesses is

because a deficiency of one nutrient can cause many

different illnesses.

 

And if nutrient deficiency is basically about

inadequate intake, then dependency is essentially

about heightened need. As a dry sponge soaks up more

milk, so a sick body generally takes up higher vitamin

doses. The quantity of a nutritional supplement that

cures an illness indicates the patient's degree of

deficiency. It is therefore not a megadose of the

vitamin, but rather a megadeficiency of the nutrient

that we are dealing with. Orthomolecular practitioners

know that with therapeutic nutrition, you don't take

the amount that you believe ought to work; rather, you

take the amount that gets results. The first rule of

building a brick wall is that you have got to have

enough bricks. A sick body has exaggeratedly high

needs for many vitamins. We can either meet that need,

or else suffer unnecessarily.

 

Until the medical professions fully embrace

orthomolecular treatment, " medicine " might well be

said to be " the experimental study of what happens

when poisonous chemicals are placed into malnourished

human bodies. "

 

References:

 

1. Heaney RP: Long-latency deficiency disease:

insights from calcium and vitamin D. Am J Clin Nutr.

2003; Nov; 78(5):912-9.

 

2. Kaufman W: The common form of joint dysfunction:

Its incidence and treatment. Brattleboro, VT: E. L.

Hildreth and Co. 1949; Chapter 5.

http://www.doctoryourself.com/kaufman10.html .

 

3. Smith L: Vitamin C as a Fundamental Medicine:

Abstracts of Dr. Frederick R. Klenner, M.D.'s

Published and Unpublished Work. Tacoma, WA: Life

Sciences Press. 1988. Renamed in 1991: Clinical Guide

to the Use of Vitamin C: The Clinical Experiences of

Frederick R. Klenner, M.D.

 

4. Hoffer A: Editorial. J. Orthomolecular Psychiatry.

1974; Vol 3, No 1, p. 34-36.

 

5. Hoffer A: Mechanism of Action of Nicotinic Acid and

Nicotinamide in the Treatment of Schizophrenia. In:

Hawkins D and Pauling L: Orthomolecular Psychiatry:

Treatment of Schizophrenia. San Francisco: W.H.

Freeman. 1973; p. 202-262.

 

6. Cathcart RF: Vitamin C, titration to bowel

tolerance, anascorbemia, and acute induced scurvy. "

Medical Hypothesis. 1981; 7:1359-1376.

 

7. Cameron E: Protocol for the use of vitamin C in the

treatment of cancer. Medical Hypotheses. 1991;

36:190-194. Also: Cameron E: Protocol for the use of

intravenous vitamin C in the treatment of cancer. Palo

Alto, California: Linus Pauling Institute of Science

and Medicine. Undated, c.1986.

 

8. Cheraskin E: Vitamin C and fatigue. J.

Orthomolecular Medicine, 9:1, p 39-45, First Quarter, 1994.