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" Andrew W. Saul " <drsaul

DOCTOR YOURSELF Newsletter (Vol. 6, No. 3, February, 2006)

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 14:53:16 -0500

 

 

 

To for free: dy-update-

 

 

 

" I get up each morning, dust off my wits; Pick up my paper, and read

the " Obits. "

 

If my name is missing, I know I'm not dead. So I eat a good breakfast,

and go back to bed. "

 

(Author unknown)

 

 

 

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER (Vol. 6, No. 3, February, 2006)

 

" Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A. "

 

 

 

Copyright 2006 by Andrew W. Saul of http://www.doctoryourself.com ,

which now welcomes nearly two million visitors annually. Commercial

use of the website or the contents of this Newsletter is strictly

prohibited.

 

 

 

IN THIS ISSUE:

 

 

 

1) VITAMIN THERAPY CENSORSHIP

 

2) SELECTIVE REPORTING OF MEDICAL SCIENCE?

 

3) VITAMIN THERAPY BOOKS BY WILLIAM KAUFMAN, M.D.

 

4) FEATURE: INTERVIEW with DR. BRUCE NATHAN AMES

 

5) FIBROIDS, CANCER AND IODINE DEFICIENCY

 

6) WELLNESS CONFERENCE

 

7) Book Review: ADVENTURES IN PSYCHIATRY

 

 

 

 

 

VITAMIN THERAPY CENSORSHIP

 

It's real, and it's in America right now. The taxpayer-funded US

National Library of Medicine still refuses to index the Journal of

Orthomolecular Medicine on MEDLINE, even though the Journal has

published the work of Linus Pauling and other major orthomolecular

(megavitamin nutrition) scientists for nearly forty years.

 

 

 

Read the whole sordid story at the newest webpage at

DoctorYourself.com:

 

http://doctoryourself.com/medline.html (And, for some real fun, be

sure to scroll down that page a ways and read about our famous, our

one-and-only MEDLINE COMEDY CONTEST.)

 

 

 

Here is what one scientist thinks of MEDLINE's bias:

 

 

 

SELECTIVE REPORTING OF MEDICAL SCIENCE?

 

 

 

(BMJ, Rapid Response, 27 December 2005

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/331/7531/1487 )

 

Steve Hickey, PhD

 

Department of Biological Sciences, Metropolitan University of

Manchester

 

Reprinted with the author's permission.

 

 

 

Pubmed may be giving doctors a biased view of the progress of medical

science. Recently, I presented a paper, on the microevolutionary model

of cancer, to a meeting of the British Society for Ecological Medicine

(BSEM), at the Royal College of General Practitioners in London.

Afterwards, I happed to mention that I was looking into claims of bias

in the selection of journals for indexing by Medline. I gave the

example of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine (JOM). Although this

journal has included papers by leading scientists and physicians, it

has not yet been indexed, despite numerous applications to Medline. Dr

Abram Hoffer, editor of JOM for over 35 years, believes this is a

clear example of censorship in medicine.

 

 

 

Considering the widespread interest in nutrition and medicine, and the

status of many of the journal's contributors, JOM should be indexed

because of its relevance to medical science. However, the decision to

index a journal is based on selection by a panel, which appears to be

privately appointed. Furthermore, the procedure lacks a set of

published and objective criteria.

 

 

 

I was unable to obtain a viable reason for the rejection of JOM from

the US National Library of Medicine. The ostensible reason was

weakness of scientific content, which may be considered an inaccurate

explanation, given the list of currently indexed magazines. These

include many that would claim little scientific content, such as Time

magazine, Newsweek, the Indian Journal of American Studies, and the

Kansas Historical Quarterly. My offer to demonstrate the relevance of

JOM to the medical profession, by providing an application signed by

several thousand physicians, medical professionals and scientists, was

not accepted.

 

 

 

Coincidentally, BSEM members told me that they had just had a meeting

to discuss a second Medline rejection of the Journal of Nutritional

and Environmental Medicine. They implied that a further application

for indexing would be a waste of time, as their impression was that

the selection process was biased against nutritional approaches to

treatment.

 

 

 

Fortunately, this bias is less worrying than it might once have been,

as Medline and Pubmed are gradually becoming redundant. These once

definitive sources of information appear to be in the process of being

replaced by Google Scholar, which is more open and covers a greater

depth of scientific journals. At the time of writing, a search on

Pubmed for the word " orthomolecular " generates 213 papers. Google

Scholar yields 841 papers, while a standard Google search produces

228,000 responses.

 

 

 

DOCTOR YOURSELF ACTION TIP: If you would like to help fight for free

user access to ALL nutritional research (and not just the wimpy

low-dose stuff) please drop me a line at drsaul .

 

 

 

 

 

RARE VITAMIN THERAPY BOOKS BY WILLIAM KAUFMAN, M.D.

 

Out of print for over 50 years, the last remaining examples of each of

Dr. William Kaufman's two rare, self-published nutrition books are now

available for purchase.

 

 

 

Through the courtesy of the Kaufman estate, DoctorYourself.com is

pleased to have acquired and exclusively offer these unique

collectors' items to its interested readers and patrons.

 

 

 

THE COMMON FORM OF JOINT DYSFUNCTION centers on Dr. Kaufman's very

extensive, and very successful, clinical experience using megadoses of

vitamin B-3 to fight severe arthritis. Each of these very rare 1949

hardcover books is in mint condition, individually sealed in its

unopened original box, just as it came from E.L. Hildreth and Co.,

Brattleboro, Vermont. The Common Form of Joint Dysfunction is 228

pages in length. The last time I knew of this book being offered for

sale, the price was over $90.

 

 

 

In the interest of my readership, I have decided to make them

available for only $29.95, plus shipping and handling, to USA

addresses. (If you live outside the US, please see

http://www.doctoryourself.com/order.html for international orders.)

 

 

 

I also have a limited number of examples of Dr. Kaufman's even

lesser-known, and even older, book on B-3 (niacin or niacinamide),

entitled THE COMMON FORM OF NIACIN AMIDE DEFICIENCY DISEASE:

ANIACINAMIDOSIS. Each one is likewise in mint condition, in a sealed

and unopened original box, just as it came from the Yale University

Press in 1943. The Common Form of Niacin Amide Deficiency is 62 pages,

hardcover. It too is now offered at $29.95, plus shipping and handling.

 

 

 

While I have ample quantities available of my own books, DOCTOR

YOURSELF ( http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html ) and the new

one, FIRE YOUR DOCTOR!, ( http://www.doctoryourself.com/fyd.html ), I

have rather few of these genuinely historic volumes by Dr. Kaufman,

one of the great vitamin therapy pioneers. I therefore ask, if you are

interested in purchasing either or both, that you first reserve your

copies by emailing me at drsaul .

 

 

 

TO ORDER, please go to http://www.doctoryourself.com/order.html

 

 

 

For more about Dr. Kaufman and Niacin(amide) therapy for Arthritis:

 

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

 

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

 

http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v2n13.txt

 

http://www.doctoryourself.com/JOM1.html

 

and

 

http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v3n16.txt (towards the end)

 

 

 

 

 

THE DOCTOR YOURSELF INTERVIEW:

 

DR. BRUCE NATHAN AMES

 

 

 

Bruce Ames, PhD, is 78 years young and he is quite certain that good

nutrition has kept him that way. Dr. Ames, Professor in the Division

of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California

at Berkeley, has research interests that seem to closely coincide with

those of this Newsletter's regular readers. " Inadequate intakes of

vitamins and minerals (less than 50% of the RDA) are very common, "

says his UC Berkley webpage, adding that " inadequate intake of folate,

B12, or B6 leads to chromosome breaks " just as if radiation caused

those breaks.

 

( http://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/BMB/amesb.html ) In addition to

emphasizing the dangers of zinc deficiencies in men, and iron

deficiencies in women, Dr. Ames is an advocate of supplemental

alpha-lipoic acid and acetyl-L-carnitine, and supports the use of high

therapeutic doses of B-vitamins.

 

 

 

Dr. Ames is also a senior scientist on the staff of Children's

Hospital Oakland Research Institute, with over 500 publications to his

name. The very often-quoted, and very busy professor kindly agreed to

this special interview conducted by Doctor Yourself Newsletter Editor

Andrew Saul, which is presented below in edited form.

 

 

 

DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWS: Dr. Ames, I am especially interested your

thoughts on our often-overlooked need for nutrients. How bad is the

Standard American Diet?

 

 

 

Dr. BRUCE AMES: When you drink a soft drink, you get 10 teaspoons of

sugar and no vitamins. Obesity is an epidemic. A third of the children

coming into Children's Hospital where I work now are clinically obese.

The problem is worse in the poorer populations, chiefly Black and

Hispanic. Obese people are at the bottom of the heap for icronutrients

because they are eating this lousy diet. And, obese people are

inflamed. The gut has all that food fuel, and a lack of

micronutrients, which encourages the bad bacteria, the clostridium and

others that overwhelm and give you inflammation, and then the bad

bacteria start leaking through. "

 

DY NEWS: New government-sponsored food recommendations call for nine

or ten servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Yet their seems to be

trouble getting people to eat five. What's wrong?

 

AMES: There has been the least success with the poor. It all depends

on thinking long-term. The problem is getting people to eat good

diets. It is a struggle. So, I recommend taking a multivitamin as

insurance. Everybody in the world should take a daily multivitamin.

Many nutritionists don't like that. But you need both good diet and

nutritional insurance. My interest is preventive medicine.

 

 

 

DY NEWS: Government-sponsored nutrient levels, such as the RDA and

DRI, have been widely criticized as being too low. What specific

changes in these recommended levels would you support?

 

AMES: People are not even getting the current RDAs. I think some of

the recommended levels might go up a bit, especially the B-vitamins,

when we start to learn more about long-term damage.

 

DY NEWS: What are some of the major health problems caused by

micronutrient deficiency?

 

 

 

AMES: Deficiency causes so much harm. For example, folic acid

deficiency breaks chromosomes. If you do not have enough

micronutrients, you are aging yourself fast. Whatever micronutrient

group you look at, some group is low in it. A quarter of menstruating

women are getting less than half the RDA of iron. Half of the poor

used to take in less than half the RDA of folate, before folate

fortification of flour in the U.S.. I think the first priority

is getting the poor and obese up to the RDA for the vitamins and

minerals.

And the cost of supplements? They are really cheap.

 

DY NEWS: What aspects of high-dose nutrient therapy show most promise,

in your opinion?

 

AMES: There are diseases that are curable by high B-vitamins. We've

found 50 different genetic diseases where some doctor had shown that

you can reverse the disease by feeding a high dose of B-vitamin. A

high dose of a B-vitamin does raise the corresponding coenzyme level,

as we have found.

 

DY NEWS: And as for B-vitamin safety?

 

AMES: You can take 50 times the RDA of most B-vitamins, though I don't

recommend that, they are safe. I may need more of a B-vitamin than you

do. Roger J. Williams and Linus Pauling had the idea but never really

showed that you could raise coenzyme levels, which I think is the

mechanism of the effect.

 

DY NEWS: What quantities of supplemental nutrients do you personally

take daily?

 

AMES: I take a multivitamin every day. Also, they do not have enough

calcium or magnesium, so I take extra. I also eat a good diet.

 

DY NEWS: What public health improvements might result from all

Americans taking nutritional supplements?

 

AMES: Particularly if you could get the poor to do it, you would see a

considerable decrease in medical bills, and an increase in health and

life expectancy. You'd get less degenerative disease of all sorts.

 

DY NEWS: Years ago, I showed my college classes some video footage of

you being interviewed on national television. You were speaking about

what really causes cancer.

 

AMES: People think cancer is due to some external toxin. But in fact,

most of the cancers are due to the lousy diets people are eating, or

their smoking. Smoking depletes all your vitamin C. It also depletes a

number of other micronutrients.

 

DY NEWS: So would you say that, rather than focus on very small

amounts of toxic chemicals, we should look at the fact that we are

malnourished?

 

AMES: Right.

 

DY NEWS: And that is probably what is really causing cancer?

 

That's my guess, yes. If you scare people about a thousand

hypothetical minor risks, nobody knows what is important anymore.

 

DY NEWS: A well-publicized 1998 study was presented to the public as a

claim that vitamin C is harmful to DNA. Your thoughts, please?

 

AMES: That was a lousy experiment. I know that paper. The epidemiology

was not good, and the science wasn't good. It was way over-hyped.

 

DY NEWS: Do you take extra vitamin C?

 

AMES: When I get a cold, or when I feel one coming on, I suck 500mg

vitamin C pills frequently. When your white blood cells are fighting,

they need a little help.

 

DY NEWS: So a sick body needs more vitamin C?

 

AMES: Yes, as inflammation uses it up.

 

DY NEWS: What about vitamin C as a treatment for cancer?

 

AMES: The Cameron-Pauling studies claimed to cure cancer. Moertel at

the Mayo Clinic " repeated " the study and said they did not see any

effect, but they gave the vitamin orally. The Cameron-Pauling study

injected the vitamin C, and that makes a big difference. You can get

really high blood levels of vitamin C when you inject it, and when you

feed it you can't get it that high. High doses will kill tumor cells

preferentially. I think there is going to be a new interest in using

vitamin C against cancer.

 

DY NEWS: A recent meta-analysis more than suggests that high doses of

vitamin E are actually harmful. Your comments?

 

AMES: I think all that was exaggerated a bit. There are a lot of

things wrong with some of those negative vitamin E analyses. It is

best to take the natural vitamin E, with gamma tocopherol, as well as

the d-alpha tocopherol.

A mixed natural vitamin E, 200-400 IU per day, is a good idea. An

excellent website is the Linus Pauling Institute. (

http://lpi.oregonstate.edu )

They have very good people running a very good site discussing each of

the micronutrients.

 

DY NEWS: How long have you been at UC Berkeley?

 

AMES: Since 1968; 37 years.

 

DY NEWS: How many graduate students do you supervise?

 

AMES: Currently one, plus a dozen postdoc's and a couple of

physicians. "

 

DY NEWS: Would you please comment on the Juvenon company

 

( http://www.juvenon.com/about/scientific.htm ) and your interest in

its products?

 

AMES: I founded Juvenon; all my stock is in a non-profit foundation

and Juvenon profits fund clinical trials. I get no money from Juvenon

at all. We demonstrated wonders for decayed mitochondria in old rats,

and for cognition and energy level in the rats. There has been one

successful clinical trial so far in people, and hopefully more to

come. The two mitochondrial biochemicals in the product are

acety-L-carnitine and alpha-lipoic acid.

 

DY NEWS: Should there be RDA/DRI's for alpha-lipoic acid, and

acetyl-L-carnitine? If so, in what amounts?

 

AMES: There is not enough data in humans. However, I take 400 mg

alpha-lipoic acid, 1,000 acetyl-L-carnitine daily. "

 

DY NEWS: What advice would you most like to offer to our readers?

 

AMES: You mean about diet? I'd say, " Your Mom knew. " Try and eat a

good diet: lots of fruits and vegetables, less meat and more fish.

Keep the meat within bounds. I try to never eat meat more than once a

day, or even every day. Eat lots of whole grains, not so much refined,

well, anything!. Avoid the cookies and white bread. Drink water

instead of sugary soft drinks. Get some exercise. Get some sunshine.

Your Mom knew all these things.

 

DY NEWS: What about vitamin D?

 

AMES: People who are dark skinned, or even many Caucasians, should

take a vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D is going to turn out to be a

very big thing for dark-skinned people. I think they are going to

eventually increase the amount of vitamin D in a multivitamin. There's

now only 400 IU, and that's not enough. You need at least 1,000 IU of

vitamin D. The RDA should definitely be increased. You'd get 20,000 IU

if you were out in the sun.

 

DY NEWS: So if you were asked by the RDA or DRI committee, what would

you recommend for a daily intake vitamin D?

 

AMES: In the range of 3,000 IU per day for an adult. Certainly a

minimum of 1,000 IU per day, for all ages. Eventually people will

realize it, and they will raise the recommended level, but it is just

taking a long time.

 

DY NEWS: If you had a personal motto, what would it be?

 

AMES: " Do what you are enthusiastic about. "

 

DY NEWS: You are clearly enthusiastic about nutrition research. What

drew you into it in the beginning?

 

AMES: I was interested in cancer prevention. I recognized that the

chromosome breaks due to folate deficiency were important. Zinc

deficiency damages mitochondria, which are the " power plants " of your

cells. So does B-6 deficiency, pantothenic acid deficiency, and biotin

deficiency.

When you are getting low levels, you are pouring oxygen radicals out;

you're battering up your DNA, and you are aging more quickly. The

price the cell pays for being short of micronutrients is DNA damage,

which leads to cancer in the future, and ages you faster. When you

make human cells slightly deficient in either a vitamin or a mineral,

I think you're going to get DNA damage. A lot of the degenerative

diseases of aging are being tied to mitochondrial decay. I think

better diet and supplementation would result in less neurodegenerative

disease, less cancer, less Alzheimer's, less Parkinson's, less diabetes.

 

DY NEWS: This being the Doctor Yourself Newsletter, what are your

thoughts on the shortcomings of modern medicine?

 

AMES: There's nothing wrong with doctors; it's just that they have no

training in nutrition and they're not very interested in prevention.

So you get a disease and they try to give you a pill.

 

DY NEWS: Do you have any plans for retirement?

 

AMES: None. I enjoy my work. I have no interest in retiring and

playing golf. I was born without a sports gene. The most fun is just

doing science.

 

Recommended for Further Reading:

 

Increasing Longevity by Tuning-up Metabolism. [b.N. Ames (2005) EMBO

Reports, 6: S20-4] (1)

 

Heme deficiency may be a factor in the mitochondrial and neuronal

decay of aging. [H. Atamna, D.W. Killilea, A.N. Killilea, and B.N.

Ames (2002) Proc.Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A, 99: 14807-14812] (2)

 

Iron deficiency and iron excess damage mitochondria and mitochondrial

DNA in rats. [P.W. Walter, M.D. Knutson, A. Paler-Martinez, S. Lee, Y.

Xu, F.E. Viteri, and B.N. Ames (2002) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 99:

2264-2269] (3)

 

Low intracellular zinc induces oxidative DNA damage, disrupts p53,

NFkB, and AP1 DNA-binding, and affects DNA repair in a rat glioma cell

line. [E. Ho and B.N. Ames (2002) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 99:

16770-16775] (4)

 

High-dose vitamins stimulate variant enzymes with decreased

coenzyme-binding affinity (increased Km): relevance to genetic disease

and polymorphisms.

[b.N. Ames, I. Elson-Schwab, and E.A. Silver (2002) Am. J. Clin.

Nutr., 75: 616-658] (5)

 

Feeding acetyl-L-carnitine and lipoic acid to old rats significantly

improves metabolic function while decreasing oxidative stress. [T.M.

Hagen, J. Liu, J. Lykkesfeldt, C.M. Wehr, R.T. Ingersoll, V. Vinarsky,

J.C. Bartholomew, and B.N. Ames (2002) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 99:

1870-1875] (6)

 

Memory loss in old rats is associated with brain mitochondrial decay

and RNA/DNA oxidation: partial reversal by feeding acetyl-L-carnitine

and/or R-a-lipoic acid. [J. Liu, E. Head, A.M. Gharib, W. Yuan, R.T.

Ingersoll, T.M. Hagen, C.W. Cotman, and B.N. Ames (2002) Proc. Natl.

Acad. Sci. USA 99: 2356-2361] (7)

 

Age-associated mitochondrial oxidative decay: improvement of carnitine

acetyltransferase substrate binding affinity and activity in brain by

feeding old rats acetyl-L-carnitine and/or R-a-lipoic acid. [J. Liu, D.

Killilea, and B.N. Ames (2002) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99:

1876-1881] (8)

 

FIBROIDS, CANCER AND IODINE DEFICIENCY

 

Robert Sarver writes:

 

 

 

" There is mounting evidence that a major cause of breast, ovarian,

uterine and prostrate fibroids (cysts) and cancers is dietary iodine

deficiency.

Iodine deficiency probably also contributes to obesity, arthritis and

mental illness. Virtually every older person I know has symptoms of

iodine deficiency. Those symptoms may also include thyroid problems,

dry eyes, compromised immune system functioning, reduced sex drive and

a long list of other symptoms. Some young people already show symptoms

of iodine deficiency such as Attention Deficit Disorder and excessive

weight gain. "

 

 

 

Mr. Sarver's excellent article on the tremendous importance of

correcting iodine deficiency is now posted in its entirely at

 

http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/iodine.htm

 

http://www.ghchealth.com/iodine-deficiency.html

 

 

 

DR. SAUL AND WELLNESS CONFERENCE ON DVD

 

I recently had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker at Wellness

Journey 2005 in Albany, NY. The entire conference was video recorded,

including my one-hour speech, " Essential Issues in Integrative

Medicine. " If you've always harbored an irresistible urge to see and

hear me in action, or maybe just to enjoy my shtick, here's your

opportunity.

 

 

 

To order the DVDs, and for more information on future natural-health

conferences, please go to

 

http://www.wellnessjourney.org or contact Ken Goewey at KGoewey

..

 

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURES IN PSYCHIATRY: The Scientific Memoirs of Dr. Abram Hoffer

 

by Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.

 

(Kos Publishing Inc. 2005. ISBN 0-9731945-6-1. )

 

Reviewed by Helke Ferrie.

 

and reprinted with her permission.

 

 

Dr. Abram Hoffer's life could justly be described as being an

essential nutrient in its own right. His research, being based on the

right questions, correct observations, and relevant assumptions, has

functioned like a vitamin, mineral, or essential fatty acid for the

growth of medical knowledge. This is so because such research sustains

and nourishes every branch of inquiry it comes in contact with.

 

This book is a feast for the mind and the spirit. For those of us who

have learned, through painful personal experience that drugs, surgery,

and most of high-tech medicine offer only very temporary benefits, but

rarely if ever a cure, this book tells the wonderful story of the

rebirth of nutritional medicine. Here the reader gets a magisterial

overview of the resurrection of nutritional medicine in the 20th

century and its placement on new foundations of rigorous scientific

methodology made possible through by the simultaneous developments in

biochemistry.

 

Over the past 60 years, Abram Hoffer's life's work has systematically

transformed and informed major areas of modern medicine to the benefit

of thousands of patients. And now we have a book in which he tells the

story of a lifetime in research and clinical practice himself. Today,

what is known about addiction, depression, schizophrenia, attention

deficit disorders, the nutritional role in cancer prevention and

treatment, the connection between stress and mental health, the

nutritional deficiencies acting in synergy with vaccine toxicity in

autism and the nutritional regimes to reverse this condition, as well

as the nutritional treatment of cardiovascular/lipid disorders were

either pioneered by Dr. Hoffer or co-developed alongside other giants

in those fields, such as two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling

(who coined the term orthomolecular medicine), Theron Randolph (the

father of environmental medicine), Humphrey Osmond, Roger Williams

(discoverer of Pantothenic acid and other B vitamins), Irwin Stone

(vitamin C pioneer), Bernard Rimland (autism research pioneer) and

many others.

 

This book will enthrall those practicing naturopathy, pediatrics,

environmental and addiction medicine. Medical historians will be

fascinated.

Patients looking for the basic science involved in the use of

nutrition as prevention and treatment of mental disease will find it

explained and contextualized for lay readers to get a better

understanding of the block-headedness of much mainstream medicine.

This book also has a virtually complete bibliography of Dr. Hoffer's

writings. Given that this octogenarian is currently working on several

books, it is of course impossible to be completely up to date.

 

Adventures in Psychiatry is dedicated to Tommy Douglas who was Premier

of Saskatchewan when Dr. Hoffer was professor of psychiatry in Regina.

Douglas energetically supported Dr. Hoffer's efforts to humanize the

appalling conditions in the mental asylums of that time and encouraged

the research begun into the nutritional deficiency connections to

mental disease.

 

The unique tongue-in-cheek humor and coolly factual narrative style of

Dr. Hoffer's writing makes reading this book a pure delight. We follow

the author from his Saskatchewan farm childhood, subsequent training

in bio-chemistry and agricultural science, his early insights into the

central importance of soil and plant food quality to human and animal

health, to his specialization in psychiatry, professorship at the

University of Saskatchewan, and above all his daily work with

patients. We learn of his disillusionment with traditional methods of

treating the mentally ill (e.g. lobotomies), and we share his

excitement of discovery as we follow his dramatic case histories,

which unfold like detective-stories, as he uncovers the connection

between deficiencies in specific nutrients and mental illness. One

example is that of the first patient successfully rescued in

the early 1950's from end-stage catatonic schizophrenia through

vitamin therapy:

 

" Ken . lay on his bed unresponsive, not able to eat or drink.

Catatonic deaths [among schizophrenic patients] were not uncommon many

years ago.

We decided to make him the first patient to receive massive doses of

the two vitamins . niacin and vitamin C. We were certain we could not

do Ken any harm since he was so close to death. We inserted a tube

into his stomach since he could not swallow. Then we poured in a

mixture of five grams of nicotinic acid and 2.5 grams of ascorbic

acid. We waited anxiously by his bedside .. he seemed to grow no worse

as this regimen was continued. On the second day he was able to sit up

and drink his solution of vitamins.

One month later he was completely normal! "

 

Thus, Hoffer's work began to offer patients recovery, not merely

death-watch maintenance-therapies. Long-time colleague Linus Pauling

observed that " Dr. Hoffer has made an important contribution to the

health of human beings and the decrease of their suffering through the

study of the effects of large doses of vitamin C and other nutrients. "

 

Most gratifyingly, we read how Dr. Hoffer patiently handled the

insufferable stupidity and arrogance of medical authorities in

government and at universities, often hell-bent on preserving their

pride and the status quo rather than focus on the suffering of

patients. You will laugh and weep reading this book and regain faith

in both medicine and humanity.

Harold D. Foster, who teaches medical geography at the University of

Victoria in BC, noted about this book that Dr. Hoffer's work with

vitamins served to " undermine the reigning medical paradigms for

psychiatry and cardiovascular disease. Fathering a new paradigm does

not promote popularity.

Fortunately, Dr Hoffer .. has consistently proven to be able to stand

up for the truth, regardless of personal cost. Look around you, there

are health food stores everywhere - now and thank Abram Hoffer for his

courage. " Indeed, the first vitamin B tablets were made at the

suggestion of Dr. Hoffer, back in the early 1950's, by a compounding

pharmacist. Since 1986 the Ben Gurion University in Israel has a chair

for orthomolecular medicine, and the most prestigious universities in

the world conduct research into the role of nutrition in the causation

and treatment of mental and chronic disease.

 

Some years ago, during an interview, Dr. Hoffer observed, " My idea of

a typical meal toxic to the mind is a donut and coffee. " He was

referring to the refined flour and sugar baked concoctions and the

pesticide-laden coffee with antibiotic and hormone-laced cream

ingested by millions every day.

Such observations are no longer dismissed but have become the stuff of

major research and political action. As I was writing this review, two

scientific reports reached me by e-mail from the UK: one is a large

report published this month by Sustain, the British Alliance for

Better Food and Farming, entitled Changing Diets, Changing Minds: How

Food Affects Mental Wellbeing and Behavior; the other is called

Feeding Minds and published simultaneously by the British Mental

Health Foundation (both available through www.sustainweb.org ). The

scientific and clinical foundations for these amazing reports, as

their bibliographies show, were laid by Dr. Hoffer.

 

In his closing reflections Dr. Hoffer writes that " if research is to

have any value at all it must explore outside what is currently

known. " He muses also about the fact that advice from enemies and

friends presents a major challenge to those who think outside the box.

The enemies are easy to identify and their advice is easily dismissed,

Dr. Hoffer writes, but the advice of friends is harder to deal with:

" The most common bad advice I received from friends was not to

continue what we were doing because it made us unpopular. It took me

some thought and effort to reject this advice; I feel vindicated in

this decision as I see that I have been very popular with

my patients . for the past 50 years. "

 

(Helke Ferrie is a medical science writer. She lives in Caledon,

Ontario: Helke )

 

 

 

 

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