Fitness

True to his word, Will was a fantastic coach! He still managed to make his mouth-watering meals but cut the amount of fats he used. I started taking more of a role in our menu planning which gave me more control of what I was eating. We started eating a lot more vegetables and fruits and eating less junk food and more balanced meals.

We started walking again: miles and miles of walking. Will would set the pace of our walk and I would set the distance. Before long we were up to doing five miles a day. I also stopped taking the elevator at work. The stairs became my new best friend.

I was so proud the day that I came home with my first 10 pound ribbon - ten pounds lost! Will was with me all the way. It wasn’t always easy. I know that I could lose the weight on my own but knowing that your spouse is supporting you all the way makes such a big difference! He was my biggest cheering section.

By the time I lost my 55 pounds I felt like a new woman! Wait a minute–I was a new woman! I was in love with life again and I actually liked myself and didn’t mind looking at myself in a mirror. What a difference from the year before.

Will went with me to the meeting when I was to receive my lifetime ribbon and when I spoke in front of everyone at the meeting I could tell that he was as proud of my achievement as I was.

Christmas, one year later, found us at a Danier store and instead of sitting on a bathroom floor and crying my heart out, I was modeling leather skirts and jackets for my husband! I wore my new leather suit to all the Christmas parties that year and was proud to show off my new body.

I managed to keep the weight off for 12 years before a few pounds re-found themselves to my hips and butt. The onset of menopause is going to be another hurdle that I will have to figure out.

I’m in better shape now than I have ever been and I plan on keeping it that way to look fit and foxy by the time I hit fifty!

I tried different fad diets to lose weight on my own and although I would lose a few pounds, I always ended up putting it back on.

I remember going away for Christmas 1991 and having a fantastic time but when returned home and I happened to get on the scale, I found out that I had gained 7 pounds over the holidays. I remember sitting down on the bathroom floor for 3 hours and crying my heart out. When I couldn’t cry anymore, I dried my eyes and vowed that I would NEVER be in the same place ever again.

I went downstairs and asked Will for a hug and told him that I had gained 7 pounds and that I feel that I had hit ground zero and that things had to change and I needed help.

I loved Will so much at that moment. He didn’t pooh-pooh the way I felt or berate me for gaining weight. He listened to everything I had to say without interrupting and promised that he would help me in anyway possible to achieve the goals that I set for myself.

I had decided to join Weight Watchers. I knew that they were starting a Weight Watchers lunchtime meeting at my work place. He promised that he would make any changes necessary to make his cooking more health and weight conscious for the both of us. He even agreed to the reward that I would get when I achieved the goals that I had set for myself: a Danier leather suit! I had wanted one for years but felt it was too expensive for me to buy. This would be my incentive to keep me going when the going got tough.

I started Weight Watchers that week and found that we didn’t have to stop eating any of our favourite foods. Portion control was half of my battle as well as getting back to a fitness regime.

After a few years of living with Will and his mouthwatering meals, I began to lose the battle to keep my size five shape. Then I watched size eight come and go as well as size 10 and soon I was into a size 12. As much as I loved to eat Will’s sumptuous meals, by the time I was inching to a size 14 I began to re-evaluate my life. I knew I wasn’t as active as I had been when I first met and starting dating Will. Life gets busy and it seems to me that when our social life got hectic my fitness activities were the first casualties.

I remembered back when Will first started cooking for me, I would barely be able to finish a quarter of the dinner he served me but by the time I hit size 12, I was eating almost as big as plate as Will did. He played sports, I didn’t. Not that I didn’t like sports - I was just wasn’t good at any sport.

Will hadn’t said anything about me gaining weight but he could see that I was not happy with the way I looked. He probably was a little alarmed at the weight that I had put on, but to his credit he never had a negative word for the way I looked. I had always been thin when I was younger and never had to worry about weight but it seemed as soon as I hit the age of 30, weight was becoming a problem. It’s funny when I was younger I had vowed I would never be one of those wives who let themselves go. It just kind of happened.

As for Will, Will never changed. Will had always been lean and fit. He played sports all year round.

Next you think of the potentialities of the school cafeteria managers and the foods teachers. If you can get them personally interested, you know the rest will follow. Once enthusiastic, a foods teacher could not look herself in the mirror if she used the disease-producing methods which many such teachers do now. She holds a vision of the future of the students in her classes, so soon to be husbands, wives, and parents. She visualizes healthy mothers, their pregnancies a joy, their deliveries easy, their children beautiful. She knows that these boys and girls, once taught nutrition, will produce tomorrow’s leaders, thinkers, and doers.

Soon you see the potential good an athletic coach can accomplish. He is already interested in health; his athletes are almost crying for knowledge of nutrition. Without any trouble at all you get him to rush in scarcely thinking of the timid wise men. He gets enthusiastic approval because everyone wants the team to win. Several coaches have told me that the boys make a touchdown for tiger’s milk or wheat germ at every football game. I know of one basketball team which won a championship with good nutrition last year; the physician at this school said he could scarcely believe the improvement he found. A university physician gave me an even more glowing report: much less fatigue among the boys; the crew ending the season without enlarged hearts; broken bones healing more quickly than ever before. These coaches and physicians will be writing articles for their journals before long; they, too, become enthusiastic and cannot help themselves.

After you go to bed, you lie awake thinking that adult education classes in nutrition should be taught in every evening school. You look around for someone to teach such a class, perhaps a physician, a nurse, or the hospital dietitian; after you talk to this person, you go to the principal of adult education, then to your neighbors to be sure that they turn out for the class. If you cannot find anyone else, you study like mad and then offer to teach it yourself. Perhaps you even go back to college for a few courses in chemistry or foods.

You realize that nutrition should be taught in every medical school but feel that you can do nothing about it. Who do you suppose has already forced some medical schools to teach this subject? You have. For example, the reason physicians are giving so many shots of vitamin B12 is that patients demand them. If you get enough people interested in nutrition, you will all find yourselves asking your physicians such questions as: “Where am I going to get linoleic acid on a fat-free diet?” “Why aren’t you giving the baby any vitamin E?” “Doctor, will you give Johnny a vitamin-C shot?” “How many milligrams of pantothenic acid do you think I should take?” When physicians hear enough questions they cannot answer concerning nutrition, the subject will be taught in every medical school; thousands of practicing physicians are on the staffs of such schools.

If you have any contact with hospitals, you quickly realize that someone should do something about the food they serve. The dietitian’s hands are usually tied; she does not see the patients, let alone learn to love them or to feel concerned about their needs. She must meet the budget. Surveys have shown that the meals in approximately two-thirds of the hospitals in the United States do not meet the minimum nutritional requirements set up by the National Research Council in any respect, even calories.

There are three small hospitals I personally know of where a patient has a reasonable chance of recovering rapidly; two are run by physicians who know nutrition. At the third, the Sister Kenny Polio Hospital at EI Monte, California, the entire personnel, nurses, physicians, physiotherapists, and kitchen help, were requested to attend a lecture course in nutrition given by Dr. Michael Walsh. Dr. Walsh also helped to supervise the application of nutrition in the meals served the patients and also those for the staff. The health of physicians, who were originally antagonistic to the program, has so improved that they are now enthusiastic.

Often parents have refused to allow their children to stay in a hospital where the food was inadequate. Frequently nutrition-minded people bring good food to a member of their family or a friend in a hospital; the attending physician may be surprised at the speedy recovery, ask questions, and make similar recommendations to other patients. Certain patients in our county hospital are now being given brewers’ yeast; everyone able to swallow on the polio ward has vitamin-C tablets handed him almost every hour; I suspect some mother or friend started both practices.

This report is not imaginary. It is what is actually happening all over America. The snowball is rolling on and on. Wonderful “fools,” more and more of them, keep rushing in. A big job is being done by big people, the big people who are sometimes mistakenly called the “little” people, by uncommon men so wrongly called, individually, the “common man.” I could give you the names and addresses of hundreds of these big people, some of whom have changed the lives of almost everyone in their communities. They are people like Celia Massie in Grants Pass, Oregon, Mildred Hatch at St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Amy Tapping at Plainfield, New Jersey, Bernice Hicks at Bellingham, Washington, and the Clive McCays at Ithaca, New York. In California Homer Dahlman at Paradise, Eleanor Kingsley at Pomona, Douglas Campbell and Rhoda Kellogg in San Francisco, Alfreda Rook at Vista, Harold Stone in La Habra and Gladys Lindberg in Los Angeles are all doing magnificent work. Making such a list is like sending out wedding invitations; you do not know where to stop. Without any specialized training, any organization, or any particular leadership, without one cent of tax money and without even any work but just a lot of fun, we can collectively solve this problem of America’s malnutrition.

Although much is being done, there is still much to do. It cannot be done fast enough. Millions of persons of all ages are still going to suffer needlessly. Spastic, feeble-minded, or disease-susceptible babies are still to be born. Children now fairly healthy will hate ugliness still to be produced or will live out years in iron lungs. Arteries now elastic are still to be filled with cholesterol, mouths to be filled with dentures, and hearts to be filled with dread. If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the groaning, sobbing and pleading for help, groaning and sobbing which you can prevent, help which you can give. There is work for everyone; every talent is sought. Equally important is the discipline of the scientist, the humanitarianism of the clinician, and the enthusiasm of the amateur.

Every person who has the ability to see our country’s need can help to fill that need. It is part of my creed-of my region if you like-that when you have the ability to help ,our fellow man, that ability ceases to be merely an ability and becomes a responsibility. It is part of my faith that this responsibility will be shouldered by the big people of America.

Perhaps you put in an herb garden or plant a few vegetables among your flowers. If you have more land, you may go in for compost heaps and real vegetable and fruit gardening. Or, perhaps you move to the suburbs, buy a cow or goat, and value the milk and manure equally. Maybe you already live on a farm; gradually you change to biological methods. In any case you have your garden soil analyzed, add the trace minerals needed,” and return as much humus to the soil as you can. You read books on gardening 4 or farming 5 with biological methods and subscribe to magazines.” You give some of your fruits and vegetables to your friends and neighbors, let them see how delicious such foods can be, and get them interested in putting in a garden of their own. Thousands of gardeners and hundreds of farmers all over America are already using biological methods. Even some of the largest truck farmers are adding trace minerals to their land and as much humus as they can procure; they find that it pays because less produce is destroyed by insects and the food has much better keeping qualities.

You may have considered opening a small business and have wondered what would be best. The people you have given vegetables to like them so much that you may open a roadside stand; or you convert a front room into a small restaurant where you serve wonderful vegetable soup with stock you have to cut with a knife, your fresh vegetables added after the customer is seated; or your specialty may be slow-roasted meats and delicious cooked vegetables or a tossed salad seasoned with your fresh herbs.

Maybe a specialty food shop interests you even if you have no garden. The first thing you do is to learn to prepare some food better than anyone else in your part of the country; then you convert that front room into a place like the famous New York Central oyster bar, for example. People do not want big meals; they want delicious, filling meals. Think of the business a small specialty restaurant could do on a cold rainy day serving nothing but delicious soup and hot homemade bread; or a restaurant with a sign, “The Best WafHes in the World,” their product coming up to expectations, served with creamed chicken or turkey and a beverage, nothing more. I should like to find a place which serves only a delicious tossed salad with piping-hot cheese blini, made fresh for each customer instead of warmed over as in the restaurants which serve them at all. If 100,000 or more such specialty food counters could be opened across the country, motoring would be a pleasure.

Perhaps you start selling homemade bread, cookies, nut–breads, or cakes made of whole-wheat flour, wheat germ and other health-building ingredients; I know of several women who are, doing that. One of them makes the best orange nut-bread I have ever tasted. One acquaintance is now in the health-candy business, making delicious candies of such ingredients as powdered milk, honey, nuts, and peanut butter. Another man is making pure orange juice lollipops without added sugar; he supplies all the stores and schools in a moderately large city, his business far surpassing his expectations. A number of couples have opened small bakeries, using only health-building ingredients. Still other families have started health-food stores; every county seat needs at least one such store. A boy I know of is putting himself through college by raising goats and selling goats’ milk. Aside from supporting themselves with such businesses, these people are spreading the itch.

You find yourself wanting to learn more. You get such books as The Wheel of Health.’ Tomorrow’s Foods Body, Mind and Sugar/ Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Our National Malnutrition, and Diet Prevents Polio,” You may subscribe to Modern Nutrition:” The Journal of Applied Nutrition and to Carlton Fredericks’ Nutrition Neuis.” All of these you circulate among your friends; they borrow them again to lend to their friends who buy them to lend to their friends. Together you get your local library to order these books and to keep them prominently displayed. Soon you find yourself and your friends giving book reviews. You may long for company and join the American Nutrition Society or the American Academy of Nutrition 13 or even start a chapter of your own. Perhaps you go to a national convention where you meet wonderful physicians, dentists, agriculturists, chemists, laymen of every variety, all of whom think and feel as you do; you leave with your head in the clouds, determined to work harder than ever.

It soon gripes you that your money supports schools run so inefficiently because of poor nutrition. You dream about nutrition being taught in every classroom. That was the dream of the late Dr. Mary Swartz Rose, too. I studied under her and observed classes she herself often taught in a grade school near Columbia University. The fifth grade that year was studying calcium; they learned about milk, bones, and teeth and brought real teeth and bones to class; they soaked bones in acids to observe the bone base. They made milk drinks for parties; they raised white rats, some on milk, some without. They learned more about calcium than most adults know. The sixth grade was studying vitamin A, and they also had rats with and without this vitamin. They had parties with carrot-stick refreshments and ate dried apricots instead of candy. They learned a great deal; they loved it and went home to teach their parents about nutrition.

Suddenly you realize that every teacher in every public school in America could teach nutrition in one way or another; you quickly lend your books and magazines to teachers. Once interested, a teacher cannot help teaching nutrition even if she tries. She lives it and saves herself much fatigue; then she finds herself helping her students to feel better. Her work soon becomes easier because they are more alert. By this personal method many teachers are already doing a corking good job in nutrition education, although they do not consider that they teach nutrition at all. Some day such teachers will publish in the teachers’ magazines their experiences and methods which will serve as a guide and inspiration for other teachers.

If you have a child in school, you start getting the candy bars and soft-drink machines out of the corridors. You nose around the cafeteria, see the huge tubs of potatoes peeled one day and soaking until the next, the mountains of white bread, the oceans of sweet gelatin desserts made sweeter by juices left over from canned fruits used in cobblers; you go before the P.T.A., you give the principal and/or the school board a bad time, or you run for the school board yourself.

After you have applied personal nutrition for awhile, you feel it and look it. You hear yourself exclaiming, “I never felt better in my life!” Your friends who did not want advice now want what you have, the sparkle, the pep, the glow you radiate. They start asking you questions. Soon their reports come back: they are not tired any longer; the leg cramps or headaches have disappeared; their constipation is gone. You glow with pride, and your snowball gains momentum. They ask you to talk to their friends who have problems. The itch spreads; more and more people begin scratching.

Your educational campaign with the children starts paying dividends, just momentary flashes at first, like feminine fireflies calling their lovers. “We have better food than other people, don’t we, Mommie?” My son, sitting at a restaurant counter next to a woman drinking a soft drink, came out with this one, “Don’t you know that will hurt your teeth? I’ll drink it if you like, and you can save your teeth.” Barbara brings her doll’s bottle to me, lfs inch across at the top, “Mommie, put yeast in my baby’s formula.” You will hear similar comments. The older children bring their friends with pimples and menstrual cramps to you. You feel happy inside, knowing some day you will have beautiful grandchildren.

Perhaps you start a nutrition cooking school in your home; several friends of mine have, charging a fee for each person who attends. One girl, infected with a splendid case of divine itch, charges, but her fee is not monetary. She agreed to teach four of her friends how to make whole-wheat bread provided each of them would teach four friends who would agree to teach four of their friends. Soon the lessons included the making of yogurt, high-protein custard, cookies prepared with vegetable oil, and meat loaf fortified with powdered milk and wheat germ. Spirited discussions of nutrition take place at each lesson. The chain of her Magnificent Obsession continues to lengthen.

You may get interested in the 4H Clubs, an organization of farm youngsters thousands strong, to whom practical nutrition could be so easily and wonderfully taught and applied. You read the surveys showing that the health of farm children is inferior to that of city children, an ironical twist of fate which you realize should not be so; you know that a few itchy fools could quickly change that. Perhaps you become a leader of a garden club and teach biological methods and the nutritive value of the foods; or you help the little girls make breads, muffins, and cookies of whole-wheat and soy flour. You teach them to put some meaning into their 4Hs by allowing their hearts to feel the need for alert heads to direct capable hands into helping build national health.

Many people agree with me that something should be done quickly about our national malnutrition. I ask them who should do it. Some say the universities, some the Department of Agriculture, the Public Health Departments, the schools. I cannot believe that any of these organizations will solve the problem.

The persons who in my opinion will save our nation are those marvelous individuals who rush in where wise men fear to tread. These wonderful people often do not know enough to believe it when the wise men tell them that something cannot be done. Sometimes they cannot even understand why it cannot be done.

One such person was an author who bought several worn-out farms in Ohio; the wise men said the land could not pay taxes. This author had no degrees in agriculture and did not consider himself a farmer; he had lived in France and watched the peasants there, and he had ideas and was willing to study and work. He changed that eroded, worn-out land into a paradise where springs, long dried up, bubbled again, with lakes where you could swim on hot days and where delicious fish almost jumped into the breakfast frying pans. He let wild roses and berries grow along fence rows. Small animals hid there to have their babies; hunting was always good. Quail and other birds nested in the bushes, feeding their young on worms and insects which the educated wise men said must be killed with poison sprays. The paradise he created is now a mecca; thousands of farmers become pilgrims to learn wholesome farming methods which the money they have spent on taxes has not given them. This author has done tremendous good for nutrition, which starts with the soil. I hope some day I can know Mr. Bromfield well enough to call him Louie.’

Another remarkable person refused to believe the wise men who said it could not be done; he manufactured electrical equipment in New York City. Somehow he became interested in farming and moved onto worn-out land in Pennsylvania; he believed in soil bacteria, compost heaps, and lowly earthworms. When his health and the health of his family improved as his soil improved, it occurred to him that other people might want to know about his methods. First he published a magazine on gardening by biological methods and then one on farming.” This man had the courage to stick to his convictions, although the agricultural colleges said that what he said was poppycock. Several of these colleges set out to prove him wrong. Can you guess what they are finding out? That he has been right all along. I have never met this man, but I admire his courage; he has done much for nutrition.

Perhaps I love these “fools” who rush in because I have always been one of them. If you have become interested in nutrition, you will be one of us too; you cannot help yourself. Genuine interest in nutrition gives everyone a sort of divine itch, virulently contagious. It is like health, which is a million times more contagious than disease. The first thing you know, you have everyone around you scratching. This is the way it works.

At first there usually comes a trial-and-error period which varies depending on how genuinely you want to help others and/or how much you have been helped by nutrition. The more enthusiastic you are, the more hot water you get yourself into. You may use the Prussian-commander technique:

“You have to eat these hotcakes. They’re blown up vitamin pills, full of wheat germ, soy flour, powdered milk, the works.” The hotcakes may be more delicious than any your family ever tasted, but they go uneaten while you writhe in defeat. Perhaps you try the eager-beaver attack next: “Mary, you’ve got to take brewers’ yeast. Deficiencies stick out all over you. Let me see your tongue. Oh, darling, you are a mess!” Mary is a little cool after that; her deficiencies become more severe. Next you use the blunt approach: “You don’t eat liver every morning for breakfast? Huhl You’re as inefficient as a horse and buggy.” After a period of being an antagonizer par excellence, it dawns on you that no one enjoys criticism or advice; that every person has received an overdose of both as a kid and will take no more. You give up your talk-too-much technique and proceed with a sort of personal underground movement, silently conducted, which is the point where the less eager person starts in the first place.

You quietly improve your own nutrition; not your husband’s or wife’s or children’s, just your own. Gradually y@u make changes. You buy better food every time you go to market. You get nuts for the kiddies instead of candy, make lollipops of pure fruit juices instead of buying ones of colored water and sugar. Perhaps you investigate a source of milk safe to use unpasteurized, or find hens associating with roosters and allowed the freedom of a barnyard. You locate supplies which must be purchased outside your community. You are more careful in selecting foods in restaurants and in planning and preparing delicious meals at home. Possibly you or even your husband starts baking homemade bread of stone-ground fresh wheat. When this art is mastered, you give slices or loaves to neighbors and relatives; they may start making bread or beg you to make enough to sell them. You discover the fun of having the youngsters say, “Gee, Mom, these are the best waffles you have ever made.” Even after your husband finds out that they are full of wheat germ, which he tells you he “hates,” and after he says that you will be putting ground glass into his food next, you give him butterscotch brownies at the following meal; he eats them to the last crumb, never dreaming they are made entirely of wheat germ.

When you have conquered the home front, you volunteer for the refreshment committee and serve some really good cookies at the P.T.A. or the Women’s Club tea; you improve the food at Scout meetings and birthday parties; or you put some Christianity into a few church suppers. If you are a man, you work on the Breakfast Club or Rotary or Kiwanis luncheon menus. In case you are an executive, you realize the stupidity of paying for inefficiency produced under your own nose by mid-meals of coffee, soft drinks, and doughnuts, and you see that nuts, delicious milk drinks, “hopped-up” ice cream, and fresh fruits are made available. Perhaps you give a talk to some organization about highprotein breakfasts, fluoridation of water, the use of iodized salt or nutritious lunches carried from home. The local paper hears about your talk and wants copy, so you find yourself writing a food and nutrition column. Some people may call you a crackpot or food faddist; you expect that and shrug it off.

It is easy to find statistics on the billions of man-hours lost from work per year when 7,000,000 people per day are sufficiently sick to require medical care. These statistics tell nothing of those who suffered from minor but painful ailments, or of the millions whose illnesses were severe but who called no physician because they feared the expense or because none could come during the night when the pain was most excruciating.

There are no statistics available for dozens of things which really matter or really hurt; of exhausted mothers who, missing nights of sleep because of a sick child, must still go to an office the next day or drag themselves through mountains of housework, simultaneously caring for other children. No statistics tell of the billions of father- and mother-hours of worry or anguish endured per year; of the billions of spankings given annually to good children whose parents were irritable or frustrated; of the billions of meals mined per year by nagging and scolding; of the billions of student-hours wasted because so many of the 30,700,000 in school attendance receive too few nutrients to keep their minds alert; of the number of parents paying dentists with savings they had hoped to spend on college educations.

I could find no health statistics. What is health? It seems to be something we talk glibly about. We speak of health insurance, meaning sickness insurance; of health benefits, meaning sickness benefits; health plans and surveys, meaning sickness plans and surveys. People talk about health education, health courses, health books; I have taken the courses, read the books; you learn about vaccinations, contagion, and diseases. What health actually is, apparently no one knows; certainly it is more than freedom from disease or ability to go to work. The best definition appears to be one which a small boy used to define money: “It’s something we ain’t got much of.”

The less health we have, the less money we will have. It is said that 60 per cent of the savings of people sixty years old are spent on a search for health; but 60 per cent of the people sixty years old have no savings. Their sickness bills are paid by you and me. Our taxes pay for the county and state hospitals and homes for the chronically ill, as well as for institutions for the insane and feeble-minded. It is your tax money and mine which pays for schools, whether the children attend or not, are mentally alert or not, or the teachers eat breakfast or not.

In addition to the taxes, there are the fund-raising campaigns: the heart fund, the polio fund, the cerebral palsy fund, the cancer fund, and numerous others. Money-raising has become big business, for which experts are trained. To my knowledge, no money has yet been raised for the purpose of what I call prevention. The native races studied by Drs. Price and McCarrison did not “prevent” tuberculosis by early X-rays, or cancer by free clinics where frightened people could be examined; they used constructive methods.

Unless something is done and done quickly toward real prevention, I think we can expect still more irritability, fatigue, mental sluggishness, psychological maladjustment, faulty posture and bone structure, crooked and decayed teeth. We can expect more surgery: more tumors, cancers, gall bladders and prostates removed, more sinuses scraped, more hysterectomies performed. As things are now, I cannot see how an increase can be prevented in the incidence of cancer, ulcers, high blood pressure, heart and kidney diseases, diabetes, muscular dystrophy and atrophy, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, and many other diseases, some still unknown and unnamed. How sincerely I hope I am wrong I can you hear the arguments being raised? Diagnostic methods are better. People are living longer, we are told, into the heart-disease-, diabetes-, nephritis-, cancer-susceptible age. Granted that these arguments contain some truth, but not all the truth. Before Iron Curtain days, it was known that the Bulgarians lived to be older than other peoples in the world without these diseases. When grains were unrefined in Denmark from 1914 to 1920, people lived longer, into the “disease-susceptible age,” and had fewer of these diseases. Diagnostic methods are better, yes; they are now so good that a tremendous increase in cancer among babies and small children has been diagnosed. A year ago a young woman sat beside my desk, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. Her three-year-old child, a little girl whose picture she showed me, had just died of cancer; another child of less than two and still another of scarcely five were then dying. She herself wanted to die; she said so repeatedly. Yet she came asking for help for her two dying children. I wish I could have helped her six years earlier.

To my way of thinking, our national health began to decline at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, when families began to move from self-sustaining farms into crowded cities. It declined still further with the invention of machinery for milling grains, and with each new method of processing foods, each new trick for forcing hybrid crops to yield higher tonnage per acre on worn-out soil. New problems arising every year make sound nutrition more difficult to apply, or prevent its application.

The technical knowledge for halting this decline is at our fingertips as never before. Every person wishes to feel well, to stay young; persons aware of sound nutrition are eager to apply it. But we need men and women with courage and willingness to be leaders, to set the example, and to educate, probably in the face of ridicule, cynicism, and criticism. I hope enough fine men and women can be mobilized for this purpose. I believe they can.

Thousands upon thousands of persons have studied disease. Almost no one has studied health.

Thirty years ago a dreamer-researcher named Dr. Weston A. Price traveled the world over, examining people untouched by so-called civilization. He investigated groups in lit then isolated part of the Swiss Alps, in northern Italy, on the Isle of Man, in the New Hebrides, Australia, New Zealand, central Africa, the South American jungles, the north of Canada and Alaska and on various islands in the South Pacific. The foods of many of these peoples were limited indeed. In some cases their diets were largely meat or fish without vegetables or grains; in others, vegetables and grains without meat or fish; they appeared to have nothing in common. These peoples, however, had two things in common: their diets met every body requirement; and the know-how for refining foods was lacking. The latter allowed the former to be so.

Dr. Price told of his findings in a book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. He tells of people with erect posture, unbelievable endurance, and cheerful, even dispositions. These people had excellent bone structure; their faces and jaws were so wide and well developed that their teeth were not crowded together, and stayed free from decay just as their bodies stayed free from disease. The statistics concerning the incidence of cancer, ulcers, high blood pressure, tuberculosis, heart and kidney diseases, polio, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, and cerebral palsy were zero, zero, zero in every case. Names for these diseases were unknown and unneeded. Dr. Price found no physicians, surgeon, psychiatrists; no prisons, institutions for the insane or feebleminded; no child delinquency, no homosexuality. Every mother nursed her babies; a non-functional breast was unheard of. Mental, moral, and emotional health accompanied physical health.

Sir Robert McCarrison, an English physician, investigated the health of the Hunzas, living high in the Himalayas. Their foods were limited, but their lands were composted and watered by glacial streams rich in minerals from rocks grinding on rocks. Dr. McCarrison’s statistics were the same as those gathered by Dr. Price: all zeros. He could find no ulcers, cancers, heart or kidney diseases, polio, or the rest; no prisons, mental institutions, child-delinquency problems. As a physician, he would have starved; as a researcher and dreamer, he made a great contribution. Other Hunza visitors have written of the cheerfulness and lack of fatigue of these people after great feats of endurance; a runner carried a message to a nearby village only 35 miles away and returned the same day with no sign of fatigue. As mountain guides, the Hunzas scrambled sure-footed over precipitous cliffs, carrying tremendous loads, laughing and singing the while.

Years ago a group of medical missionaries, Mormons by faith, collectively examined more than a million natives in central Africa; they found no disease, no cancer. A similar group found none among primitive peoples in South America.
Recently Dr. Michael Walsh studied Indians in an isolated district in Mexico, people without even a water supply. Their only beverage was fermented cactus juice, so rich in vitamin C that the amount allotted per person per day was equivalent to a dozen glasses of fresh orange juice. These people had never taken a bath; yet they were as free from body odor as they were from cancer, high blood pressure, coronary thrombosis, and other diseases.

These same dreamer-investigators also studied diseases; they did not have to go far to find them. In villages only a few miles away, white men had brought white sugar, white Hour, and less-white “civilization.” In such villages, Dr. Price found faulty bone structure, crowded, crooked teeth, rampant tooth decay, diseases of all kinds, prisons, perversions, and sexual immorality. Dr. McCarrison found ulcers, heart and kidney diseases, cancer, high blood pressure, colitis, and tuberculosis. In Africa and South America the medical missionaries found cancer rampant among members of the very tribes who, on their native diets, had stayed cancer-free. Now, only a generation later, these African natives are dying like Hies from a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor; 60 per cent coming to the autopsy tables have died of cancer. In populated areas in Mexico, Dr. Walsh found every disease he had the heart to look for.

I hunted for statistics of health in America to compare with the zeros found by Drs. Price and McCarrison. All I found were records showing people suffering from diseases in huge, heartbreaking numbers. The one group of statistics of the numbers and causes of rejections during the Korean War compared with those of World War II threw me into a depression which lasted days-the time interval is so short, the increases in abnormalities so appalling. These are not sickness figures; merely statistics of our finest young men at the height of their physical development.

Statistics can tell so little. The number of new cancer cases discovered each year tells nothing of the fear and dread in the hearts of millions of Americans who already know that some day they themselves will suffer from the disease. Statistics about the “chronics” in every county and state home, people whose illnesses go on year after year, do not mention the tired underpaid nurses ready to drop in their tracks; the stinking bedpans, the raw, running bedsores, or the looks of despair on the faces from which hope was lost so long ago. Statistics of the number of elderly people sitting or lying out monotonous and/or agonizing days in the thousands of rest homes in our country do not mention the bitterness, the fear, the hopelessness in the hearts of these still nne old people; if you see enough of these homes, you wonder whether our increased life span is always to be viewed with unmitigated pride.

The morbidity statistics all seem the same even though the diseases and numbers of people suffering from each are different. The new cases of polio per year, for example, tell nothing of the man- and woman-hours of the wonderful physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, and mothers who with endless patience help persons to some slight use of nearly useless arms and legs; of the heartbreak of youngsters who want to play football or dance, of ill mothers who ache to care for their children or of fathers who long to support their families. Each year the Red Cross pleads for blood plasma with which to fight polio. “More cases are expected this year than ever before,” goes the appeal, and the Red Cross predictions have not yet been wrong; they will probably not be wrong in the future.

Now I come to the “you-won’t-believe-it” problem which sometimes disappears, the problem of growing older. Actually I am convinced it need not be a problem at all. There, are people-not many, but a few-who seem to grow younger instead of older.

One day on a television program I may show you some of these people. For all of you doubting Thomases I could supply names and addresses, except in one case. This is a woman of eighty-two who enjoys tremendously the fact that most people think she is sixty; she works half-time as a secretary, Hitting about like a humming bird. There is Mr. G., now eighty-six, who talks about having fun on borrowed time; he loves to garden, and once when I was entertaining, he turned our house into a florist shop and in addition brought a camellia corsage for each guest. Mrs. S. must be nearly eighty by now. It is unbelievable that one person can do as much good as she does; I know how much she helps people because she sends many to me for nutritional advice. She was ill and old when I first saw her 15 years ago; now she is active and young and vibrantly alive.

Mrs. L. is one of the most amazing of this group. I would bet that in 12 years she has swallowed no morsel of food which does not build health. Her figure is that of a thirty year-old. I tell her I should pay her to visit me instead of vice versa. She is particularly amazing because she is a crack skier and is on the ski patrol, skiing down the slopes with stretchers, helping to carry youngsters who have broken bones. She does not worry about breaking bones nor does she need to.

Mrs. H. has been one of my favorites since 1936. She came to me because of pernicious anemia, exhausted, depressed, her mouth and tongue so sore she could hardly eat. Her life has been hard; money always scarce. Before child-labor laws were passed, she was taken out of school and forced to work in the New England woolen mills, leaving home when it was still dark in the morning and returning after dark at night. There was little love and few bright spots in her life until she was sixty-eight; then a childhood sweetheart found her, a wonderful physician whose record is in Whd s Who. A friend and I poured coffee at their wedding, a big occasion with the brightest bunch of oldsters I have ever seen assembled; we laughingly said we were the only persons present who could hold a coffee cup without shaking out its contents. This woman sent me a report of her physical examination from Johns Hopkins Hospital: “Although this patient claims to be seventy-four years old, she has the body of a fifty-year-old woman.” She and Dr. H. are now spending happily-ever-after summers in Vermont and winters in Florida. Dr. H. asked me to visit them in Vermont. I said I could not decide when to come; I wanted to be there for maple syrup making but also for autumn colors. His answer was graciousness at its height: “If you can come only once, come in the spring and stay till the fall.”

I wish you could all meet Mr. and Mrs. R., people whom it seems God must have made especially for each other. He is seventy-six; she, seventy-two. She had been crippled with arthritis for years, and he had the usual old-age symptoms: a tremor, fatigue, some shortness of breath, trouble with his eyes; years of hay fever and sinus infection, both still troublesome. The arthritis scarcely bothers her any more; his symptoms, too, have gradually cleared. Both are now amazingly active. She is busy with a grandchild who lives with them, with Spanish classes and social gatherings. Mr. R. holds down what could be considered three full-time jobs. He is president of a building and loan association which takes a great deal of his time; he operates three oil wells which require as much attention as spoiled children; and he has gardened their acre of land since their Mexican gardener, an old man of forty, became ill. Besides these activities he plays 18 holes of golf twice each week. I remarked that he probably played with men 20 years his junior, and he said they were sometimes SO years younger than he. If you want to taste really good homemade bread, you should drop in to see them, as I frequently do.

And lastly, there is Dr. P., who earned his Ph.D. at Columbia half a century ago. He and his family lived in Shanghai for years, then in Manila where he was caught at the outbreak of World War II. He spent the war years in the terrible Santo Tomas Prison. His health was broken then, and recovery was never complete; heart attacks followed and then polyneuritis, the American term for beriberi. His pain was too excruciating to be deadened by opiates. Although he was given B vitamins by many physicians, he became worse and was not expected to live. As a last resort, his wife and daughter came to see me. Tiger’s milk, liver, wheat germ, all three in small amounts at first, large quantities of pantothenic acid which had not been given before, calcium tablets to help deaden pain, vitamin pills of. every letter, tablets of enzymes and hydrochloric acid to digest the food combined to turn the tables; his recovery was spectacular. Since childhood, Dr. P. has had a wonderful voice, and singing had been his joy. He sang solos at churches, clubs, and weddings, including Chiang Kai-shek’s wedding, his wonderful wife playing his accompaniment. His voice failed with his illness, but now he believes it is stronger than ever; again he is singing for churches and clubs and weddings. Just before he left for Manila to be an executive of an insurance company, he sang to me a song he said he had especially selected. It was, “I’ll be loving you always.” And if I had a voice and could have held back the tears, I would have sung the same song to him.

These are young people, every one of them. The good health they enjoy, however, is no mere happenstance. Every person in this group takes his nutrition seriously, not just occasionally but every meal of every day and year after year. The rewards are pretty wonderful. With these people there is no gap between the generations. Each one of them is an inspiration, almost a vision of what could be for possibly every human being. They remind you again that aging may not be a “natural” process but the result of years and years of cumulative nutritional deficiencies. I tell them that they make me look forward to my nineties.

Many people have told me that, after dietary improvement, their sexual difficulties have disappeared; a few say a contemplated divorce was forestalled. These reports have covered many varieties of sexual problems. Several were cases of impotence; others, of restoration of libido, or sexual desire. A young husband complained one month that his wife had no sex interest and the next that she had too much. A sixty-year-old widower told me that he felt much better when eating an adequate diet but that he could no longer do so; he would gladly follow the diet again as soon as he remarried. Many reports had to do with prostate infections which had interfered with sexual expression; others concerned eczemas on the genitalia or Manila albicans infections in the vagina or penis resulting from the use of aureomycin, streptomycin, or other antibiotics. Whatever the improvement was, it came as a by-product of dietary help sought for other reasons.

Worry over possible inability to express sexual love seems to be a masculine trait. These fears might disappear if men understood more fully the relation of nutrition to sexual function. For example, the pituitary gland, situated at the base of the brain, produces gonadotrophic hormones which in turn stimulate the gonads-testicles or ovaries-to produce other hormones necessary for normal sexual activity. The gonadotrophic hormones are made of protein; the sex hormones, of protein or fat-like substances known as steroids. If the diet is seriously inadequate in protein, fat, the B vitamins, or almost any nutrient, the pituitary and/or the gonads are unable to produce these hormones in adequate quantities. For example, I was amused to find that scientists had studied the vitamin-C content of the pituitary gland before and after male rabbits were bred. When the diet lacks vitamin C, the animals do not care to breed. If the diet is adequate, the pituitary is saturated with vitamin C before breeding but depleted of the vitamin afterward. Anyone who has bred a rabbit will admit that this is rapid utilization of a nutrient.

Studies of men in prison camps, of the conscientious objectors in the starvation experiments at the University of Minnesota, and of numerous clinical investigations show that libido decreases or disappears when the nutrition is inadequate. On the other hand, as long as even an average degree of health is maintained, glands rarely become abnormal. I know of no man who worries about the function of his thyroid, pancreas, or adrenal glands; if they become abnormal, he knows he can obtain thyroxin, insulin, or adrenalin from his physician. Testosterone is also available, but it is probably never needed when the nutrition is adequate.

If neither psychological nor nutritional problems exist, sexual function is probably maintained as long as is health itself. A doctor told me of his Danish grandparents. At the age of eighty-seven, his grandfather, after working in the garden all morning and eating a hearty lunch, had quietly passed away while sitting in his chair. Grandmother, considerably younger, outlived him many years. Once when the women of the family were gathered with their sewing, someone asked the grandmother at what age, in her opinion, men became functionally unable to express love through sexual union. Grandmother answered softly in Danish, “Aldrig”which means never. This same doctor, speaking of the importance of maintaining adequate nutrition in order that the sexual relationships may be fulfilling, then remarked, “It’s putting money in the bank which will be a pleasure to spend.”

To say that obesity is caused merely by consuming too many calories is like saying that the only cause of the American Revolution was the Boston Tea Party. There are many causes. One, I suspect, is that our foods are so depleted of the nutrients which starved bodies crave that overeating is due to a physiological compulsion to obtain them; even that usually fails to supply the nutrients longed for by the tissues. Another cause is that people often eat too little rather than too much; the basal metabolism drops far below normal; there is no energy for work or play, none to be turned into heat. When few calories are used, few are needed. Such people sit, sluggish as lizards sunning themselves, gaining weight on tiny meals and becoming more miserable with each added pound.

If an improved nutrition program does not cause you to lose weight, I would say that the program is not adequate for you or that you should go to a psychiatrist for help.

Another reward of nutrition is gaining weight, if that is desired. In the spring of 1932 I planned a diet for a man who weighed 121 pounds and who wanted so much to gain weight; that fall he asked for a reducing diet. Not long afterward, an extremely tall, ill man came to see me; he then weighed 155 pounds and he, too, wished to gain. A year or so later he weighed 210 pounds and wanted to reduce. I still know both of these men. Although gaining was no problem and a “reducing diet” was planned for each of them, neither has reduced.

For years I have refused to make out a gaining diet for anyone. When faulty digestion and absorption are corrected, when nerves and muscles are relaxed to the extent that energy is no longer needlessly wasted and sound sleep is induced, the underweight person gains easily without increasing his calorie intake. A gaining diet usually causes him to put on too much weight.

There is another problem which almost invariably disappears if nutrition is taken seriously over a considerable length of time. For me, the most striking example of this problem is a woman I saw first when she was twenty-nine. She was underweight, pale, and listless; her hair was stringy; tension lines cut her forehead; and fatigue was stamped on her face. Her blood count and blood pressure were both low. She had trouble with constipation and hemorrhoids and was “miserable from gas.” The radio and youngsters made her “fly off the handle.” She had severe headaches about twice a week. My notes say, “Can’t sleep; stays up all night at least once each week to be sure she can sleep the next night.” She told of several miscarriages. Because of tumors her uterus had been removed shortly before I saw her.

Three years later, when this same woman came to a series of lectures I was giving, she had become my idea of genuine beauty. She reminded me of a race horse being held back at the starting line. Her eyes were bright and flashing, her skin had both color and glow, her figure was the kind any woman might envy. Her hair was resilient and amazingly alive. Her face was animated; it glowed with health even in repose. After these lectures, a group of us often went to her home for “coffee,” meaning a near-smorgasbord of cold meats, cheeses, and dark breads. I usually sat watching her, fascinated. Every time I saw her, I asked myself how any person could have met her and not been immediately struck by her beauty. I knew the answer perfectly well. When I first saw this woman, she was not beautiful: she was pale and listless; her hair was stringy; tension lines cut her forehead; and fatigue was stamped on her face.

Too much “beauty” is only cosmetic-deep, though that is better than no beauty at all. The person who is satisfied with cosmetic-deep beauty, in my opinion, has low standards.

Beauty should be at least vivacity-deep. It is better still if it can be both vivacity-deep and character-deep. Before I die, I hope mine can be soul-deep. Sound nutrition is absolutely essential for vivacity-deep beauty, a form of beauty which, I believe, any semi-healthy individual at any age can have provided it is wanted badly enough. When persons are seriously malnourished, as far too many of them are, those who could have character-deep beauty are often so ill and mentally confused and self-centered because of their illnesses that they fail to achieve this higher form of beauty. When malnutrition is severe, it prevents the serenity and calmness which in my opinion are essential ingredients of that rare and intangible quality I think of as soul beauty.

Another problem which often disappears after dietary improvement has to do with sexuality. Let us grant that perhaps 95 per cent of such problems are psychological, and consider only those which may be nutritional. Probably every nutrient plays some role in stimulating normal hormone production or in maintaining the health of the prostate, the uterus, and the penial and vaginal passages, all essential before mate relationships can be fulfilling.

Aside from having a metabolism test taken, there are a number of little tricks by which you can determine a person’s rate of energy production. One is to notice how quickly he moves or thinks or how warm he keeps his house. A neighbor once gave me quite a serious lecture on the possibility of my children dying of pneumonia because our house was so cold and they often went outside without coats or sweaters. I silently turned up the furnace, later sold her on nutrition, and now she is comfortable in our house. All energy is turned into heat; if you have no energy, you can have no heat. The energy production of a healthy child is usually much more efficient than that of an adult. In fact, the BMR of a mother can be guessed quite accurately by how much she bundles up her children; such a mother then feels happy, but the children usually feel miserable. Anyone who pays fuel bills will agree that low energy production is quite expensive.

If you are comfortable at a room temperature of 70°F., love a cold shower, need only moderate covering on your bed, and enjoy a pleasant breeze which some people call a “draft,” your metabolism is quite normal. One woman told me she slept with an electric pad at her feet under an electric blanket covered by two more blankets and still was cold. A man said the only time he felt warm was when he got into his car which had stood all day in the hot sunshine with the windows closed. After following an adequate nutrition program, these people, and dozens with milder symptoms of inadequate energy production, soon became comfortable at moderate temperatures. A physician tells me his temperature increases a degree within an hour after drinking a glass of tiger’s milk, showing the rapid and marked increase in energy production. In Dr. Thorne’s experiments at Harvard, the BMR increased within a few minutes after a high-protein breakfast was eaten.

Probably every nutrient plays some role in helping the body to produce energy. The lack may be predominantly one of the B vitamins, iodine, or protein but not necessarily so. Since the trace minerals act as catalysts, or speeder-uppers, of energy production, an undersupply of these minerals may be the major cause. Whatever the cause, if an adequate diet is eaten and well absorbed, energy can be produced in excess of human needs.

A problem which is intimately related to a normal metabolic rate and which often disappears when the nutrition is adequate is that of reducing. I myself was as slow as molasses in discovering this easy solution. A number of obese persons who wanted to reduce when they came to me have been too ill to be put on reducing diets.

“Let’s forget about reducing for at least three months and concentrate on building health,” I would tell them. “Get your basal metabolism built up, and then you can reduce while you sleep. You’ll feel like working and exercising by that time, and reducing will be easier.”

Many of these persons were so malnourished that I recommended 200 to 300 grams of protein daily for them temporarily: large servings of meat, fish, or fowl including liver daily if they enjoyed it; a quart of tiger’s milk made with whole milk; as much yogurt, cheeses, and eggs as they could eat or wanted; a green salad at each lunch and dinner tossed with a tablespoon of cold-pressed soybean oil or approximately two tablespoons of French dressing; two or three tablets of mixed minerals and usually 250 milligrams of vitamin C after each meal; vitamins A and E in capsules daily after breakfast; a capsule of vitamin D every Sunday. I told them to get tablets of digestive enzymes with bile and more tablets of glutamic acid hydrochloride in case gas became a problem. I asked them to forego foods which would fill them up too much or over-stimulate their insulin production, such as potatoes and other starchy vegetables; cereals of all kinds; honey, molasses, any concentrated sweet; desserts except fruits. Certainly refined foods had no place in their health-building regimes: they were to pass up soft drinks, refined sugar concoctions, foods prepared with white flour. They used Sanka instead of coffee unless too exhausted to live without a stimulus.

Some of these people gained weight for a week or two; then they complained they could not eat so much. Their blood sugar was high; they had no craving for sweets. When the diet is adequate, few calories are needed or desired. By the end of three months they had lost weight; some phoned or came in to ask, “How can I stop losing?” One was a seventy-six-year-old woman who had been in a wheelchair for years with arthritis; she had weighed 186 pounds; now she is 40 pounds lighter and walks well with a cane. Another was a man with heart disease, his legs swollen to twice their normal size; now his weight is exactly as he wants it, and all heart symptoms are gone. I shall never forget a middle-aged woman, whose brilliant mind worked sluggish);” and who had huge varicose veins covered with elastic stockings; she had a history of repeated attacks of gout. Three months later I did not recognize this woman: she had been transformed into an alert, slender person with a new vivacious personality and without a visible varicose vein or a tinge of gout. There are many others.

Finally it dawned on me that this method was the way every person should reduce. My advice now is: Throw away your bathroom scales and calorie charts; forget about reducing and forget about exercising, but never forget about building health. When health comes, you cannot keep yourself from exercising; you will work twice as hard without fatigue; you will find yourself wanting to go skiing or dancing or walking or swimming, your own vitality urging you into activity. Weight loss will come slowly perhaps, but if you adhere to the program, it will come. And it will be a permanent loss.

There are many people who want to reduce, but their principal hunger is subconscious. Eating is a substitute for love. The child first experiences love as his mother feeds him, at the same time cooing, singing, and caressing him. The happy old-fashioned mother loved and nursed her baby perhaps 1500 times. Under these circumstances any child soon associates love with food; later, if love is withdrawn, overeating becomes a compensation. People who suffer in this way can usually be helped only by a competent psychiatrist.

When a good nutrition program is conscientiously followed, other problems often disappear. They are rather like happiness which comes as a by-product of unselfishness but is elusive if sought directly. No one can say what nutrients or combinations of nutrients have brought about the change. Probably the improved psychological outlook which comes with feeling better helps as much as anything.

It has been known for years, for example, that persons who drink excessively suffer from multiple nutritional deficiencies. Only recently has the work of Dr. Roger J. Williams at the University of Texas and of other scientists shown that the desire to drink, in itself, can be caused by nutritional deficiencies.

Many experiments have been conducted, the general gist of which is as follows: Large numbers of rats are given the choice of four beverages: water; 3 per cent alcohol, representing beer; 10 per cent alcohol, comparable to light wines; and 50 per cent alcohol, suggestive of hard liquors. Each rat is kept in a separate cage, its liquid consumption measured daily. All the animals are given the same “normal” diet. Under such treatment, some rats become teetotalers; others land on skid road. Then the abstainers are put on an inadequate diet, perhaps partially lacking one or more B vitamins. The excessive drinkers are given a superior diet containing far above normal amounts of certain nutrients, especially the B vitamins. Before long, the teetotaler rats start drinking, and many land on skid road. All the skid road rats drink less, and many become teetotalers. When offspring of the teetotaler rats and the skid road rats are offered their choice of drinks as were their parents, like-father-like-son, they become abstainers or drunkards.

A number of conclusions have been drawn from such experiments. First, there is no such thing as a «normal” diet. What is normal for one person may not be normal at all for another. Second, the need for greater than so-called «normal” amounts of certain nutrients is a hereditary need. When these excessively high nutritional requirements are not met, the person with such needs becomes susceptible to certain abnormalities to which Dr. Williams has given the name “genetotrophic diseases,” of which alcoholism is one. If the nutrition is adequate for each individual, however, such diseases need not appear in any generation. Another conclusion is that alcoholism might be partly prevented if our national diet were improved. The third conclusion to be drawn from the experiments is that if persons who have the compulsive urge to drink excessively are given far-above-average amounts of certain nutrients and are treated with understanding, their desire for liquor may decrease; a few may even stop drinking.

Although an undersupply of B vitamins appears to be a -major cause of alcoholism, the blood sugar level is also of extreme importance (ref. 3, P: 14) as is the amount of fat and protein in the diet. A factor N 1 believed to be in yeast, liver, meat, and wheat germ 1 has been emphasized as being another nutrient perhaps necessary in preventing the craving for alcohol. Although Alcoholics Anonymous deserves no word of criticism, its members suffer unnecessarily by being unaware of the value of good nutrition. They wash B vitamins from their bodies by drinking tremendous quantities of coffee. They lower their blood sugar levels by over-stimulating their insulin flow with quantities of sweets. They merely change crutches from alcohol to tremendous quantities of coffee, sugar, and tobacco. Ignoring as they do the simple rudiments of good nutrition, without either dietary or psychological help, it is surprising indeed that as many give up alcohol as do. Certainly nutrition is only one part of this problem. Who knows how important a part?

Mrs. Gladys Lindberg, who in my opinion is making an outstanding contribution to nutrition, has worked for some years with men whom Alcoholics Anonymous has failed to help. As usual, it started with one man, who, down and out, an alcoholic for 32 years, came to see her. Let us call him Mr. X. Mrs. Lindberg asked him if he would help her with an experiment to see if good nutrition could decrease his craving for alcohol. He agreed, and she supplied the nutrients. At the end of the first week he reported incredulously that his craving had decreased and that he felt unbelievably better. Each week improvement was greater. Soon he found employment.

In our city a man and his wife, themselves ex-alcoholics, own a large car-washing establishment. They employ about 20 men, all alcoholics whom they usually find in flophouses; they give these men food and a dormitory to sleep in and guarantee employment as long as they do not drink. Mr. X. became one of their employees. In the evenings, the men came to the dormitory, threw themselves on the beds with exhaustion which went to the marrow of their bones; they were too exhausted to seek entertainment, too afraid they would be tempted to take the drinks which could bring relief. Mr. X. worked as hard as they but felt no exhaustion and craved no drinks. He told them of Mrs. Lindberg, and they went to her and told their friends who then went to her. They found that as long as they followed her nutritional program, their exhaustion and their craving disappeared.

Mrs. Lindberg gives these men an adequate diet supplemented with yeast mix containing liver concentrate massive doses of synthetic B vitamins, large amounts of soybean oil, vitamins A, C, D, and E in capsules or tablets, and enough enzyme tablets and hydrochloric acid tablets to insure efficient digestion. Although her results will never reach the pages of a medical journal, I suspect that she will have a special feather in a wing some day. If you ever want to talk to men who have gone overboard on good nutrition, you should talk to some of her teetotalers.

A problem which is in my opinion easily corrected by sound nutrition is a low basal metabolic rate (BMR), or subnormal energy production. Probably no physician would agree with me. The reason, I believe, is that although any doctor sees hundreds of patients with low BMRs, few if any have seen patients who have improved their nutrition sufficiently to raise their BMRs to normal. “Internal laziness” could describe this condition except that it would ignore the external laziness which is far more of a problem. Physicians usually recommend thyroid tablets for subnormal energy production. Such tablets are perhaps necessary at times and do increase the BMR, often, I am afraid, at the expense of general health. To me taking thyroid is like whipping a tired horse instead of letting it rest awhile, then giving it enough oats so that it no longer wants or needs to rest.

There are two approaches to improving the diet when nutrition has been neglected. The cautious approach is to increase the amounts of supplements and such foods as yeast, yo gmt, or tiger’s milk gradually; thereby you can prevent digestive upsets and give yourself a chance to cultivate a taste for these foods. Improvement may be slow, but this method is safest for persons without supervision. The other approach, which can end in disaster or spectacular improvement, is to take enough supplements to saturate the tissues and large amounts of foods supplying proteins, B vitamins and other nutrients for a few days, then decrease the amount drastically when body needs have been met. I use the latter method but have sometimes regretted it. Persons who consume more nutrients than their bodies need lose a fortune annually through their excreta.

I take vitamin pills and recommend them, but I still disapprove of them. If wholesome foods were available, supplements would rarely be needed except for vitamin D. Few people can obtain wholesome food. By wholesomeness, I mean the kind of food our grandparents and all our ancestors before them ate at every meal. Just plain food. Fruits” vegetables, and grains grown on naturally mineralized, naturally composted soil untouched by smog, chemical fertilizers, and poison sprays. Milk from healthy animals grazed on green pastures (most such milk need not be pasteurized, and its hormones, enzymes, and steroids are not destroyed; if “pasteurization” is necessary, it can be done by the natural methods of souring or changing into yogurt). Eggs laid by hens allowed to run on the ground, gathering worms and scratching in manure piles rich in bacteria-produced vitamin B12, vitamin K, and many other nutrients. Fertile eggs produced by hens kept with roosters (such eggs are rich in steroids which commercial eggs lack). Meats from animals which have not been castrated. Foods which have not been refined or processed.

Although such foods have been eaten by billions of people who have lived and died, this degree of wholesomeness is now too dreamy to be practical. As I see it, thousands of adults and millions of children in our country have never once had one mouthful of wholesome food. Everything we eat is tinkered with in one way or another. With every tinkering come losses, some small and unavoidable, some large and avoidable; the cumulative amount of these losses is staggering and crippling. It is we who are staggering, we who are being crippled. We must do the best we can, but our best can be none too good. Supplements, therefore, appear to be necessary.

One should constantly be aware that a certain balance seems to exist between the various nutrients in the body, as in the case of the B vitamins. Furthermore, the absorption, utilization, and/or retention of one nutrient often depend upon the presence of another. For example, it is silly to take calcium if you fail to obtain enough fat and/or vitamin D to absorb and use that calcium; or it is useless to spend money on vitamin A unless fat and vitamin E are available simultaneously. These problems are largely taken care of automatically when natural foods are eaten. The overall picture, however, should be kept constantly in mind.

It seems to me that the situation is much like boxes inside of boxes. Each box should be seen as a whole and in relation to each other. The smallest box, let us say, represents the whole of nutrition from the proper preparation of the soil, through the harvesting, handling, processing, and marketing of food; the careful selection which makes it possible for each of the 60 or more body requirements to be met; the scientific preparation and gracious serving of that food; the pleasantness and relaxation necessary to assure digestion and absorption; and the factors which must be controlled to prevent destruction of nutrients in the body and losses through the excreta.

The next larger box might symbolize the body as a whole, all its parts and organs functioning co-operatively. Health is not of a part of the body but of all the cells together. Whether recognized or not, disease is not of a part but also of every body cell. The third box could be symbolic of the body needs as a whole, such as love, peace of mind, psychological adjustment, relaxation and personal recognition as well as the needs for exercise, sleep, fresh air, sunshine, and warmth. The next larger box might represent the individual in relation to his environment, family, friends, work, hobbies, and recreation. The largest box could symbolize this individual’s personal philosophy, religion, convictions, ethics, prejudices, and morals, which in turn determine the part he plays in the world about him. Nutrition, seen in such light, becomes a small part; yet it remains a vital part.

A doctor friend of mine calls persons only part-smart who fail to see nutrition as a whole and its relation to the world about us. When an individual takes vitamin Br or a physician ~ves injections of vitamin B12, either is granting that nutrition has a little value; since some 60 nutrients are considered essential, he is approximately one-sixtieth part-smart. Wonderful physicians have made such outstanding contributions by their clinical research with vitamins Br, B2, and niacin that they now have become famous; these brilliant men are still, nutrition-wise, only part-smart. The person who fails to see the value of soil bacteria, the losses caused by refining, the psychological factors involved in food choice and/or absorption or any other fragment of the picture is, in my opinion, only part-smart. The individual who perhaps harms nutrition most is one who exaggerates its importance; he is often neurotically part-smart. The man who has not yet realized that nutrition plays a role in his ability to be a good husband and father, to make a good income or to enjoy recreation or that it can influence his thinking and feeling is, nutrition-wise, not even part-smart.

Personally applied nutrition is a means to an end, a means which need be remembered only a few minutes daily during the remainder of your life. The end goal is health in all its aspects, a type of physical health which can help to form a basis for mental, emotional, moral and spiritual health. Such a goal is valueless unless you do something worthwhile with the health you attain. If a high degree of health, however, increases your mental alertness and emotional stability and can thus give you the moral courage to live up to your spiritual convictions, then you will find your work fulfilling, your fun rewarding, your goals tantalizing and the world about you both a good place to live and a better place because of your presence. Then only will nutrition have reached its personal goal.

Dr. Rountree has pointed out that the goal of nutrition is growth of body, mind and conscience. She states that the possibilities of improvement of family, community, and world conditions through better food and the use of nutritional knowledge for man’s welfare make up a vision all must catch; that nutritional knowledge alone is of little value but that what you do with this knowledge is all-important. She reminds us that undernourished bodies are tied up with self-centered, pessimistic minds and that malnourished people are not interested in abstract ideas like democracy. She writes: S “Nutritional knowledge can give us a sense of mastery over life, help balance the budget, reduce medical costs, maintain the right architectural propositions for social success and long life, improve the sense of humor, promote efficiency in home, school and business and make us better able to take it. Nutrition well taught will make people glory in the American way of life.”

It seems to me that the person who can be ever mindful of such a concept of health is, nutrition-wise, no longer only part-smart.

I usually have fruit or fruit juice, meat, tiger’s milk, and coffee or Sanka for breakfast. The youngsters’ favorite breakfast is fruit or juice and buttered muffins containing soy Hour, wheat germ, fresh and powdered milk, eggs, raisins, and soybean oil; they eat quantities of the muffins with milk or tiger’s milk. Unless I am invited out, I have only salad and tiger’s milk or yogurt for lunch; if there is no time to eat, I have nothing except a glass of yogurt or tiger’s milk. Afternoon snacks I particularly enjoy; I usually have fruit or a glass of yogurt or milk, then Sanka. Our suppers are skimpy, perhaps only scrambled eggs or cottage cheese with salad, milk, and fruit; or yogurt with fruit and homemade bread. Even when I entertain, I serve only meat or meat substitute, tossed salad, dark bread if anyone wants it, milk, and fruit. Sometimes I cook a vegetable and occasionally make custard, cheese cake, or some other dessert. The woman who helps me feels so sorry for my guests because they get no potatoes or gravy except on Thanksgivings. My friends are at “that age”; they seem to run to chubbiness.

The objection is sometimes made that such a dietary is expensive. I consider it the reverse. No money is wasted on junk; little or none is needed for medical or dental bills. Thousands of people who could afford adequate diets live on markedly inadequate ones. Persons who have little money also spend tragic amounts on “foods” which can never produce health. Perhaps two-thirds of the items in our food markets are not worth carrying home, let alone paying for, unless the goal be to produce disease.

The trouble with any general instructions is that they cannot meet individual requirements. For example, my first book contained a reducing diet; I recall how proud I was when a woman told me she had followed this diet and had lost 20 pounds. My glow quickly disappeared when I discovered she had also lost 12 teeth partly because the diet had not met her needs. The pounds quickly returned; her teeth did not. Every person’s nutritional requirements vary from those of other individuals and from day to day. No one can possibly know those variations as well as you yourself; for this reason everyone desiring health should have a thorough knowledge of nutrition.

People frequently ask me what vitamin supplements I take. My requirements may vary widely from yours. I use fresh orange juice and yeast and/or liver daily as my sources of vitamins C and the B vitamins and eat yogurt almost daily to supply bacteria which I hope are producing vitamin K and still more B vitamins. For years I have taken after breakfast 25,000 units of vitamin A, 100 units of vitamin E in the form of natural mixed tocopherols, and 100 to 250 milligrams of vitamin C, the amount varying with the number of people who are currently sneezing in my direction. I used to take 25,000 units of vitamin D every Saturday because I was afraid I would forget it on Sunday; now I take it on Saturday because a woman told me she understood that vitamin-D-on-Sunday held a religious significance for me. For one week of every month I take daily three to six tablets of calcium combined with trace minerals; I have hoped that enough trace minerals would be stored for the three following weeks. Occasionally, when working under unusual pressure, I take additional B vitamins in capsule form. If something causes me to blow my top, I run for calcium and vitamin B6 tablets, or if I miss so much sleep that a cold threatens, I take more vitamin C.

While I was visiting a friend recently I was startled to overhear her teen-age daughter remark, “I’m going to bed and leave the menopause gals to themselves.” This jolted me into increasing my vitamin E to 200 units daily, the mixed minerals to an after-breakfast routine, and the vitamin D to 25,000 units every Wednesday and Saturday, still without religious significance.

If you can find an everything-in-one capsule which meets your needs, that is excellent but I have never been able to. Such capsules are usually expensive; many B vitamins are omitted, some are supplied only in microscopic amounts, and the cheap ones are too plentiful. In most cases, to obtain enough vitamin D or E, you need to take several which, besides increasing the expense, may supply far more of other nutrients than you need. The supplements I take meet my needs at about nine cents per day; to obtain my requirements from all-in-one capsules would usually be many times that.

In my opinion, the vitamin business has become a racket.

I am continuously shocked at the amount of money people spend on vitamin supplements. Before buying any supplement, read labels and compare potencies and prices of various brands. Products shipped across a state line are inspected by the Food and Drug Administration. No company wishes its reputation marred by government citations; therefore the potencies stated on the labels of products marketed for some time are usually reliable. The prices vary widely, however, even for products often prepared by the same manufacturers. The cheaper product is often excellent.

There is little value in improving your nutrition if your digestive system is so below par that the food is not efficiently digested or absorbed. If your tongue shows the symptoms discussed on page 63 or if you get gas from taking yeast, milk, or other nutritious food, you can be sure, unless you are eating too fast and swallowing air, that your digestion is on the rocks. In such case lemon juice or dilute hydrochloric acid (10 per cent solution purchased from a drugstore) should be added to yeast, milk and/or tiger’s milk if used. To aid in digesting other foods, hydrochloric acid tablets, usually labeled as “glutamic acid hydrochloride,” are excellent. Tablets of digestive enzymes with bile are often advisable.” One physician I know tells his patients to take five of each kind of these tablets after each meal; if IlO gas occurs, to decrease to four, three, two, and finally one of each, increasing the amounts again if gas recurs. Such a procedure is excellent, but I have never had nerve enough to recommend it; I usually advise one tablet of each after each meal, to be increased later if trouble with gas persists. Both should be stopped as soon as digestion appears normal, or in about a month after a good nutrition program is initiated.

Removing numerous bottle tops daily would make a hypochondriac out of anyone. If you become a tablet taker, buy an attractive box designed for keeping several packages of cigarettes, dump your tablets into it, and keep it on the breakfast table. Avoid, if possible, the display of taking tablets in public.

Lunch

• Eggs, cheese, meat, fish, fowl, or cream soup; or peanut butter or other protein sandwich, if desired
• Green salad with oil dressing or vegetables in soup to which is added one tablespoon of vegetable oil
• Milk, skim or whole, yogurt, buttermilk, or tiger’s milk
• Whole-grain bread and butter or margarine, if desired
• Fruit, if desired
• Capsules or tablets if used

4 P.M.

• Fruit or fruit juice, milk, tiger’s milk, yogurt, or buttermilk

Dinner or Supper

• Soup or fruit or fish cocktail if desired
• Meat, fish, fowl, or meat substitute such as eggs, cheese, or waffles with creamed ham or tuna
• Tossed green vegetable salad with one tablespoon oil for each person being served
• One cooked vegetable if desired, preferably non-starchy
• Whole-grain bread and butter or margarine if calorie requirements are high
• Milk, buttermilk, yogurt, or tiger’s milk
• Fruit, cheese, and nuts if desired capsules or tablets if used

Bedtime

• For hungry persons or those whose health is below par: milk or milk drink

Since breakfast determines the amount of energy you have for the day and establishes your metabolic rate, it should be high in protein and supply some fat and carbohydrates, although it need not be a large meal. Lunches should likewise be high in protein and moderate in carbohydrate and should contain some fat. Dinners or suppers can be perhaps more graciously served but, calorically speaking, they should be no larger than breakfast or lunch. All meals should be delicious. The daily menus may be somewhat as follows:

Breakfast

• Orange or grapefruit juice or a vitamin-C tablet with other juice or fruit
  ¼ to ½ pound liver, chops, steak, hamburger, brains, kidneys, mixed grill, fish, or other meat; or eggs with another protein as ham or sausage, or cheese omelet, or eggs scrambled with powdered skim milk and/or cheese or brains, or an egg served with melted cheese on toast (bacon I consider an appetizer rather than food); or wheat germ and middlings or any whole-grain cereal cooked in milk and/or with powdered milk added; or waffles, hotcakes, or muffins made of high-protein ingredients
• whole-grain toast or bread if desired; cheese or peanut butter used instead of butter or margarine if enjoyed
• milk or milk drink, preferably tiger’s milk
• coffee if you must; preferably Sanka, postum, or other coffee substitute, perhaps made by adding milk instead of water to instant varieties
• daily, immediately after eating, if used: capsules or tablets of vitamins A, C, E, calcium and/or trace minerals, enzymes and/or hydrochloric acid; vitamin-D capsule every Sunday if desired

Unpleasantness at meals often makes us dislike the food served at .those times; many of these unpleasantnesses come early in life and are forgotten, but the food dislikes remain. I shudder to think of the future eating habits of a nation of individuals who, as babies, grope eagerly for warm nipples and instead have cold, hard spoons forced into their tiny mouths; of babies who long for the security of their mothers’ arms but endure the vacuums imposed by bottle holders. These babies are served unappetizing meals of canned foods which their own mothers could not stand to eat. Later, flavors may improve, but beside the children sit giantesses, urging, and scolding, prodding, and nagging. The children are too young to understand that the well-meaning mothers are concerned only about their health. They become too tense to eat at meals and satisfy their hunger by eating between meals, when only junk is available, their low blood sugar urging them to eat the sweets they have already been trained to love so much. These are only a few of the psychological reasons why good nutrition may never be applied.

Let us now suppose that sound dietetics is put into practice. The best food available is obtained and prepared by the best methods known. If this food happens to be disliked, if fatigue is too great, if unpleasantness occurs during the meal, if worries are carried to the table, if the food is said to be health-building and you better eat it or else, or if fears of indigestion are harbored, the flow of digestive juices is decreased or inhibited. Few enzymes are produced. This excellent food, deliciously prepared, stays partly or wholly undigested; most of the nutrients supplied never reach the blood. For example, fecal analysis of a group of successful businessmen revealed quantities of undigested meat fibers.

Such factors as worry, fatigue, and perhaps the stress of competition combined to prevent their five-dollar steaks from digesting. Relaxation and graciousness should reach their height before any meal. The mother who arranges her table as best she can, whether with pottery on clean enamel or with lovely linen, silver, crystal, flowers, and candles, is building health as surely as the one who selects and prepares food carefully. Any person who wishes to apply nutrition must keep these many psychological and physiological factors in mind before becoming too optimistic about the results expected.

There are two major rules to follow in planning a nutrition program for any person, young or old, well or ill. First, every known requirement must be adequately supplied. Second, except for correct cooking, foods should be eaten in their natural state as nearly as possible; thus nutrients still unknown can probably be furnished. Certain foods are the best sources of each body requirement. A summary of such foods, supplying nutrients in most concentrated forms, can give a basis for a day’s dietary:

1. A quart of milk which can be in the form of whole milk, preferably certified and not homogenized, buttermilk, yogurt, tiger’s milk, or skim milk drunk at the same meal when fat is obtained; or any combination of these milks, making a total of one quart. If health is seriously desired, eight ounces of yogurt should be eaten daily.
2. Whole-grain breads and cereals used as weight and aetivity permJt; wheat germ used in cooking or added to cereals. Yeast and/or liver daily if requirements for the B vitamins are high.
3. Some dependable source or sources of vitamin A: green and yellow fruits and vegetables, liver, cream, butter, or margarine; capsules of vitamin A if requirements are high and/or cannot be met by food.
4. Eight ounces of fresh orange or grapefruit juice or the equivalent in whole fruit or 12 ounces of canned or frozen; if frozen, select brands without added sugar.
5. A dependable source of vitamin D, as fish-liver oil or capsule of viosterol.
6. Iodized salt used to the exclusion of any other.
7. One or two tablespoons of vegetable oil as salad dressing, made preferably of soybean or corn oil untreated by heat, or two to four tablespoons of nuts (50 per cent oil) or 1it to l/2 avocado (33 per cent oil).
8. Enough green leafy vegetables to carry a tablespoon of salad oil at lunch and/or dinner. Cooked vegetables, preferably green or yellow, as desired. Starchy vegetables only when calorie requirements are high.
9. Fruits in addition to juice if desired. Colored fruits are preferable to colorless ones, raw to home-cooked, home-cooked to frozen, frozen to canned, and unsweetened to sweetened.
10. Two servings or more of meat, fowl, fish, eggs, cheese, or a high-protein meat substitute. Glandular meats, such as liver, brains, heart, and kidneys, served twice each week or more often. Some type of seafood once a week or daily if desired.

Now let us turn the tables and see that we have a dependable source of every body requirement:

1. Vitamin A: colored fruits and vegetables, cream, butter or margarine, eggs and liver; vitamin-A capsule if used.
2. The B vitamins: yeast, liver or wheat germ, wholegrain breads and cereals, separate B vitamins obtained from milk (B2), green leaves (B2 and foelic acid), meats (niacin), blackstrap molasses (inositol), brains (cholin).
3. Vitamin C: orange or grapefruit juice; smaller amounts from any fresh. raw fruit or vegetable; supplemented by ascorbic acid tablets if needed.
4. Vitamin D: fish-liver oil or vitamin-D capsule; vitamin- D milk if used.
5. Vitamin E: wheat germ, soybean oil, other vegetable oils; natural mixed tocopherols in capsule form if requirements are high.
6. Vitamin K: produced by intestinal bacteria; need be no concern to a healthy person if diet is adequate in milk and unsaturated fatty acids and low in refined carbohydrates; intestinal bacteria are increased by eating yogurt.
7. Vitamin P (rutin): citrus fruits, especially lemon rind; helps to prevent destruction of vitamin C in the body; helpful but not essential when massive doses of vitamin Care used.
8. Unsaturated fatty acids: vegetable oils, such as corn, soybean, peanut and cottonseed, and lard; avocados, nuts and unhydrogenated nut butters.
9. Calcium: milk, whole or skim, buttermilk, yogurt and/or tiger’s milk; bone powder and/or calcium tablets if used.
10. Phosphorus: milk, eggs, cheese, meats; all unrefined and unprocessed foods.
11. Iron: liver, yeast, wheat germ, meats, whole-grain breads and cereals.
12. Iodine: iodized salt.
13. Trace minerals: seafoods; liver, blacks trap molasses, and egg yolk usually dependable sources; unrefined foods grown under biological soil conditions; tablets of trace minerals or preparations of sea kelp if used.’
14. Proteins: tiger’s milk, yeast, fresh, canned and powdered milks, yogurt, buttermilk, cheese, meats, game, fowl, fish, eggs, soybeans and soybean flour.
15. Bulk: fruits, vegetables, whole-grain breads and cereals.
16. Liquids: milk, fruit juices, soups, all beverages; any amount of water you may wish to drink.

Such a simplified method of checking is only superficial.

Each requirement must be adjusted to the needs of the individual, the amounts of nutrients depending upon such factors as weight, activity, and degree of health.

One frequently hears the statement that all nutrients should come from good wholesome food. Of course they should. It is extremely difficult, however, to get good wholesome food. Certainly our over-processed, over refined American diet diluted with soft drinks, candy bars, and “quick-energy” cereals has little or no relationship to wholesomeness.

Selecting the best food available and preparing it by the best methods known are both extremely important. Selection and preparation determine the degree of health you enjoy. Food supplements may help, but food itself is far more important. Let us suppose you do obtain wholesome food and bring it into your kitchen. Losses of 60 to 100 per cent of certain vitamins and many minerals can occur during food preparation. One can predict with fair accuracy both the sickness expectancy and the life expectancy of a family by observing the wife’s cooking methods. Any man can be sure of decreasing his life span by marrying a fluffy-cake-and biscuit artist or one who does good-ole-Southe’n cookin’. The green vegetables prepared by some of these women look like the business end of a mop and taste, to me, like something a mop has picked up.

I personally know one such woman, a veritable feminine Bluebeard, who has buried three husbands from heart disease. I call it murder by the lemon-meringue-pie method. H you do wish to murder your husband, this method is excellent; no messy investigations by the police, no prisons, no loss of social prestige except among your acquaintances who are interested in nutrition. In fairness to women, however, it must be stated that many husbands commit suicide; men will continue to do so as long as the way to their hearts - often meaning their billfolds - remains the French-fries-apple-pie path.

Neither careful food selection nor preparation should he minimized. In my opinion, however, the best of both can still not assure health although the absence of either can and usually does assure illness. As I see it, we are caught in a double-squeeze play. We must have nutrients to maintain health. Most of us, however, live sedentary lives; we can use few calories. The desired nutrients come in packages with undesired calories. We cannot obtain the nutrients because we cannot use the calories; this is the first squeeze play. Because of the stresses of modern-day living, our nutritional requirements are extremely high, higher for our entire population than ever before in our history. Because our foods are over-processed and over-refined, our chances of obtaining these nutrients from foods are extremely low, lower for our entire population than ever before in our history; this is the second squeeze play. We are caught like trapped animals, and like trapped animals, we are suffering.

People are different from the experimental animals in a nutrition laboratory. Such animals are put on diets adequate in every respect except for one requirement, which may be only partially under-supplied. All other nutrients are generously supplied, their sources checked and double-checked. Even then the animals’ health gradually changes to disease, and their life span is shortened. People’s diets are often partly inadequate in from 20 to 60 nutrients simultaneously. A few nutrients may be severely lacking; others only slightly so. Just as the scientist produces ill health in experimental animals, so do people produce ill health in themselves. The principal difference is that, with these animals, illness is planned and expected; with people, illness is dreaded but expected.

Instead of the clean-cut, single-deficiency symptoms discussed in the previous chapters, persons usually suffer from multiple deficiencies, the symptoms superimposed upon each other. For example, an individual uninterested in nutrition may suffer from symptoms of a severe lack of 20 amino acids and 12 B vitamins intermingled with the symptoms of milder deficiencies of vitamins C, D, and E and of calcium, iron, iodine, and the trace minerals; during certain hours of the day the symptoms of low blood sugar may become more severe than any others. Such deficiencies, however, are not too difficult to correct.

As I see it, every day you do one of two things: build health or produce disease in yourself. There is, of course, a sliding scale ranging from the most perfect health which you as an individual can attain, through all degrees of semi-health and semi-illness to serious disease. Your choice of foods can largely determine where on this scale you will fall. Neither sickness nor health is a matter of chance.

The problem, however, is less simple than merely selecting and preparing food. The reason nutrition is not applied and may never be applied is largely psychological. We enjoy foods; our pleasures are few enough; if the only foods we feel we can enjoy are the refined and/or processed ones, we will fight to keep them, thus fighting to hold our few pleasures. We as a nation have become so malnourished that we crave sweets as an alcoholic craves drink. This craving is being bred into our children from the very day of birth when, instead of being given life-saving colostrum, the child is offered sugar water in a hospital nursery, which is soon changed to a formula often prepared from solids containing 50 per cent or more refined sugar. Later, limited budgets, radio-and-television blarings, tired mothers, kids’ parties, Girl-Scout-cookie sales, and a hundred other forces combine to perpetuate this craving for sweets. People will fight to satisfy these cravings. The cravings themselves must be prevented if health is to be built.

All other parts of your body are but servants of the cell.

The heart, for example, which people think of as important, only makes it possible for supplies to reach the cell and wastes to be removed. The arteries, veins, and thousands of miles of capillaries are mere pipes through which supplies and wastes are carried. The lungs are slaves which supply oxygen and throw off carbon dioxide; the kidneys are slaves which purify water and remove the wastes freed by the tearing down of worn tissue; the urinary bladder is merely a reservoir. The digestive tract is nothing more than a mechanism for changing food into the form which the cell can utilize. The bone marrow is a slave which produces blood corpuscles to carry oxygen, and the spleen is the graveyard for these corpuscles when their usefulness is spent. All of the glands are slaves which produce hormones to help regulate each cell’s activity; the master gland, the pituitary, is in turn a slave which supervises the functions of the other glands and of each body cell.

The most important slave of all is undoubtedly the liver.

This organ is the storage house which holds fats, sugars, and proteins coming from the digestive tract, ready to supply them to the cell the split second they are needed. It is largely in the liver that toxic substances which might damage the cell are rendered harmless; here the nitrogen-containing waste products from worn-out cell proteins are broken down; the protein, albumin, needed to collect urine, is made here, and still other proteins, the antibodies, which destroy bacteria, are produced. The liver makes the fat-like substances, lecithin and cholesterol; it likewise produces the bile necessary to aid the digestion of fats and the absorption of vitamins A, D, E, and K; it stores not only these vitamins but also minerals such as iron, copper, and the trace elements; it forms and stores the body starch, glycogen. By the help of insulin, it largely controls the amount of sugar in the blood, withdrawing sugar when the supply is generous and changing it into body starch or fat or, when the supply runs low, changing the starch back into sugar and spilling it into the blood. When no food is eaten and all the stored glycogen is used up, cell proteins are tom down into sugar and fat; the liver again withdraws sugar from the blood and feeds it back once more as needed. This servant produces enzymes capable of inactivating the hormones which would otherwise accumulate to the extent that the cell might be injured. In spite of all these duties and many others, this master servant has only one purpose: to help maintain, regulate, and protect the life of the cell. Like the nutrients, all of these slaves co-operate with each other.

Although the structure and activity of every cell in the body are similar in that each must have oxygen and food and from each waste must be removed, the cells themselves are differentiated; their hundreds of duties vary endlessly. The cells of the muscles are the body’s pulleys; their cytoplasm is so made that it can contract, and by each cell contracting in harmony, muscles are shortened and movement is made possible. The cells which make up the bones attract minerals and solidify them to give form to the body. The cells of the glands are manufacturers, turning out hormones. Thus is the function of groups of billions of cells each differentiated to make up the separate structures of the body.

Foods can be selected which will supply all the nutrients known to be needed by each cell. If these foods are grown on good soil and eaten in as nearly their natural state as possible, the nutrients still unknown can probably be furnished. Digestion and absorption, if faulty, can be improved; the destruction of nutrients in the digestive tract and the blood and losses of those nutrients from the body can be prevented. The well-nourished body can protect itself from bacterial invasion and can detoxify foreign materials which gain access to it. My belief, therefore, is that every person, if intelligent enough and financially able to obtain a completely adequate diet, can achieve perfect health provided irreparable harm has not already been done.

Dr. Szent-Cyorgyi, who was given the Nobel Prize for his early work on vitamin C, pointed out that when he was a medical student, everything appeared to be always wrong with the body. There were so many diseases that it seemed impossible to learn them all; he tells how he flunked examinations covering this subject. Later, when getting his doctorate in biochemistry, or the chemistry of the body, which is the study of health, he was amazed to find that this time everything was so right, so very right. Probably there never has been a person who has studied the detailed mechanisms which make up health who has not felt as did Dr. Szent-Cyorgyi.

In fact when one considers the healthy body as a functional structure of billions of cells having hundreds of separate purposes, yet each working co-operatively in perfect unison with absolute harmony and almost inconceivable synchronization, so far surpassing the most delicate machinery made by man, one cannot help being reminded of the philosophers who argue that there is only one perfection, and that perfection is God. Regardless of the religious skepticism of any person when he starts to study the workings of the healthy body, he usually soon agrees with the philosophers and realizes simultaneously that only disease is manmade. The God-made perfection is health, and potentially thrs perfection is you.

Here is chlorine which originally came from table salt; like the shuttle from Times Square to Grand Central, it shifts continuously in and out of the cell, thereby aiding the body in removing carbon dioxide. Here are all the trace minerals, the catalysts, or speeder-uppers; they are the traffic cops which keep all traffic moving at a fantastic speed. Movement ‘can take place without them, but it is slow and the traffic jams. Here is cobalt in the vitamin B12 portion of certain enzymes; iodine is part of thyroxin; zinc is helping the messenger, insulin; here are magnesium, fluorine, and all the other minerals, each helping the cell to function.

Just outside the cell wall is sodium, which may have originally come from meat or table salt. In some way not understood, sodium carries on a lifelong duel with potassium, largely inside the cell. This mysterious duel is apparently fought over the water supply. When the sodium appears to be winning, the cell contains more water, but potassium is withdrawn and excreted in the urine; when potassium wins, much sodium and water are lost. The referee for this duel appears to be a messenger from the outside of the adrenal glands.

Perhaps with the help of these duelers and of calcium and vitamin C, this cell has an amazing power of selectivity. If poisons, harmful chemicals, allergins, and/or bacterial toxins are carried in the tissue fluid, this healthy cell refuses to let them enter. On the other hand, if the nutrition is good, the tissue fluid carries every nutrient to this cell; the cell invites whatever nutrients it needs to enter, withdraws what it wants, and leaves the remainder to be carried on to other cells. When too little of a nutrient is supplied, the cell adjusts itself as best it can; when too much is given, the cell fights back but is sometimes defeated.

Every nutrient has its own duties; yet each works cooperatively with the others. Vitamin E helps linoleic acid, linoleic acid helps vitamin D, vitamin D helps phosphorus, phosphorus helps calcium, calcium helps vitamin C, ad infinitum. No nutrient plays a hermit role.

Many activities which take place in this cell are brought about by other substances; although neither the activities nor the substances are described, both are known and understood by scientists. There are still, however, myriads of unknown activities and unknown substances which scientists have yet to understand.

This cell with all its processes and activities, multiplied by billions and billions, is you. The degree to which this cell can maintain its ideal structure and can carryon its normal functions is the degree of your health. A seemingly minor lack of a single nutrient or of many nutrients can damage the structure and/or interfere with its functions; a severe deficiency of one or more nutrients can bring about disaster. It is the amount of nutrients supplied to the cell itself which determines the state of your health. Malnutrition does not necessarily mean a faulty diet or even faulty absorption; it means only that less than enough of one or more nutrients reaches the cell.

The sum total of all the never-ceasing activities of all the cells is spoken of as metabolism. When these hundreds of activities, although still carried on at fantastic speed, are at their slowest, as when you lie motionless not even digesting food, the total is called basal metabolism. A lack of any nutrient or nutrients can slow down the activities of the cells; less food is needed, and unwanted weight may be gained. Only when all nutrients are generously suppli€d elm the activities of the body be maintained at ideal speed, and the metabolism remain normal.

Let us now see how all nutrients help the body by imagining that we can watch one of your cells. Let us say that you are in perfect health; therefore all the processes of this cell are perfect.

The cell is the shape of an egg. Foods can pass through its walls just as spilled juice might pass through a tablecloth. Every moment from birth until death there is poured in and sucked out a continuous surf of blood plasma, or tissue fluid. The incoming surf is pushed in by the force of the blood pressure from capillaries branching from arteries; the outgoing surf is withdrawn by the attraction of the tiny particles of a protein, albumin, in the capillaries joining the veins. The incoming wave carries fresh supplies; the outgoing wave removes wastes.

We can see through this ever-moving fluid as a diver can observe sea life about him when he walks the floor of the ocean. As we gaze into the cell itself, we see endless particles in fantastic and ceaseless motion. First we notice the business center of the cell, the nucleus. It is made of amino acids from the proteins you have eaten and of nucleic acid, obtained perhaps from yeast or liver; with the help of at least three B vitamins (biotin, pantothenic acid, and vitamin B6) these substances are formed into what are known as nucleotides; they in turn are combined into genes and chromosomes carrying your hereditary pattern, the life program of this cell. Surrounding the nucleus are ever-changing clusters of protein particles, or molecules, formed into what are known as colloids; these protein clusters make up the tissue of the cell, the cytoplasm. The whole, or the nucleus and cytoplasm together, is called protoplasm.

There is so much to observe that we scarcely know what to look at first. Before us are molecules of fat and glucose, both combined with phosphorus; bits of the body starch, called glycogen, made up of dozens of glucose molecules; tiny globules of the fat-like materials, cholesterol and lecithin. We see every known vitamin and mineral.

Our eyes fall on the worker ants in this amazing anthill, the carpenters who build, the demolition crews who tear down; these workers are the enzymes. Your genes carry the blueprint of the enzymes in your body; it is by enzymes that heredity is made possible. If you have blue eyes and brown hair, some of your enzymes are different from those of the person having hazel eyes and black hair. All enzymes are made of protein, but many also contain a vitamin and/or a mineral, such as magnesium or cobalt. They have been named according to the work they do, just as a family might originally have been named Smith because the father worked as a blacksmith.

We watch an enzyme family called phosphatase breaking phosphorus free from molecules of glucose and fat, thus beginning to change them into energy. By the help of other enzymes containing vitamin B1 or pantothenic acid, the particles of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen which form the sugar and fat are tom apart. Hod-carrier enzymes containing vitamin B2 take oxygen from the blood cells and carry it to the fat or sugar. Still other enzymes, this time containing vitamin C, pick up the hydrogen freed as the food is broken into its component parts. With the help of these and other enzyme families, oxygen from the air is combined with the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen which once formed sugar and fat and which are changed into carbon dioxide and water. By this process energy is liberated; all energy, in turn, is changed into heat.

We observe many other enzyme families; ones which tear down the genes of old cells and rebuild genes for new cells, the nucleotidases. The enzymes containing vitamin Be are demolishing and rebuilding bits of the protein cytoplasm. Still others containing pantothenic acid are building or demolishing the unsaturated fatty acids combined with pro.., teins, which together form the lumber for this amazing house. Other enzymes are breaking worn-out protein into sugar, fat, and nitrogen-containing substances. There is the enzyme family of glycogenases, quickly changing glycogen into sugar to replenish that used in energy production, and there are other enzyme families, hundreds of them.

We next notice little telegraph messengers, the hormones, racing in and out of the cell. A messenger from the thyroid glands, thyroxin, helps to determine how much energy is needed and to keep the temperature at the point at which the cell can function best and the worker enzymes can be most efficient. We see another messenger from the pancreas, insulin, aiding the cell to change the sugar not needed for ‘immediate energy into glycogen or fat. Still another messenger from the adrenal glands, cortisone, stands by to break body protein into sugar and fat if sufficient glucose is not supplied. A messenger called adrenaline (epinephrine) is here from the adrenals to speed up the change of glycogen into sugar in case large amounts are needed quickly, as during anger or fear, to produce energy required for fight or flight. Even messengers have come from the sex glands to affect the life of this cell and all cells of the body.

Our eve now catches our old friends, the minerals. Here is phosphorus, both free and combined with protein and fat as part of the cell structure. Calcium is here ready to help relax the cell when rest is required, and potassium is waiting to stimulate it into greater activity when the need arises.

The protein content of our food and the food of animals has decreased and continues to decrease still more. The mineral content of foods is apparently only a fraction of what it used to be or of what it could or should be. The vitamin content varies with the health of the plant. Fresh foods no longer have keeping qualities. Flavor is gone; there is little joy left in eating. I talked to a Frenchman from the provinces, an architect from a village in Mexico, an Englishman lecturing in American universities, an engineer who had lived in the north of China. All asked the same question, “What’s wrong with American food? You eat and eat, and it doesn’t fill you up. It has no flavor.” These people had been used to better foods. Our grandparents were used to better foods. From now on I am going to be used to better foods, but how the entire population of America can get better foods, I do not know.

For four years I raised all of our own vegetables and much of our fruits in soil composted and mineralized without chemical fertilizers. The worms in the compost piles looked like plates of spaghetti. Bugs and aphids were no problem; no disease which I could recognize invaded the garden. The flavors of these foods were superb. People say that flavor is due to freshness, but it is not freshness alone. Many times I have brought in too much and kept the excess in the refrigerator, using it later when I was busy or the garden was muddy; the marvelous flavors were retained. The quantities we ate were unbelievable; often the children had to be told to stop eating vegetables. This year I thought I was too busy to put in a garden; I bought the best vegetables I could find and cooked them the best I could; we tasted them and threw them out. The fruits were not much better. Now I have shipped to me vegetables and fruits grown on rebuilt soils without commercial fertilizers or poison sprays. They are not fresh when they reach me, but they seem fresh and are still delicious. Until I found a supply, we had stopped eating vegetables except as carriers of salad dressings. As I figure it, the cows ate “vegetables,” and their digestion is more complete than ours. We get some minerals in meat and milk. Chickens are better fed than humans. Ocean fish suffer no dearth of minerals. Perhaps the animal body detoxifies the poison sprays to a certain extent at least. A diet of these foods, however, is expensive.

In a city where I go to lecture live a doctor and his wife, both wonderful people; I stay with them so often that they file my bedsheets under D. The last time I was there, at about three 0′ clock in the morning, the three of us were dreaming though we were not asleep. The doctor’s specialty is agriculture, the health-starts-in-the-soil variety. He was saying:

“No virgin soil has ever been found to contain all the essential minerals in amounts now known to be somewhere near optimum in producing the health of plants, animals or humans. Experiments are carried on in which land is rebuilt with minerals and humus; the protein content of alfalfa grown on such land has already been increased from the average of 9 per cent to 32 per cent. The protein content of other foods is increased correspondingly. No one yet knows the upper limit. The quantities of the cobalt, copper, and other trace minerals can be multiplied in our foods, yet they never reach the point of toxicity. Plants grown on such soil stay healthy, free from the dozens of diseases which have changed agricultural journals into medical magazines and treatises on poison sprays.

“There are a number of experimental farms where soils have been improved to known standards for minerals and humus for several years. Animals grazed on such land were injected with the most virulent types of bacteria; a week or two later, the blood of these animals showed not one sign that bacteria had been injected. Illness could not be produced in them, not even Bang’s disease or the dreaded hoofand-mouth disease or any of dozens of diseases which plague stockmen. The milk, meat, eggs produced by animals ranging on such soil, and the vegetables, fruits, and grains grown on such soil may produce in man a degree of health, the potential of which is not known.

“Land built up with minerals and humus can surpass any virgin soil ever found. On a single acre a man can create his own Shangri-La. The land is available; the know-how is here; the application of that know-how is coming; the rewards for humans no one can guess.

Thus we dreamed into the dawn, but the dream was not original. Years ago Sir Albert Howard had dreamed that dream in India. Now Lady Eve Balfour is dreaming it in England. America has many such dreamers: Bromfield, an author in Ohio; Rodale, a publisher in Pennsylvania; Pfeiffer, a scientist in upper New York; Albrecht, a university professor in Missouri. Each of these dreamers has his followers. There are large groups of dreamers in South Africa and, New Zealand and Australia.

That dream has to do with agriculture, but it is not of agriculture. It is a dream of world peace. This dream starts with a family which perhaps creates its Shangri-La on an acre of land, a family in which a high degree of health has laid the foundation for character, courage, integrity, serenity, graciousness, and love in the home. Enough such families can make up a community, a state, a nation, a world at peace.

A friend of mine, who has made a hobby of vegetable raising, has composted his soil. In flavor and beauty his vegetables so far surpass those purchased at the market that you can scarcely recognize them as the same. This year his soil was analyzed at the Foundation for Agricultural Research; 8 their report states: “With one or two exceptions, this soil is in very good condition. It shows evidence of repeated composting.” My friend tells me that his soil ranked high in comparison with 3,000 other analyses this foundation has run. It was only slightly too alkaline, contained somewhat near the optimum amounts of nitrogen and manganese, was adequate in potassium, or potash, and was somewhat high in calcium but within a favorable range. This far-above-average soil, however, contained one-half as much sodium, one fourth as much phosphorus, one-eighth as much sulfur, one tenth as much copper, less than one-twentieth as much cobalt, one-fortieth as much boron, less than one-fortieth as much zinc, one-sixtieth as much iron, and one-eightieth as much manganese as are considered to approach the ideal. Although this soil is less than two miles from the Pacific Ocean, it contained no detectable iodine. If this is far-above average soil, what are our market vegetables, fruits, and grains being grown on?

The point of view I shall next express is bitterly contested by some commercial fertilizer interests. It is viewed with contempt by many agriculturists, but not all, in the United States Department of Agriculture and the State Agricultural Colleges and Experimental Stations. Granted the subject is controversial. My point of view, however, is that of some outstanding agriculturists, physicians, and other scientists whose interests lie in the promotion of health from the ground up. In fact the following discussion has been read and blessed by persons holding doctorates in agriculture, medicine, dentistry, and biochemistry.

According to my understanding, it is not merely the mineral content of the soil which determines the nutritive value of foods grown on that soil. Many other factors enter in. There must be minerals, of course, although plants seemingly flourish when many deficiencies exist; if minerals are not in the soil, they cannot possibly be in the plants. To build genuine health in plants, however, there must also be humus which serves as food for bacteria, fungi, and molds. Furthermore, these minerals must first be changed to ionized form by soil bacteria and so held in the soil moisture. The soil fungi, which grow into the roots of plants, pick up the dissolved minerals and thus feed them to the plants. This cooperative situation between fungi and plant roots is known as the mycorrhiza relationship. If all minerals are generously supplied, the plants, so fed, remain healthy and resist disease. Their protein, mineral, and vitamin contents are high. They can support the health of animals and of people. Thus was all the food grown on the well-mineralized virgin soil of young America; such food helped make great men of our forefathers. The nutritive value of their food was limited only by the natural supply of minerals in the soil.

Then mass production came and with it the use of chemical fertilizers: natural rock treated with concentrated sulfuric acid, now sold as superphosphate; the pure chemicals ammonium sulfate and potassium sulfate, which is spoken of as potash. These chemicals dissolved in water as easily as sugar in a cup of coffee. They saturated the soil moisture, making it difficult or impossible for the less easily dissolved iron, copper, magnesium, zinc, and other elements to stay in the soil solution. The excessive amount of sulfur, accumulating from repeated applications of chemical fertilizers, became toxic to the mineral-transferring fungi. The importance of humus was often overlooked; the already existing humus was used up, and little or none was returned to the soil. The valuable bacteria and fungi cannot grow without humus to feed them. Minerals may be in the soil, but without massive numbers of bacteria and fungi they cannot be dissolved; without life-sustaining humus, fungi no longer grow into the plant roots. The soil was gradually depleted of natural minerals which were taken into the plants, shipped to markets, passed through human bodies, and thrown into the sea or rivers as sewage. Lands became mineral-poor.

Still the plants grow; they look green and bulky but can no longer support optimum health. Bugs and worms and aphids multiply; Sir Albert Howard pointed out that bugs and worms destroyed only the unhealthy, the sooner to return soil-rebuilding humus to the land. It now appears that the soil molds produce aureomycin, streptomycin, and penicillin or similar antibiotics, which bugs, worms, and aphids do not enjoy; hence they will not eat healthy plants. Without sufficient humus, molds cannot grow to produce enough antibiotics; the insects come. Their destruction is costly to the producer. Every year more kinds and more pounds of sprays and poisons are poured onto our foods, now 800,000,000 pounds annually of arsenic alone. Arsenic is one of the many chemicals used to produce experimental cancer. Bees, needed to pollinate blossoms, are destroyed by poison sprays. Valuable bugs, needed to eat harmful bugs, are likewise killed. The poison sprays drop to the ground, dissolve in the soil solution, and are carried into the very core of all our foods. The housewife tries to wash them off, but no amount of washing can remove them.

The first argument seems unsound to me. Mothers of children whose teeth decay most severely are usually ignorant of or not interested in nutrition and/or cannot afford excellent food. Furthermore, many intelligent, conscientious parents, doing everything they can, still cannot prevent their children’s teeth from decaying; sweets are given the children by well-meaning neighbors, store owners, and even strangers and are served at parties, cub scout meetings, and endless other places. The argument that fluoridation has not been studied sufficiently is probably true. Long-term “experiments,” however, have occurred naturally in dozens of places, some of which have been studied in great detail. In certain communities where the water contains as much as three or four parts of fluorine per million, there have been little or no mottling and no tooth decay. No other toxic effects have been found. In communities perhaps only a few miles away, almost no fluorine occurs in the water; tooth decay is rampant. The reason there seems little danger of toxicity from adding one part of fluorine per million (as is already being done in many communities) is that fluorine, like iodine, is excreted daily in the urine. Even when relatively large amounts are obtained for a time, fluorine is held temporarily in the body and laid down in the teeth and bones; when little or no fluorine is supplied, it is gradually withdrawn from the body and excreted.

My conviction on fluoridation is also emotional. My father used’ to make maple syrup almost every spring; I loved it and still do. Furthermore, I was an unhappy motherless child. Our general diet was atrocious enough, but in addition I ate far too much maple syrup to compensate for the love I craved and never got. Dozens of nights as a child I sobbed with seemingly unbearable pain from abscessed teeth or from decay which exposed the nerves. Thousands of youngsters, through no fault of their own, have screamed with similar pain, and thousands more will unless enough kind people try to prevent it. Furthermore, fluorine makes bones as well as teeth stronger. In every hospital in this country are old people-sad people-with not many years to live perhaps and not much to make them happy, lying motionless and uncomfortable hour after hour because of broken bones which should never have broken. You and I will be old some day, and we may fill those hospital beds; fluoridation of water might help us to enjoy our last years instead. My emotional conviction, therefore, which no one need accept unless he wishes to, is that every water supply in this United States should be fluoridated, even at the risk that some toxicity may occur.

There are a number of trace minerals which can be either valuable or harmful to health depending on the amount obtained. In fact, all trace minerals can be toxic if taken in excess. Arsenic, well known as a drug and a poison, may be important in human nutrition. Relatively large amounts are found in the liver and blood, particularly before birth. Aluminum occurs in the human body and in the bodies of animals which have never eaten food prepared in aluminum utensils; minute amounts of it, too, may be essential. Bromine is found in human blood; in a type of insanity known as manic depressive, the amount of bromine in the blood falls to half the normal quantity and increases only upon recovery from the disease. Tin, silver, nickel, and mercury are also found in human tissues; their functions, if any, are unknown.

The trace minerals, like calcium and iron, cannot be absorbed until they are first dissolved in the hydrochloric acid of the stomach. As we have seen, this acid is frequently undersupplied or absent. Poor absorption, therefore, can lead to deficiencies. This reason, however, is only a minor one.

The relation of this mineral, if any, to insanity has not been investigated. In many of our institutions for the insane the diets provided are far from adequate. No well person could eat the food served in some of these places, let alone an ill one. There has been no effort to find out what a well absorbed diet adequate in vitamin B6 and magnesium could do for mentally ill persons. Whenever I think of the tortured human beings writhing in straitjackets or perhaps held down in hot water by canvas fitted around their necks and the sides of the tubs, as I have seen them in too many institutions and psychopathic wards, I long to give these people injections of vitamin B6 and magnesium. Yet I know of no physician who is even interested; and how could one be? In a new gOO-page book on clinical nutrition, written as a reference book for the practicing physician and as a textbook for medical students, the word magnesium is not even mentioned or listed in the index. The assumption is that it is unimportant because it is “generously supplied in our foods.”

Copper helps the bone marrow to produce red blood cells.

Anemia results if it is undersupplied. It aids in forming certain enzymes necessary to the function of the nerves. This mineral plays some role in pigment formation, thus possibly being a factor in the prevention of gray hair. Black animals, lacking copper, become gray. Graying in humans has long been known to be often associated with anemia. Copper also appears to aid the body in using vitamin C economically; signs of scurvy in guinea pigs without vitamin C can be prevented by giving this mineral.

Copper-deficiency symptoms can be recognized in plants.

“Swayback” disease occurs in lambs grazed on copper-deficient soil, and anemia in the ewes; both conditions may be prevented by putting copper in the soil. In infants and small children, anemia which is not corrected by iron alone is corrected when copper is added. Yet one finds in medical textbooks such statements as, “Since the human requirement is so small and the element is so widely distributed in foods, it is difficult to imagine circumstances under which copper deficiency might develop.” I find it as easy to imagine as it is to imagine a person with gray hair.

Zinc deficiency is not recognized in humans, but it is in plants, where it results in little-leaf disease. The healthy human body contains more zinc than any other trace mineral. Zinc is present in all human tissues, especially in the pancreas where it is associated with insulin. The zinc content of the pancreas of diabetic patients is only half that of normal persons. Zinc is known to be part of several enzymes in the body and acts as a cell catalyst, or “speeder-upper,” of energy production. Zinc deficiency in experimental animals results in slowed growth, loss of hair, faulty food absorption, skin abnormalities, and emaciation. Zinc is lost when foods are refined; diabetes increases when foods are refined; perhaps a mere coincidence.

Manganese is also necessary to human growth and health, although its exact action in the body is little understood. It is found in all healthy human tissues and can be stored in the liver and thyroid glands. This element is important in maintaining normal reproductive functions; it is related to the use of calcium and phosphorus and is found in the bones; and it activates at least four known enzymes. An undersupply of manganese causes a loss in mating interest and later sterility in male animals. It interferes with the maternal instinct in females; mother rats on manganese-deficient diets will not suckle their young nor will normal mother rats adopt manganese-starved baby rats. Manganese is found in green leaves if the food is grown on good soil; it is often discarded in cooking water. Whole-grain breads and cereals contain about six times the quantity found in the refined products.

Fluorine is another element essential to health. I have received many letters asking my opinion on fluoridation of water. People become so emotional about this subject that I am tempted to say that my opinion is like my religion, no one’s business but my own. I recently heard a forum on fluoridation; dentists, physicians, and biochemists argued it out, each with violent convictions for or against. Some speakers were unscientifically emotional; others, emotionally scientific. Everyone seems to agree that the right amount of fluorine will reduce tooth decay. The opponents argued that if youngsters’ teeth no longer decay, mothers will make no more effort to keep the child’s nutrition adequate; that fluoridation has not been studied sufficiently; and that even small amounts may be toxic. Too much fluorine obtained when the teeth are developing causes them to be mottled with an unattractive brown pigment.

Under normal conditions, a healthy person runs little risk of deficiencies of sodium and chlorine. In extremely hot weather, however, so much salt can be lost through perspiration that death may result. Death from salt deficiency occurred during the first years of work on Boulder Dam and similar projects. During the blistering summer of 1933 I corresponded with an engineer who was working on Parker Dam. Each letter contained some such cheerful note as, “We had a wonderful cook but he died yesterday of heatstroke.” The symptoms of sunstroke also are now recognized as caused largely by loss of salt through perspiration.

A lack of salt causes symptoms varying in severity from mild lassitude, weariness or hot-weather fatigue, common during heat waves, to heat cramps, heat exhaustion, or heatstroke, familiar to people who work in iron foundries, furnace or boiler rooms, and industrial plants such as steel or paper mills. Even persons who foolishly play tennis or take similar exercise in hot weather may suffer from heatstroke. The symptoms of heatstroke are nausea, dizziness, exhaustion, vomiting, and cramps in the legs, back, and abdominal muscles or any muscles being used at the time. Without salt, the more water drunk, the worse the condition becomes. Persons working in extreme heat are now advised to take a salt tablet with each drink of water. During hot weather, salty foods, such as salted nuts or soybeans, cheeses or potato chips, should be kept near the drinking water, and at least one well-salted food should be served with each meal. Too much salt rarely harms a healthy person; if more is eaten than is needed, diarrhea occurs. Since normal people may lose as much as a tablespoon of salt daily in the urine, it is unwise to restrict the salt intake unless advised to do so by a physician. Except during hot weather, the healthy person can allow his taste to be his guide as to the amount of salt to eat.

Another essential element, magnesium, is a component of chlorophyll. This mineral is necessary to the action of some 30 enzymes in the body. The best source is green leaves; like potassium, however, it can be lost if cooking water is discarded. Whole-grain breads and cereals contain some five times more of this mineral than do the refined products. When animals are deficient in magnesium, their hearts usually become abnormal and beat too rapidly; they are extremely nervous and irritable and often have tremors and/or convulsions; slight noises such as turning on a water faucet or an electric fan near by can cause the animals to go into convulsions which may be fatal. The animals’ behavior resembles certain types of insanity more nearly than that produced by any other means.

The blood of persons suffering from extreme irritability has been found to be low in magnesium. Recent work indicates that the soothing effect of vitamin B6 (p. 84) is due to better utilization of this mineral. For years Mrs. Gladys Lindberg, who works as a nutrition consultant, and I have obtained remarkable results in giving vitamin B6 to many persons suffering from nervousness, insomnia, mild or severe tremors, convulsions (epilepsy), or even paralysis agitans (palsy). Reports in medical journals often state that these same conditions have not been helped by vitamin B6. I believe that the difference lies in the fact that we also recommend for every malnourished person a supplement of trace minerals containing magnesium.” It is my guess that magnesium deficiencies are partly responsible for the widespread nervousness, insomnia, and irritability supposedly caused by the “fast pace of modern living.”

All unrefined foods grown on good soil contain minerals necessary to the normal life processes of animals and humans and to the plants themselves. Besides the minerals already discussed, there are sodium, chlorine, potassium, and a group spoken of as trace minerals.

There is no trick, of course, in getting sodium and chlorine, which are supplied by ordinary table salt, or sodium chloride. It is usually assumed that the other minerals are generously supplied in a “well-balanced diet”-whatever that means mostly because many of them are needed in such small amounts. The small-amount argument, in my opinion, is what we used to call on our Indiana farm “so much hogwash.”

Cobalt is a trace mineral needed only in small amounts.

It forms part of vitamin B12; as little as three micrograms of vitamin B12 daily can cure pernicious anemia. The fact that the amount needed was small did not keep thousands of people from suffering from fatigue which tortured every cell in their bodies; it did not prevent a crippling paralysis from dooming them to a stumbling and falling existence and finally a bedridden living death during the years before Drs. George R. Minot and William P. Murphy found that raw liver could control the disease. Thousands of cattle, sheep, and other animals, grazed on land deficient in cobalt, especially in Florida and Australia, sickened and died from a crippling anemia. Such deaths could be prevented if a few pounds of cobalt were added to each acre of land. Pernicious anemia, however, was never confined to Florida or Australia. Studies conducted at the University of Florida Agricultural Experiment Station showed that 81 per cent of the children living in the area suffered from anemia, just as did the animals; 50 per cent showed definite anemia, whereas 31 per cent were borderline cases. When the land is deficient, the plants grown on that land are deficient; the animals which eat the plants are deficient; the people who eat the animals and the plants are deficient. It cannot be otherwise.

I believe that the various minerals are far more important to health than anyone realizes; I believe that our diets are far more deficient in them than anyone realizes. One reason for my belief is that in any agricultural library you can obtain books 1 with beautiful colored pictures of deficiency symptoms of vegetables, fruits, and other plants which we and animals use as food. You can see those same deficiency symptoms in the food in every market: the split stalks of celery; the cracked cores of cabbage and cauliflower; the uneven ripening of the apricots and tomatoes; the yellow margins on the spinach; the rusty streaks of the lettuce; those signs and dozens more. Such symptoms occur only when the plant is deficient in one mineral or another.

Potassium is said to be widely found in foods, particularly in small green leaves. The three nutrients, potassium, sodium, and chlorine, are important in keeping the body fluids near neutrality; they determine the amount of water held in the tissues, and they attract nutrients from the intestines into the blood and from the blood into the cells by means of maintaining what is known as osmotic pressure. These minerals are essential parts of the glandular secretions. Potassium helps in sending messages through the nervous system. Chlorine is used in forming hydrochloric acid in the stomach. These three minerals are excreted daily in the urine, the amount being equal to that ingested by a healthy person.

A partial deficiency of potassium in animals causes slow growth, constipation, gas formation, and a nervousness typified by extreme alertness and insomnia. The hearts of potassium-deficient animals beat slowly and irregularly, the heart muscles are damaged, the kidneys become enlarged, and the bones fragile. The symptoms produced in animals are so similar to the nervousness, constipation, and digestive disturbances endured by millions of Americans that a study was made of human subjects maintained on a diet low in potassium. All developed constipation, indigestion, insomnia, and nervousness. Potassium is largely lost when foods are refined or when vegetable-cooking water is discarded. Our high consumption of refined foods and our sloppy cooking methods, to say nothing of the condition of our soil, could easily allow unrecognized potassium deficiency to be widespread.

During my next 15 years, perhaps a dozen physicians told me to take thyroid tablets, but it is no easy trick to find the correct dosage. If you take too much, you become highstrung, nervous, wakeful; your heart nearly jumps out of your chest. Soon you become discouraged and give up until you either realize how important iodine is or are driven by sluggishness to try thyroid tablets again.

Later, for me, came the years of wanting children, with the accompanying heartaches and frustrations only a childless woman can understand. You spend hundreds of dollars trying to correct the unknown difficulty and take shots until you feel like a pin cushion. Hope rises at each intermenstrual period; crushing disappointment comes with the onset of each menstruation. Eventually you learn that the ovaries are usually damaged when the iodine deficiency has been too severe during the developmental period; taking iodine later cannot restore normal ovarian function. Then followed years of empty-armed despair, spent searching for children to adopt. Yet everyone of these abnormalities could have been prevented in my case and thousands of similar ones by five cents’ worth of iodine or at no cost if iodized salt had been available years ago as it is now.

In 1917, Drs. David Marine and O. P. Kimball showed that goiter could be easily prevented. These doctors gave iodine twice a year to 2,190 girls in Akron, Ohio; only five developed goiter. Among an untreated group of 2,300 girls, almost 500 relatively severe goiters developed. After this classic study iodized salt was made available; not one case of goiter should have ever again occurred. Yet recent surveys, made more than 30 years later, revealed that 55 per cent of the girls and 30 per cent of the boys in the Cincinnati schools had goiter; in Minnesota, 70 per cent of the girls and 40 per cent of the boys; in Portland, Oregon, 40 per cent of the girls and 22 per cent of the boys. In Cleveland, the incidence of goiter was found to be exactly the same as it was before iodized salt was put on the market. This valuable salt was not and is not being used. Figures like these are disgraceful. The ignorance and apathy which allow such abnormal conditions to be so widespread are likewise disgraceful. The amount of goiter among adults is not known, but the incidence is appalling when one considers that both prevention and cure have long been known.

The chief source of iodine is the ocean. The only parts of our country where adequate iodine may perhaps be obtained without using iodized salt is a narrow strip along the Atlantic seaboard, around the Gulf of Mexico, and in regions which in recent geologic ages formed the floor of the ocean, such as parts of Kansas, South Dakota, Utah, western Texas, and New Mexico. Foods grown on these soils usually contain some iodine. Other soils, although near the coast, contain little or no iodine. No food is a reliable source except ocean fish and seafoods. Even fresh-water fish in Minnesota are said to develop severe goiters. Many cities on the Pacific Coast use melted-snow water which is iodine free; despite nearness to the ocean, iodine deficiencies are common.

Iodized salt, approved by the American Medical Association, contains the amount of iodine that occurs naturally in unrefined ocean salt. When iodized salt is used throughout life, the iodine needs are supplied. No harmful effects can result from using this salt because iodine is lost continuously in urine, perspiration, and even exhaled air. Harm caused by not using it runs into millions of dollars spent for the surgical removal of goiter alone. The monetary value of the loss of efficiency resulting from an undersupply of iodine cannot be estimated. Surveys reveal that only 15 per cent of the salt purchased even in the goiter belts is iodized. So great is the contribution of this nutrient to health that the compulsory iodinization of all salt seems to be the only answer. Wherever this step has been taken, as in Switzerland and Austria, goiter has disappeared, and basal metabolic rates stay more nearly normal.

The iodine requirements are increased in early childhood, puberty, and adolescence, during pregnancy and lactation, and particularly at menopause. It is during menopause that goiters most often grow to be huge. No additional amounts of iodine need be taken at these times if iodized salt has been used continuously for years; the thyroid gland traps and stores iodine for future safety. If this valuable salt has not been used constantly, some form of iodine should be taken to meet current needs and make up the deficiency. Dr. William T. Salter, professor of Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine, writes (p. 132 of ref. 1, P: 35): “There are still clinicians and surgeons alive who favor one type of iodine preparation over another, but this is a problem in psychology rather than in clinical science.” This physician states that to correct goiter, one minim-a few drops-of Lugol’s solution every Sunday is sufficient. Any druggist can prepare Lugol’s solution in a couple of minutes; it costs little and is almost tasteless if added to % cup of water or milk. Often physicians who recommend Lugol’s receive poor co-operation because patients become discouraged by the slow improvement; goiters which could have disappeared are removed surgically at great cost. Despite the ease of prevention, every year millions of people who fail to obtain a normal supply of iodine pay for their neglect through a lack of mental and physical efficiency and alert- . ness; thousands more, through pain and misery.

When one has suffered personally from a deficiency of a nutrient, it is perhaps difficult not to overemphasize its value. I have been guilty of that. Years ago I found an unopened box of salt on the kitchen sink; since its label assured me it was free running but not iodized, I tossed it into the trash can. Later, my husband asked if I had seen the salt; I told him what I had done and why. He was understandably a bit irritable as he explained that he had wanted to put it into the toilet of our mountain cabin to keep the water from freezing and that he did not consider its iodine content of great importance.

The National Research Council recommends 12 milligrams of iron daily for adults and 15 milligrams for adolescents and pregnant women. Probably slightly larger amounts are more nearly ideal for women with heavy menstrual flow. Any diet adequate in protein and the B vitamins, supplied by natural sources, will be more than adequate in iron. If anemia does persist after a sound nutrition program is adhered to, a physician should certainly be consulted.

A blood analysis tells a physician many things; it usually tells you nothing you could not learn by examining yourself carefully before the mirror. If your ears are red and if your forehead, neck, and skin not hidden by rouge have a glow of health, you can assume that your bloodstream is satisfactory. You have one of the fundamental attributes of genuine beauty and probably the vivacity which helps to make up the intangible qualities known as charm and personality.

Too little iodine can be even worse than a lack of iron.

When iodine is undersupplied in the mother’s diet during pregnancy, the baby fails to develop normally; if the deficiency is quite severe, he may become an idiot, or cretin. I am told that institutions for subnormal children in goiter belts are filled with such cases. When a severe lack of iodine occurs later in life, myxedema results. I have seen only one case each of these abnormalities and, please believe me, one of each is too many. The child, the first of wonderful parents, is eighteen months old, sluggish, disgustingly fat, still toothless, and covered with eczema; so many behavior problems are developing that the conscientious young mother is already nearly insane. Her physician told me, “Her troubles haven’t even started yet.”

I hesitate to tell of the other case, it is so unbelievable; a woman of perhaps forty-eight, unable to leave her home. I saw her on a sweltering day in August. A daughter opened the door and took me to the living room where the mother sat on a davenport, wearing a heavy winter coat, her knees covered with a blanket, a small gas heater burning at her feet, and every door and window in the room tightly closed. One could scarcely breathe in the room. The woman was stuporous, her eyes were glassy, and her movements and thinking were unconceivably sluggish. The condition had come on gradually. Her physician had given her thyroid, but she had failed to consult him again when the cumulative effect of repeated doses had made her extremely nervous and had caused frightening heart palpitations. She had stopped the thyroid weeks before. A small amount of iodine daily could have prevented both conditions and all others like them.

Iodine is needed by the thyroid glands, situated on either side of the windpipe. These glands produce an iodine-containing hormone known as thyroxin, which can be produced in normal amounts only when adequate iodine is supplied. Thyroxin has a profound effect upon growth, mental and physical development, and the maintenance of health throughout life. Although minute amounts of iodine are found in all parts of the human body, it is concentrated in the adrenal cortex, the ovaries, and particularly the thyroid gland which soaks it up like a sponge.

Thyroid activity is now measured by analyzing the blood for protein-bound iodine. A normal basal metabolic rate, or BMR, means that energy is produced as it should be. The normal range is from minus 10 to plus 10; persons with such a BMR have iodine values of 4 to 8 micrograms for each ~ cup (100 cc.) of blood. Persons with less than 4 micrograms of iodine have a BMR of minus 10 to minus 50. It must be remembered, however, that low blood sugar or an undersupply of protein, vitamin Bi, or anyone of several other nutrients decreases energy production. If a person’s diet is inadequate in any of these nutrients, his basal metabolic rate can he far below normal even though the iodine intake is adequate.

A partial or severe lack of iodine causes goiter, or enlargement of the thyroid glands. The enlarged glands often use the limited iodine supply more efficiently than can normal glands; hence the amount of thyroxin produced may remain the same, and the BMR may not drop below normal. Aside from a slight fullness and perhaps a mild pressure in the neck, there may be no other symptoms. The swelling in the neck may be so slight as to go unnoticed; yet every person, in my opinion, should learn to detect even a small goiter. Stand before a mirror and turn your head as far as you can from side to side; if you can scarcely see the ligaments in your neck as you turn your head, your thyroid glands are probably somewhat enlarged, and your iodine intake should be increased. Even large goiters disappear when sufficient iodine is taken together with an adequate diet; the process is slow, but eventually new, healthy cells do replace the abnormal ones. The seriousness of goiter often lies in its very mildness, which can easily lead to neglect. Goiter is a danger signal, pointing to possible troubles ahead, years and years of possible troubles.

I grew up in a goiter belt and know these troubles only too well. Mine were typical difficulties associated with iodine deficiency. When I was about fourteen, came blinding, pressure headaches associated with the menstrual period; each time I felt as though my neck would burst and my head would blow apart. A physician pointed out my goiter at that time and recommended iodine, which I considered a sort of aspirin substitute and failed to continue; he was the only physician who ever recommended iodine for me. The headaches continued for years. In a nutrition class at the University of Wisconsin the famous Dr. Amy Daniels mentioned that it was difficult to find an adolescent girl in the Middle West whose thyroid glands were not enlarged; she pointed out several girls with goiter in the class, then glanced at me and said, “You have a bad one.” I still did not take iodine; correction was not stressed.

Later, as the need for iodine decreases, the goiter disappears, but a low metabolic rate persists. There is no spontaneity or JOy in work or exercise; energy is not produced normally. You are cold when other people are comfortable; your hands are clammy; your feet are so cold at night that you cannot get to sleep. Your cooling system, however, does not work right either; in hot weather you are still more miserable. You are mentally and physically sluggish. College is difficult, and you learn by the plodder method, envying friends who complete an assignment at first reading. You gain weight easily, forever trying to reduce and forever staying too fat. The heavy-hipped, thick-legged, goiter-belt figure, resulting from iodine deficiency during growth and particularly at puberty, can be recognized the world over. Probably everyone of the millions of women who have it hates hers as much as I hate mine. Taking iodine after growth had ceased cannot change it.

The greatest single cause of iron-deficiency anemia is the refining of breads, cereals, and molasses. Although much has been said about the iron in “enriched” flour, only 6 milligrams per pound is added; whole-wheat flour contains approximately 18 milligrams. Brewers’ yeast and wheat germ are both excellent sources supplying per lh cup 18 and 8 milligrams, respectively. Blackstrap molasses is not only one of the richest sources of iron but also of many other minerals and of inositol. It supplies about 9 milligrams of iron per tablespoon; dark unrefined molasses, 1.5 milligrams; sugar, none. As a by-product of sugar refining, thousands upon thousands of gallons of blackstrap molasses are available. The dumping of blacks trap in Cuba became a public health hazard because it attracted so many gnats and bugs. It seems an affront to the human ego that insects, with their minute brains, can appreciate nutrition so much better than people can.

I used to recommend blacks trap stirred into milk or tiger’s milk. Then I saw a formerly anemic child of three whose parents, super interested in nutrition, had given him directly from the tablespoon almost a half cup of blackstrap daily. The child had never been allowed to taste candy even at Christmas, but his teeth were decayed to the gum margin. Since then I have been afraid to recommend blackstrap.

This reason, of course, may be only rationalized, the real one being that I can no longer take the ribbing. The blackstrap gags have become shopworn. The following, however, written before a geologist, Dr. Natland by name, left for Arabia, is no isolated example:

Camel’s milk, boiled goat, dates and cheese,
Poor Nat will starve if he can’t eat these;
Sun-warmed, fly-specked and sprinkled with sand,
Sounds like a diet Adelle Davis had planned.

In a mixed diet-not mixed with sand-only about 50 per cent of the iron is absorbed even by a healthy person; the remainder is lost in the feces. In experiments in which anemia was treated with single foods, liver was found to produce most hemoglobin, kidneys second, apricots third, and eggs forth. Many foods which contained as much or more iron failed to be good blood builders. Part of the iron in leafy vegetables is held in insoluble compounds which cannot be absorbed. The iron from most fruits reaches the blood stream. In general, the softer the texture of any food containing iron, the more complete the absorption. Much iron in meats is in the form of hemoglobin which is incompletely digested.

When iron-containing foods are digested, the freed iron must dissolve in hydrochloric acid from the stomach before it can pass through the intestinal wall into the blood. Since approximately two-thirds of all anemic persons lack this acid, much nutritional anemia cannot be overcome unless acid is supplied with adequate iron. Foods which contain acids, such as buttermilk, yogurt, sour fruits, and citrus juices, aid the absorption of iron. Even the drinking of sweet milk increases iron absorption because milk sugar is converted into lactic acid by intestinal bacteria. Conversely, refined carbohydrates decrease iron absorption both because they stimulate the flow of alkaline digestive juices and because they do not support the growth of valuable intestinal bacteria. Persons with stomach ulcers, anemic from loss of blood, cannot absorb iron while taking alkalinizing preparations.

Most inorganic iron is well absorbed, even iron rust. An old medical treatise entitled Self-help for People in Remote Places suggests for “the disease of pale ears” soaking rusty iron shavings in vinegar-water overnight and drinking the water. An ancient treatment of anemia was to stick rusty nails into a sour apple, allow it to stand overnight, remove the nails, and eat the apple. A rusty horseshoe would be an excellent toy for an anemic toddler who puts everything in his mouth. Ferrous chloride and ferrous sulfate are used medically in treating nutritional anemia. The body, however, needs only a limited amount; if more is absorbed than is needed, these drugs may be mildly toxic. I frequently find persons who are taking both an iron preparation and more than adequate amounts of vitamin C but who show multiple signs of vitamin-C deficiency; I suspect the vitamin is destroyed by the excess iron. I find liver, yeast, wheat germ, and eggs far more effective in correcting anemia than are iron salts.
A small excess of iron is stored in the liver, the bone marrow, and the spleen and is used at times when the diet is inadequate. The person suffering from an iron deficiency is anemic only because he lacks such a store.

The life span of red corpuscles is three to four months.

They are then withdrawn from circulation by the spleen and liver and are broken down by enzymes. The iron is used again and again in building other corpuscles. Most authorities believe that healthy women after menopause and adult men need no dietary iron. The non-iron parts of broken down hemoglobin are excreted by the liver as waste products. They are carried away in the bile and are known as bile pigments. These pigments give the color to the stools and urine.

Iron requirements are especially high during adolescence, when the blood volume increases rapidly, and during pregnancy. The needs of non-pregnant women vary with the losses during menstruation. Many women have excessive’ menstrual flow for years without realizing that it is excessive. Usually an adequate diet particularly high in protein, the B vitamins and especially vitamin E will correct excessive flow in a few weeks. Cumulative menstrual losses, pregnancies, and the long use of deficient diets cause anemia to be prevalent in women at and after the menopause. Besides causing needless fatigue, mental confusion, and depression, anemia can bring about such forgetfulness that these women often become convinced they are losing their minds.

So-called normal blood, arrived at by studying averages, has 4,500,000 red cells and 80 to 100 per cent hemoglobin for children and women and 5,500,000 cells and 100 per cent hemoglobin for men. When an adequate diet is given growing children, adolescent girls, and women of the reproductive age, hemoglobin of 100 per cent can be maintained, and the average blood count of 4,500,000 increases to 5,500,000. Such improvement shows that the standards for women are below normal. There are no age or sex differences in blood color or number of corpuscles in well-fed animals.

I cannot see how any intelligent person could let himself be deficient in either of the two nutrients, iron and iodine. The need for both has been known for decades. Iron is found in almost every natural food, whereas iodized salt has been sold at no extra cost for years. The fact that deficiencies of both iron and iodine are still widespread gives me a depressing you’re-butting-your-head-against-a-brick-wall feeling. But then I remind myself, more logically, that people will never apply sound nutrition until convinced it has personal value for them.

Not long ago a physician referred to me a man suffering from a fatal disease in which iron is held in the body in the form of a pigment. This man’s identical twin had already died of the disease. My problem, supposedly, was to plan a diet which could maintain maximum health but which supplied no iron, meaning no meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables, yeast, wheat germ, or whole-grain breads or cereals. If you can plan such a diet, let me know. I could not.

Anemia can result from inadequate protein, iodine, cobalt, copper, ascorbic acid, or ahnost anyone of the B vitamins, particularly folic acid, vitamin B12, niacin, or pyridoxin. Approximately half of all persons suffering from anemia have abnormal or sore tongues, indicating a lack of B vitamins. Probably every nutrient plays some role in building healthy blood. Much anemia does exist, however, which can be corrected by nothing more than iron.

Red blood cells, or corpuscles, are made in the bone marrow. It is estimated that approximately one billion per minute are produced by a healthy adult. In a cubic millimeter of blood, an imaginary cube about 0.04 inch on every side, there are normally about 5,000,000 red corpuscles. This number is spoken of as the blood count.

Each corpuscle must contain a certain amount of red coloring material, or hemoglobin, which carries oxygen by combining chemically with it. An easy method of estimating the amount of hemoglobin in the corpuscles is by comparing the color of blood with that of a standard series of colors. Blood which matches the brightest red of the standard is considered to have 100 per cent hemoglobin. If your blood matched the color marked 80 per cent, it would indicate that you have 80 per cent of the total amount of hemoglobin you should have.

Iron-deficiency anemia is a childish or feminine disease rare in men; the chief reason is that children grow and women menstruate. Men, however, may produce anemia in themselves through hemorrhage from stomach ulcers. Severe anemia often occurs in blood donors whose admirable generosity is not matched by an intelligent replacement of iron. Anemia in general means that the body does not produce enough red corpuscles or enough hemoglobin or enough of both. If the only deficiency is one of iron, the number of red blood cells is only slightly below normal; the hemoglobin, however, lacks color. The body of an anemic person cannot be supplied with sufficient oxygen; energy production is interfered with. The chief complaints are weakness, perhaps dizziness, shortness of breath on exertion and consciousness of a pounding heartbeat, or palpitation; fatigue amounts to a continuous dead-tiredness. The fingernails are often brittle and show longitudinal ridging. Such persons are literally and figuratively colorless, listlessly lacking in vitality. Since too little oxygen reaches the brain, they cannot think as clearly or quickly as is normal, and they forget easily. Yet when an adequate diet is adhered to and well absorbed, the amount of hemoglobin and the number of red corpuscles quickly become normal.

Aside from the iron needed for hemoglobin, iron is in the nuclei, or business center, of all body cells. It is part of substances known as cytochrome, important in energy production, and myohemoglobin, or hemoglobin of the muscles. During iron deficiency, iron for the production of cytochrome and myohemoglobin has priority over that of hemoglobin.

It is not enough to see that calcium is adequately supplied; it must pass through the intestinal wall into the blood before it can be of value. Calcium must first be dissolved by hydrochloric acid in the stomach. If this acid is absent, as it usually is when persons have the tongue symptoms described on page 63, calcium cannot be absorbed, though the supply be generous. Even when the stomach acid is normal, the added citric acid supplied by a glass of orange juice or lemonade has been found to increase calcium absorption markedly. Lactose, the sugar obtained by drinking milk, causes a pronounced increase in calcium absorption because it is broken down by intestinal bacteria into lactic acid. If the diet is excessively high in phosphorus, calcium and phosphorus combine in the intestine to make insoluble salts which do not dissolve even in acid. The taking of soda or any alkaline substance, which neutralizes the food and stomach acids, or the eating of candy or other concentrated carbohydrate, which stimulates the flow of alkaline digestive juices, decreases or prevents calcium absorption.

After calcium is once soluble, it must next combine with fat, making a soap which dissolves as readily in water as ordinary soap dissolves in a bathtub; in this form, the calcium passes across the intestinal wall into the blood. If so much fat is eaten that it cannot be absorbed, soap is formed, and both the fat and calcium are lost in the feces; this soap becomes hard, often causing constipation as well as robbing the body of valuable calcium. The stools of persons attempting to gain weight by drinking rich milk and eating quantities of fat often look like shiny soap; instead of gaining, such people usually become thinner because the loss of calcium results in greater nervousness and over activity.

Conversely, almost any person who stays on a fat-free diet absorbs little or no calcium from his food. For example, leg cramps and other calcium-deficiency symptoms suffered by women during pregnancy or menopause can sometimes be relieved more quickly by fat than by extra calcium. More calcium is absorbed from yogurt and buttermilk, which supply both fat and lactic acid, than from sweet whole milk. If you wish to use skim milk, drink it at a meal when you have a salad tossed with oil. Using fresh or powdered skim milk without fat being obtained simultaneously may be actually dangerous; besides calcium being lost, the need for vitamin B2 is increased.

After calcium has reached the blood, the next task is to prevent it from being lost from the body. If cholin and/or linoleic acid are undersupplied, if the protein intake is inadequate, or if thyroid, benzedrene, or certain other drugs are used, large quantities of calcium may be lost in the urine. Even a slight increase in protein intake can markedly increase calcium retention. The most important factor, however, is the quantity of phosphorus in the diet in relation to the amount of calcium. Ideally, no more than twice as much phosphorus as calcium should be obtained; yet persons often ingest 10 times more phosphorus than calcium. Aside from such urinary losses, calcium and phosphorus which might be thought of as worn out are lost daily in the feces.

Phosphorus is necessary to the life processes of every cell not only in all animals but in all plants. The American diet, poor in calcium, is therefore rich in phosphorus. In the maintenance of bones and teeth, calcium is used in chemical combination with phosphorus. If calcium is undersupplied in proportion to phosphorus, there is nothing for phosphorus to combine with. In this case, phosphorus is excreted in the urine. There is, however, always calcium in the blood. Unfortunately, urinary phosphorus is excreted in the form of calcium-phosphorus salts, and the body is robbed not only of its limited calcium supply but of phosphorus which may also be greatly needed. For these reasons, calcium gluconate and calcium lactate are preferable to calcium salts containing phosphorus.

Liver, yeast, and wheat germ are unusually rich in phosphorus and yet poor in calcium; if large quantities of these foods are consumed, calcium lactate or calcium gluconate should be obtained simultaneously. When such a precaution is not taken, the proportion of phosphorus to calcium may become so high that the excretion of the excess phosphorus in the urine can induce a severe calcium deficiency. Sometimes a person who uses little or no milk becomes enthusiastic about obtaining large amounts of the B vitamins; his high intake of phosphorus and lack of calcium can cause him to become a nervous wreck. Phosphorus, calcium, and vitamin D are interdependent. When liberal quantities of milk, cultured buttermilk, yogurt, and foods prepared with fresh and powdered milk are used, calcium is supplied, and no problem arises unless large amounts of liver, yeast, and/or wheat germ are eaten temporarily; in this case, a calcium salt can both prevent harm and be of great value.

Excess calcium which is absorbed and retained is stored in the shafts at the ends of the long bones as a lacy network of bony structure known as trabeculae, absent when no excess minerals have been available. You probably have noticed this lacy structure when a soup bone has been cut lengthwise. Calcium thus stored can be used at times of dietary insult; thus health can be protected. When no minerals are stored, calcium and phosphorus, aided by a hormone from the parathyroid glands, are removed from the bones to supply the needs of the soft tissues. The amount of calcium in the blood therefore remains at a normal level even when bones become progressively more porous and fragile, teeth become susceptible to decay or erosion, and multiple symptoms of calcium deficiency become evident. When deficiency symptoms are persistent, the bones are probably in a precarious condition.

Instead of bones being lifeless structures, unchanging after the cessation of growth, a continuous tidal flow of minerals passes in and out of them every hour of life. If sufficient calcium is obtained and absorbed, the tide flows into the bones, building and repairing until all porosity is gone and dense mineralization is formed; any excess is then stored in the trabeculae. When too little calcium is obtained, the tide Haws first from any calcified trabeculae; if no minerals have been stored, calcium and phosphorus are removed from the bones to supply the calcium needs of the soft tissues.

The calcium content of milk varies with the feed of the cow and season of the year; a quart of milk may contain 800 to 1500 milligrams. Powdered milk, made from summer milk when the supply is generous and green food is usually available, contains more calcium than does average winter milk. Powdered milk should be used liberally in cooking, always in recipes containing fat. If optimum health is to be obtained, adults should have daily at least one gram of calcium, the amount obtained from four glasses of average milk, yogurt, or cultured buttermilk. Still larger amounts may be advantageous. In times of prosperity, the daily calcium intake of the Finns and Swiss averaged six grams; many primitive races obtain even larger amounts of calcium. If a small excess is allowed for daily storage, large amounts of calcium would never be needed nor would calcium deficiencies ever exist.

Your own disposition can probably tell you the adequacy or inadequacy of your calcium intake, absorption, and retention. If it is good, no one can enjoy it more than yourself.

Another reason for an adequate calcium intake and for keeping calcium tablets in the medicine chest at all times is that this mineral is a pain killer par excellence. Old medical textbooks give as the treatment for the sharp stabbing pains of pleurisy-than which there are few worse-injections of calcium. Why calcium has not been used more widely in alleviating other pain remains a mystery. One physician tells me that he uses no opiates but injects one to four grams of calcium gluconate into the veins of patients suffering even excruciating pain and that relief occurs almost immediately. Although the severely ill person or one enduring a blinding headache usually cannot absorb enough calcium taken by mouth to relieve pain, a less ill person can. The migraine sufferer, for example, can be helped most by taking calcium between headaches. For years I have told people to take calcium tablets before visiting a dentist; the mineral not only helps them relax and feel less pain but makes life easier for the dentist. It has been my experience that adequate calcium usually relieves the itching of hives in a half-hour and the pain of arthritis within one to three days. Since the publication of my book on baby feeding, I have been amazed at the number of young mothers who have written or told me personally that they had experienced no pain during delivery. Invariably they have written or said, “I thought I was having gas pains when the baby was born.” Now I tell women to grab a vitamin-D capsule as soon as labor starts and to take two or three calcium tablets every hour until they are wheeled into the delivery room. Regardless of the cause of pain, calcium can usually do something to relieve it; if no relief comes, blame it on poor absorption.

A further reason for obtaining adequate calcium is that it is necessary for the clotting of blood. This need for calcium in blood clotting can be a matter of life or death after an accident. A year ago I interviewed a woman in her forties, a milk-hater whose calcium intake was almost nil; she had suffered from nosebleed most of her life. At the time I saw her, the hemorrhages were so severe that she was paperwhite and exhausted; she was being given blood transfusions every few days. Her hemoglobin had been 45 per cent the previous day prior to a transfusion and 58 per cent afterward. Vitamin K, another nutrient essential for clotting, had not decreased the clotting time. I planned a diet containing liver daily and a quart of tiger’s milk to which were added powdered bone and dilute hydrochloric acid. I suggested that she take 25,000 units of vitamin D daily for three days and during this period three calcium tablets every two hours, sipping tiger’s milk with them. A letter written 10 days later gives the following report: 1 “Had a hemo taken yesterday and it was 79. Pretty good, huh? A queer thing. I told you about the hot flashes and my nose would start practically every time I had a hard one. Well, I haven’t had one hot flash since I saw you. The second day was blistering hot. My nose bled a very little bit. None at all since. Gosh, sure is wonderful not to be afraid to breathe for fear of a nosebleed.”

The 1 per cent of calcium in the soft tissues has still other functions. According to Dr. Cantarow a lack of calcium allows cataracts to form, “probably due to the effect of diminished calcium concentration upon colloid aggregation.” 2 Cataracts are undeniably common during the advanced years when calcium deficiencies are legion. Calcium appears to be necessary before vitamin C can function effectively. Physicians have often been afraid to give adequate calcium to persons suffering from arthritis, thinking that still more minerals might be deposited in the joints; the lack of calcium necessary to help vitamin C in forming normal cartilage around the joints appears to be a major cause of the disease. Calcium decreases cell-wall permeability and thus prevents harmful substances from entering the cells. This mineral is also essential in maintaining normal muscle tone, or excellent posture, and strong muscular contraction; it is for this reason so valuable during labor at childbirth. Calcium has been found also to delay fatigue and to hasten recovery.

A lack of calcium causes susceptibility to decay of teeth and demineralization of bones which cannot be overcome with any amount of vitamin D alone. Both calcium and vitamin D must be abundantly supplied, absorbed, and retained if dental and skeletal health is to be maintained. Although phosphorus is combined with calcium in bones and teeth and is possibly more important than any other mineral in the body.

Many authorities believe that the deficiency of calcium is more widespread than that of any other nutrient; milk is the only dependable source in the American diet. There is, of course, calcium in sour milk, cultured buttermilk, yogurt, and any food prepared with milk. The calcium is lost in the making of cheese. Churned buttermilk contains little calcium because cream is a poor source.

A certain amount of calcium can be obtained from mustard and turnip greens, soybeans and blackstrap molasses, but these foods are rarely eaten daily. The quantity needed to meet an adult’s calcium requirements per day from the following foods, listed in medical textbooks as good sources of calcium, would be 72 apples, 80 bananas, 42 oranges, 11 cups of carrots, 33 eggs, 77 potatoes, Or 214 dates; the quantities of other foods listed are even more ridiculous. Certainly there are healthy peoples who do not drink milk, but each has a source of calcium; the Hawaiians’ source is poi; the Orientals’, soybean curds. The Eskimos, the African natives and formerly the American Indians obtained calcium from bones of fish, small game, and birds. Dr. Michael Walsh found that Mexican Indians, “starving” by our standards, had a calcium intake equivalent to eight quarts of milk daily; this calcium was obtained from the soft limestone used in grinding corn for tortillas. In America the calcium needs of a person who does not drink milk are not met unless he takes a calcium salt, a poor substitute indeed for milk.

Many calcium salts are available. Calcium gluconate and calcium lactate, or calcium combined with the sugars glucose and lactose, usually absorb more readily than does dicalcium phosphate or calcium chloride. Bone meal, or ground bone, is often poorly absorbed. Fine bone powder, however, is quickly dissolved by the hydrochloric acid in the stomach and hence is absorbed readily. Cereals, homemade breads, and many other foods can be advantageously fortified with powdered bone.

Although calcium salts are not harmful, only a limited quantity can be absorbed even under ideal conditions. Taking larger quantities is somewhat like dropping beads through the hole in a spool of thread; the spool is not harmed, but the procedure borders on stupidity if expensive beads are lost. Physicians sometimes fear that taking calcium salts may cause kidney stones. The formation of such stones, however, appears to result from a combination of innumerable physiological abnormalities including too alkaline urine, possibly the lack of vitamin A, and a number of combined factors such as an undersupply of unsaturated fatty acids and/or protein or excessive phosphorus which allow minerals to be lost in the urine.

No person aware of the rewards of adequate calcium would allow himself to be even slightly deficient in this nutrient. Calcium can be as soothing as a mother, as relaxing as a sedative, and as life saving as an oxygen tent.

Although 99 per cent of the calcium in the body is in the bones and teeth, symptoms resulting from an undersupply to the nerves and soft tissues can make life quite unbearable. For example, calcium aids in the transportation of nerve impulses. When this mineral is undersupplied, nerves become tense, and you become grouchy. The calcium-dencient person wastes energy, and his nervous tension and inability to relax induce fatigue out of all proportion to the work he actually does. He is usually so restless that it is tiring to be around him. His irritability and quick temper add nothing to his popularity. A mother whose seventeen-year-old son had an overdose of these symptoms, relieved by adequate calcium, said to me not long ago, “Thank you for making Johnny into a human being again.” If the blood calcium becomes unusually high, as it does when toxic doses of vitamin D are given experimentally, relaxation reaches the point of lethargy or sometimes coma; even the excitability of nerves and muscles to electrical stimulus is greatly reduced.

Often the person undersupplied with calcium becomes an air swallower. Since such a person usually talks rapidly, the air may be forced from the throat into the stomach during conversation, a trick nervous women are particularly good at. Either sex may unconsciously form the habit of vigorously swallowing saliva and air simultaneously. Frequently a man gulps his food and, like a ravenous baby, swallows air as he eats; since no one burps him, he often suffers from «indigestion.” The volatile oils from such foods as onions, green peppers, and garlic already in his stomach pass into the air bubbles, are tasted whenever he belches, and are blamed for the “indigestion.” In time his can’t-eat list usually becomes impressive. Often he is an enthusiastic user of soda or alkalinizing preparations. Besides forming enough carbon dioxide to force open the upper valve of the stomach and thus allowing gas and air alike to escape, these substances neutralize the valuable hydrochloric acid in his stomach; any calcium his food may have contained is made insoluble and cannot be absorbed into the blood. The swallowed air sometimes passes into the intestines, expands as it heats to body temperature, and may cause considerable distention and even pain. He becomes, in short, his own worst enemy. His symptoms, however, are quickly relieved provided adequate calcium reaches the nerves.

A calcium deficiency often shows itself by insomnia, another form of an inability to relax. The harm done by sleeping tablets, to say nothing of the thousands of dollars spent annually on them, could largely be avoided if the calcium intake were adequate. Since milk is our richest source of calcium, warm milk drinks taken before retiring have long been advertised for relief of insomnia; heat quickens digestion, calcium soothes the nerves, and restful sleep may follow. Such advertising has the blessing of both the American Medical Association and the Food and Drug Administration. For the person whose tissues are starved for calcium, however, the amount in a milk drink is a mere drop in a bucket. I usually tell persons whose insomnia is severe to take temporarily two or three calcium tablets with a milk drink before retiring and to keep both milk and the tablets on a bedside table and take more every hour if wakefulness persists. Twenty years ago I discussed this subject with a physician who himself suffered from insomnia; he still calls calcium tablets “lullaby pills” and tells me he continues to recommend them for patients annoyed by wakefulness.

An undersupply of calcium also causes irritability of the muscles which may take the form of cramps or spasms. If the blood calcium drops extremely low, convulsions known as tetany can occur; fortunately the usual muscle symptoms are less severe. Leg or foot cramps are the most common, although either cramps or spasms may occur in almost any muscle. For example, spasms in the intestine, spoken of as spastic colitis or spastic constipation, are usually relieved by adequate calcium. The amount of calcium in a woman’s blood parallels the activity of the ovaries; the blood calcium falls to such an extent during the week prior to menstruation that nervous tension, irritability, and perhaps mental depression result. At the onset of menstruation, the blood calcium takes a further drop, often resulting in cramps of the muscular walls of the uterus. This condition is especially severe during adolescence, when the demands of growth exaggerate the need for calcium. Menstrual cramps usually disappear within % hour after calcium is taken. During the year before menstruation begins (ref. 2, P: 152) and again during the menopause, the lack of ovarian hormones causes severe calcium-deficiency symptoms to occur; at these times unusually large amounts of calcium should be obtained, and every step be taken to insure its absorption into the blood and to prevent its loss from the kidneys. When these steps are taken, the girl at puberty often becomes more pleasant and manageable, and the woman at menopause usually loses her irritability, hot flashes, night sweats, leg cramps, and mental depression. Even after the cessation of menstruation, a pseudo-menstrual cycle can usually be observed, and calcium-deflciency symptoms can be particularly noticed during one week of each month. The calcium intake should be increased at such times.

Each of the 252,000 known cases of muscular dystrophy and atrophy in the United States should have been prevented.

The Muscular Dystrophy Association believes this figure to be only a fraction of the cases which actually exist. The incidence of this disease has apparently doubled in the last 10 years, running parallel to the numbers of fats which have been hydrogenated. The disease is little known because you rarely see these crippled people; most are too weak to leave their homes or to move wheelchairs. You do see a few but assume they are suffering from arthritis or the aftermath of polio.

The most depressing week end I have ever spent was last year when I was sent as a delegate to a muscular dystrophy conference in Atlantic City. Here were dozens of victims of this horrible living death; some were skeleton-thin; others appeared fat, bulky fibrous material having replaced normal muscle tissue. Many were pulled out of shape by muscles which had stopped growing long before the bones to which they were attached had ceased developing. It is almost unbelievable that weak muscles can pull the shoulder blades so close to the buttocks or can so disfigure the human form. One of their members, an eight-year-old boy, died that week end. Death occurred, as usual, from a slight cold; mucus cannot be coughed from the throat when muscles have given away. As this death was announced at the conference, one could see a look of dread and horror pass over the face of every parent in the room; you understood why each lived in deadly fear of colds.

All week end I talked with these people, admiring their spirit and marveling at their courage. I asked them about their food. Were any of them taking vitamin E in the hope of stopping the progression of the disease? Yes, a few. It has been known for years that muscular dystrophy runs in families. One Chicago family has six boys afflicted with it; a New York family, four boys. Were these people giving vitamin E to the other members of their families in the hope of preventing the onset of this disease? Not that I could find. Was one word said during the conference about preventing this disease? Not that I heard. These people want a cure, and may God answer their prayers!

It was not the contorted shapes, the emaciated forms or the useless limbs of these wonderful people facing the slow death they were all too keenly aware of which depressed me that week end. It was the mental picture of thousands upon thousands of similar children and adults who were yet to develop the disease and to suffer for seemingly endless years. As far as I know, not one step is being taken to prevent the onset of this horrible disease. Do you know of one obstetrician who routinely asks his patients to take vitamin E during pregnancy? I do not. Breast milk averages 40 times more vitamin E than does cow’s milk, but few babies are lucky enough these days to get breast milk. Do you know of one pediatrician who routinely gives vitamin E to the babies who must live on formulas? I do not.

Nothing is being done because there is no proof. In the name of heaven, how much proof is wanted? There is proof that pregnant women get little vitamin E. There is proof that children are undersupplied with this vitamin. There is proof that oils are refined and bread is white. Muscular dystrophy is produced in a dozen species of animals when the diets of both mother and offspring are undersupplied in vitamin E. Is there any proof that the muscles of these animals differ much from those of people? Since that week end I have been far more afraid of muscular dystrophy than of cancer or of polio.

Physicians have used vitamin E in attempting to treat many diseases. The most encouraging reports on its therapeutic use have come from a group of physicians in Canada led by Dr. Evan Shute (pp. 354-408 of ref. 1, p. 160). He and his co-workers have studied the effect of vitamin E on women who have had repeated miscarriages and on hundreds of persons suffering from heart disease, high blood pressure, peripheral atherosclerosis, Buerger’s disease, diabetes, diabetic gangrene, and gangrenous ulcers. Their results have been dramatic. It is proved that vitamin E fortunately decreases the body’s need for oxygen; presumably death from heart disease is caused by lack of oxygen. Gangrene, gangrenous ulcers, Buerger’ sdisease, and peripheral atherosclerosis are also conditions in which too little oxygen reaches the cells.

The work of these physicians has been confirmed in Canada, but in the United States it has met with bitter medical criticism. Several doctors have warned me that if I want physicians to respect my writing, I must not mention Dr. Shute’s name. Dr. Shute answers his critics by pointing out that if, in the early days of insulin, every physician had had all the insulin he wished and had given each patient the same amount, no two batches standardized, experimental studies could not have produced identical results. My feeling is that Dr. Shute’s work should be viewed with an open mind.

Although these Canadian physicians have found that they cannot obtain results with much less than 300 milligrams of natural vitamin E daily and that the need for at least adequate vitamin E is unquestioned, the diet used by physicians for high blood pressure (p. 303 of ref. 1, p. 160) contains only 7.22 milligrams per day. The reducing diet recommended by the American Medical Association (p. 303 of ref. I, P: 160), frequently given to persons suffering from heart disease or women wanting a healthy baby, supplies 4.3 to 6.6 milligrams. The diabetic diet in a textbook (p. 619 of ref. 1, p. 160) used in medical schools and by practicing physicians supplies 8.6 milligrams. A tablespoon of soybean oil, taken as salad dressing at lunch and/or dinner, could at least supply 30 to 60 milligrams of vitamin E for these patients and prevent the destruction of vitamin A in their bodies.

I have a hunch that vitamin E played a major role, together with the B vitamins and other nutrients, in the vital statistics published in Denmark after World War I; when no grains were milled, there were fewer cases of high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease, the very diseases Dr. Shute has found to respond to vitamin E. Another of my hunches is that these same diseases could be less common in the United States. If we applied what is already known, proof might soon be forthcoming.

My final hunch is that if people stayed on adequate diets including a generous amount of vitamin E, they, like the hundreds of animals studied at Columbia University, might retain their appearances of youth and their normal sexual functions to a late age; their life span, too, mi.ght be tremendously increased.

In female animals, the estrus cycle-menstrual cycle to us - becomes irregular when vitamin E is undersupplied. The onset of menopause is early, but if vitamin E is increased, normal estrus (menstruation) and fertility are restored. When large amounts of vitamin E are given, menopause is delayed to an advanced age, although eventually all females become sterile. If middle-aged or older males low in vitamin E are given testosterone, they develop enlargement of the prostate, and their testicles atrophy, or shrivel.

At the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University a four-year study was made of hundreds of animals past their menopause to see whether vitamin E was involved in the aging process. It was found that the less vitamin E given, the higher the percentage of sick animals. The testicles of males receiving less than optimum amounts of vitamin E atrophied, or became smaller, and both males and females lost sex interest and would not mate. Although animals showed no abnormalities when fed “normal” quantities of the vitamin, added vitamin E had a striking effect in prolonging youth and increasing the life span; the conclusion was that aging may be a consequence of multiple deficiency states rather than the result of “natural” processes.

Such research would indicate that vitamin E plays some role in the production of normal sex hormones. Although the relation of this vitamin, if any, to secondary sex characteristics has not been studied, my hunch is that it is important. A number of physicians have pointed out that young people these days seem to be losing their secondary sex characteristics. The hips of boys and men are often too large, whereas girls and women frequently have flat chests and slender hips. “Falsies” for women and corsets for men, semantically known as “surgical belts,” have both become major industries. I am horrified at the frequency with which I find little boys, whose diets appear to be adequate except for vitamin E, with round-cheeked hips or girls with narrow masculine hips. It has been my experience that when the diet is made completely adequate and vitamin E is increased temporarily to perhaps 100 units after each meal, these children develop normal sex characteristics quite rapidly. In my opinion, a boy’s chest should be at least two inches wider than his hips, and a girl’s hips should be as wide or wider than her shoulders. I have seen a few cases where normal breasts have developed after flat-chested women from twenty to thirtyfive years old have conscientiously followed an excellent nutrition program.

Another problem, possibly the result of multiple deficiencies of the nutrients including vitamin E, needed for normal hormone production, is that of children growing excessively large. The rooster becomes a huge capon when the testicles are removed; the slender-hipped bull becomes a steak-producing steer. Any animal supplied with too little sex hormones grows to a larger-than-normal size, Similarly many girls these days grow so large that their mothers, not realizing that poor nutrition may lead to glandular abnormalities which can result in overgrowth, are afraid, for example, to allow them to take vitamin supplements; the mothers fear that their daughters cannot find boys large enough to date with them or eager to marry them. Although there is no proof, I for one am going to follow my hunch. I want my children to achieve normal growth but neither of them to be excessively large; I want my son to have slender hips and my daughter to have something genuine to put inside her brassiere; it is my belief that adequate nutrition in general and vitamin E in particular may help these wishes to come true.

Another hunch started years ago when a professor in biochemistry class stressed that when the ovaries were inactive, the body fat of women became redistributed; they developed middle-age spread and perhaps piano legs and ankles either long before or during middle age. Since I suspected vitamin E was related to ovarian hormone production, I have recommended 100 units of this vitamin after each meal to dozens of women whose weight was correct but whose faces were too thin and hips too large. Although vitamin E may not have done the trick, the weight of most of these women has been redistributed, which was all they or I care about.

I suspect that the middle-age spread of men is often not so much the result of age or too many calories as of an undersupply of hormones caused by cumulative multiple deficiencies of which vitamin E is one. This change from a former physique, I believe, is analogous to the transition from the narrow hips and Hat abdomen of the bull to the broad hips and sagging abdomen of the steer. Although a hereditary tendency may exist, this theory can perhaps be supported by the fact that many men begin to thicken through the waist at ages of thirty-five or forty, whereas the general build of others does not change until the age of sixty-five, if at all.

Many physicians have reported successfully treating irregular menstruation and excessive or scanty flow with vitamin E. The vitamin has been particularly effective in resolving menstrual difficulties at adolescence or at menopause. When generous amounts of this vitamin are given one or two years after the menopause, normal menstruation may recur. I warn such women who consult me to expect the return of menstruation; otherwise they sometimes get panicky, thinking they have uterine cancer. A few women have conceived after dietary improvement, although menstruation had ceased a year or two earlier. Since the irate husband of one shouted at me, “You and your d– vitamins,” I also warn women that unplanned pregnancies may occur.

I have another hunch that when general nutrition is poor and vitamin E is undersupplied, the onset of menopause is early, whereas it may be markedly delayed if the intake is generous. Among my personal friends whose diets have been unusually adequate, I know of no woman whose menopause has set in before the age of fifty-three to fifty-five. Furthermore, I suspect aging occurs rapidly at menopause when vitamin E is undersupplied and, conversely, that women with delayed menopause stay physiologically young. One woman whose nutrition I have checked annually since 1936 is still menstruating at sixty-two years of age; she can pass for forty any day.

In animals, vitamin E is important in aiding the liver to detoxify a variety of harmful substances. The amino acid, methionine, has been considered one of the body’s most important detoxifying agents. Vitamin E, however, has been found to be 400 times more effective than methionine. Far larger amounts of vitamin E are necessary to maintain normal liver function than normal sex function. Jaundice in humans, resulting from the toxic effects of such drugs as atabrine or bromides, has responded so favorably to large amounts of vitamin E as to indicate the wisdom of taking vitamin-E capsules along with any drug which must be used.
Vitamin-E deficiencies in animals take various forms in different species; enzyme systems also vary with different species. The brain is most affected in chickens and turkeys obtaining too little vitamin E; encephalomalacia is produced. This abnormality, known to experienced poultrymen as crazy chick disease, develops spontaneously in farm flocks. Cattle and monkeys, undersupplied with vitamin E, develop severe heart disease long before sexual function becomes abnormal.

If females of most species are given too little vitamin E during pregnancy and their young in turn are undersupplied with the vitamin, the voluntary muscles of the young become abnormal; when the deficiency is severe, these muscles stop growing, and a condition known as muscular dystrophy 3 develops. Dys means to stop; trophy means growth. Normal muscle cells are often replaced by woody, fibrous tissue which has no power to contract. Muscular dystrophy has been produced in such widely varied species as guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, rats, ducks, hamsters, calves, pheasants, pigs, dogs, and even kangaroos. The rabbits and kangaroos can no longer hop, the rats and mice cannot run, and the ducks and pigs stop waddling. Only in the guinea pig and rabbit can this disease be corrected by giving vitamin E; in all other species, permanent nerve damage occurs. The onset of the disease is slow and insidious; it cripples rather than kills. Although this disease is purposefully produced in the laboratory, animals develop it under field conditions. These animals eat food from the same land we get our food from; the disease may develop in animals which we ourselves may eat as food.

Such research indicates that vitamin E plays a role in building normal muscles and perhaps in maintaining muscle tone. I have a hunch that the lack of vitamin E may be one cause of poor posture seen in perhaps 95 per cent of our population, from the wobbly-headed infant born of a malnourished mother to its stooped grandparents. Do you know of a baby clinic where 10 infants of normal weight can be found without potbellies? Do you know of a classroom of 20 youngsters, none with protruding stomachs and angel-wing shoulder blades? Have you seen a high-school room where all the students stand erect and walk with grace? I would gladly cross the continent to see anyone such group. I find many children, especially adolescent boys, whose intake of protein and other nutrients appears to be adequate but whose posture is atrocious; improvement usually follows when this vitamin is given.

As we examine the findings of animal experiments, let us think of similar abnormalities in humans. Since vitamin E is destroyed by rancidity, deficiencies are most readily produced by feeding rancid fat; other animals given vitamin E with the rancid fat remain in excellent health. Animals in which deficiencies are thus produced lack strength and energy; their hair becomes dull and later falls out; the thyroid arid pituitary glands become underactive. The need for oxygen is tremendously increased. Nerves are so injured that some animals, particularly old ones, walk with a waddling g.a:it, lacking co-ordination; sometimes they develop tremors arid unusual sensitiveness to pain; since vitamin A in the body is destroyed without vitamin E, vitamin-A deficiencies, such as severe eye infections, often occur. The animals develop skin lesions, become emaciated, and may suffer from intestinal hemorrhages and diarrhea long before sexual disturbances are evident; they die early. One can easily find all of . these abnormalities in humans. Who can say that an undersupply of vitamin E does not contribute to their cause?

Autopsy shows abnormal changes in the bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen, nerves, and sometimes brain cells. The heart muscles, studied in detail, have been found to have undergone such degenerative changes that scientists have made the statement: “These alterations justify the use of vitamin E in the treatment of certain cardiac conditions.” The most characteristic finding is chocolate or cocoa-brown bits of pigment deposited throughout the voluntary muscles, heart, testicles, and walls of the uterus; the liver and adrenals are described as “loaded” with pigmentation. These pigments form when oxygen breaks down essential fatty acids, a chemical change similar to that of fats becoming rancid outside the body. The pigment itself is made of these breakdown products from essential fatty acids combined with lecithin, cholesterol, and certain amino acids. Pigmentation occurs long before sexual function becomes abnormal; it is greatly increased by a diet low in protein, by one high in fat but containing few essential fatty acids, by the giving of certain male or female hormones, and by age. The more severe the vitamin-E deficiency, the more severe the pigmentation becomes. Dr. Hickman refers to these pigments as “dirt” left when “organic housekeeping” becomes untidy.

Nutrition-wise, I believe in playing my hunches; I have played hunches about vitamin E for 23 years. One of them is that “liver spots,” which people get first on their hands and sometimes-usually later if at all-on their faces, necks, and backs, are cousins of the brown pigments produced in animals undersupplied with vitamin E. The only studies apparently made of brown pigmentation in humans is a post mortem examination of the testicles of twenty men and another of “brown atrophy” of the organs of elderly persons (ref. 1, P: 160); all the testicles showed pigmentation considered identical with that of experimental animals lacking this vitamin; the “brown atrophy” was also similar to that produced in old animals.

For several years I have looked for “liver spots” on every person who has consulted me; if such spots are present, I usually recommend that 100 units of natural vitamin E be taken after each meal. Months or years later many of these people have returned with all of the disfiguring spots gone. This spring I was consulted by a woman of fifty who had on her left cheek an irregular area of pigmentation % inch across; six weeks later there remained only the faintest suggestion of a shadow. The arms and hands of one woman of fifty-nine were literally covered with “liver spots” a year ago; recently, when lecturing on vitamin E, I asked her to stand before the audience and let them see her hands; the skin is like that of a baby’s; not a spot remains. Such spots seem to appear most quickly foUowing menopause, when the requirement for vitamin E is known to skyrocket; as in animals, the spots sometimes become markedly worse when in[ections of sex hormones are taken without vitamin E being simultaneously increased. In both men and women they become more severe with age. Conversely, I have never seen these spots on any person of either sex who has followed a good nutrition program for several years preceding the “liverspot age.”

More vitamin E is found in the body than any other vitamin. Dr. Henry A. Mattill of the University of Iowa College of Medicine has made the statement: 1 “Perhaps no other of the vitamins mysteriously affects so many and so varied body processes.” Apparently as part of an enzyme which helps to utilize fat, it appears necessary to the function of every cell. It is particularly concentrated in the pituitary, adrenals, and sex glands. Natural vitamin E also prevents vitamin A, linoleic acid, and perhaps other nutrients from being destroyed by oxygen in the body. If obtained in sufficient quantities, it is stored in body fat. Yet when humans are undersupplied with this vitamin, no recognized deficiency disease occurs.

No one doubts that humans need vitamin E. A hundred years ago, before our foods were refined, the daily intake was an estimated 100 to 150 milligrams. Authorities have variously suggested the requirements now to be 30, 60, and even 100 milligrams per day. Vitamin E, like vitamins A and D, can pass into the blood only when taken with fat and when bile is present in the intestine. The American diet supplies slightly less than 6.0 milligrams per 1,000 calories, or about 12 to 15 milligrams per day (p. 303 of ref. 1 below). The National Research Council ” recommends seven basic foods which, if consumed daily, supposedly supply adequate amounts of all nutrients; yet these foods furnish only 5.74 milligrams of vitamin E. The thousands of persons who eat no fat or whose bile flow is inadequate probably absorb little of even these small amounts. Most investigators claim that this vitamin is never toxic; 1,200 milligrams daily has been given to persons without signs of harm. Since vitamin E can be stored efficiently, massive doses would probably never be needed if diets were adequate enough to allow a small excess daily. As conditions are, however, deficiencies can be expected.

Relatively large amounts are required when new cells are forming; Dr. Kenneth C. D. Hickman of the University of Rochester has pointed out that the basic need for vitamin E is during the entire constructive period which reaches its height at adolescence. The need of the growing fetus causes the vitamin-E requirements to be tremendously increased during pregnancy. Even when all growth has stopped, a virile man produces as many as 200,000,000 sperm per ejaculation; the vitamin-E requirement of a man, therefore, may vary with his sexual vigor. It was brought out at the 1949 world conference on vitamin E that the requirement increases tenfold during menopause and that, to maintain health, the aging human may require 50 times the usual intake. I, as one aging human, am going to see that I get generous amounts of this vitamin.

Fruits contain almost no vitamin E. In most medical texts, lettuce is listed as the richest source; 30 heads might supply your minimum daily need. Less than a third of this vitamin found in vegetables is absorbed by humans. Most of the vitamin from grains is discarded when flours are refined, but if the wheat germ is retained, as in the “national loaf’ in England during World War II, little vitamin E is lost. The amount in prepared cereals is practically nil. When oils are highly refined or hydrogenated, much of the vitamin E is sacrificed. Low cooking temperatures harm it little, but 90 per cent is lost in deep-fat frying, as when doughnuts or potato chips are prepared. Even slight rancidity (p. 42) destroys the vitamin both outside and inside the body. The only dependable sources appear to be fresh-ground, wholegrain flour and cereals, wheat germ, and vegetable oils.

The scientific name for vitamin E is alpha tocopherol; other tocopherols with some vitamin value occur in nature. Natural vitamin-E concentrates, prepared by distilling vegatable oils, and synthetic vitamin E, are available in capsule form. The synthetic vitamin cannot prevent the destruction of vitamin A and unsaturated fatty acids (p. 342, of ref. 1, p. 180) in the body, perhaps the most important function of vitamin E. For this reason mixed tocopherols from natural sources are superior to the synthetic product even though 149 milligrams of the synthetic vitamin equal 100 International units of the vitamin from natural sources.

More than three decades ago it was discovered that when animals were deficient in vitamin E, the males became sterile; females lost their young. If the vitamin was supplied, normal pregnancies occurred, but fertility in males could not be restored. Years passed before attention was directed to subtle deficiency symptoms.

A few years ago in a rural area, I visited four old friends, all of whom had dentures which they put in “for company.” At mealtime the dentures were removed, and the food was gummed in comfort. If an adequate diet is adhered to and well absorbed, one set of dentures should fit during the remainder of one’s life.

The calcification 5 of a person’s bones, shown by dental X-rays, is probably a good index of the density of bones throughout the body. You might ask your dentist to compare your X-rays with those of some person whom he considers to have unusually well-calcified bones. Examine the bone structure both below and around your teeth; the denser bone casts a whiter X-ray shadow. If your own X-rays show poorly calcified bone, rigid adherence to an adequate diet may pay rich dividends.

Fragile bones break easily. Although most people expect to have pyorrhea sooner or later, few expect broken bones. Unfortunately, breaks do occur. When bones are so poorly calcified that teeth are lost from pyorrhea, the condition of the bones throughout the body can degenerate but little more before they may crumble or break at any minor twist or fall. Millions of Americans, including thousands of relatively young persons and almost every person sixty years old and older, have porous bones. It makes no difference except perhaps to some physicians whether or not the porosity is of such a degree that the condition can be called osteoporosis. Formerly it was believed that bones naturally became porous with age. When experimental animals are kept on adequate diets, however, the longer they live, the stronger their bones become. Such evidence indicates that poorly calcified bones are the result of nutritional deficiencies; elderly persons have eaten faulty diets more years than has the younger person; hence the condition is more universal among them.

Since bones cannot be seen, few people trunk of whether theirs are well or poorly calcified. The difference in bones, however, is almost unbelievable. I used to lecture at a dental college where there is a large collection of skulls. The bones of some are so dense and heavy that they appear impossible to crack with a sledge hammer. Other skulls in this collection are so thin and porous that light shines through them; in fact they would make excellent lampshades, Any orthopedic physician or X-ray specialist can tell you that poorly calcified bones are extremely common.

If you think bones do well without care, you should go through an orthopedic hospital and talk with patients; you would soon be convinced that anything which helps to build strong bones and prevents such misery as you would find is worthwhile. Let me tell you about a few cases I have known personally.

A woman in her late thirties hobbled in to see me not long ago and, after putting her crutches aside, told me the following story. Several years ago she had somehow twisted her leg while walking across a lawn; the femur, or thigh bone, had broken near the pelvic joint. She lay in the hospital month after month before healing was sufficient for her to walk with crutches; in time they were discarded. Then one day, without warning, she simply fell in a heap. This time the bone had crumbled at the spot where it had been broken before. A plastic head was put on the femur which involved deep, drastic, and expensive surgery; the gold pin which held it in place showed clearly in the X-rays. Again months were passed in hospital beds before she graduated to crutches, but pain in that joint remained acute. She had been told that the pain was probably caused by calcium forming in rough deposits over the plastic head of the femur; .she came to me requesting a calcium-free diet. She left with a nutrition program which included generous amounts of both calcium and vitamin D and was as adequate in all respects as I could make it. Only three days later she phoned to say the pain had completely disappeared. A month later she came to see me, carrying a cane; she walked, however, without using it and without a limp. Do you suppose she believes that any nutrient which helps to maintain normal bones is unimportant?

A plasterer, forty-two years of age, who had fallen from scaffolding, used to come on crutches to hear me lecture. He too had broken his femur; months had passed without healing. The jagged ends of the bone kept breaking apart. Apparently in desperation, his physicians put a steel plate around the bone to hold the ends together, but X-rays cannot be taken through such a plate to see whether healing has occurred. Eventually the plate had been removed, but the bone still had not knitted. Infection, called osteomyelitis, set in, and operation after operation followed. Great deep scars about two inches apart and each a foot long went round his entire thigh. The wound from the last operation was still draining; the bone was badly infected, and amputation had been recommended. During all these tragic years, he had never once been given vitamin D; certainly he had not been in the sunshine. No diet had been recommended rich in calcium, in protein necessary to form bone base, or in the B vitamins needed to insure that adequate hydrochloric acid could be produced to help the absorption of what little calcium he chanced to obtain. No extra vitamin C had been given to help prevent or fight the infection. When his nutrition was made adequate, improvement was rapid. He now walks to work but with a limp he will have throughout life. Do you suppose he thinks that vitamin D is a nutrient only for babies?

I have seen perhaps two dozen similar cases, most not so severe but many equally tragic. The elderly persons whose hip bones crumble after a minor fall, usually in a bathtub, seem to me most pathetic. The easy breaking of bones and/or their slow healing are, in my opinion, completely unnecessary. Yet such fire insurance, which in this case should cost no more than a dollar or two per year, is usually purchased, if at all, only after the house is burned. The adult who is ignorant of the advantages of vitamin D usually pays both figuratively through the nose and literally through the pocketbook.

Perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill, and “vigorous adults leading normal lives” do not need vitamin D. A friend jokingly implied as much once when I had mentioned something about saving teeth; he remarked, “Some of the nicest people I know wear dentures.” He is undeniably right. In fact, there are some 32,000,000 nice people in these United States wearing dentures. I myself would gamble that all of these 32,000,000 nice people wish they had 32 nice teeth stuck firmly in their own jaw bones.

Long ago it was learned that excessive amounts of vitamin D can be toxic. A toxic dose for adults appears to be 300,000 to 800,000 units per day provided this quantity is taken daily for several months: Toxicity causes vomiting, diarrhea, and sluggishness; calcium is withdrawn from the bones, the amount in the blood becomes excessively high, and much is lost in the urine. These symptoms are prevented if generous amounts of vitamin C are supplied. Fear of toxicity has caused the National Research Council to recommend only 400 units daily for persons of all ages.

Almost nothing is known of the amount of vitamin D which can be taken advantageously by an adult. Dr. Johnston 2 of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit studied the needs of adolescent girls, some of whom had ceased growing. He found that even though a generous amount of calcium was supplied by the diet, if no vitamin D was taken, more calcium was excreted than was eaten. When the vitamin was supplied, the amount of calcium absorbed into the blood paralleled the vitamin-D intake. For example, when 650 units of vitamin D were given daily for a time, and later 3,900 units were given, the quantity of calcium absorbed was increased tenfold. In some cases 1,950 units of vitamin D were given with more calcium than could be obtained from an average quart of milk (1,343 milligrams); still no calcium whatsoever was retained in the body; this amount of calcium was well absorbed when vitamin D was increased to 3,900 units daily.

Unfortunately, Dr. Johnston did not study the calcium absorption when still larger quantities of vitamin D were given. His studies indicate, however, that the adult can profit by taking at least 4,000 units of this vitamin daily. It is entirely possible that the ideal intake may be nearer 7,000 units per day; since this amount is certainly not toxic, it appears wise to err on the side of obtaining slightly too much rather than too little. Aside from the need during pregnancy and lactation, I suspect the. highest requirement is during the menopause; the calcium intake is usually lower then than during adolescence. Hot flashes, night sweats, leg cramps, irritability, nervousness, and mental depression, so frequently experienced at this time, can usually be overcome in a single day by giving calcium and vitamin D; when the calcium intake is already adequate, vitamin D alone can relieve these symptoms.

Vitamin D can be stored in the body provided an excess is obtained. For example, in England during World War II mothers were given cod-liver oil for their babies. Uncooperative babies sometimes burp up the oil, which stains clothing and smells bad; the oil is a nuisance for a busy, tired mother to give. Despite the fact that the oil was supplied free, severe bone abnormalities developed. English physicians, desperately trying to solve this problem, studied the effect of giving single massive doses of vitamin D by mouth to tiny infants in the doctors’ offices. Many similar studies were made later on the Continent and in America. It was found that a single dose of 300,000 units of the vitamin promoted good bone growth for a year, indicating efficient storage of the excess; this amount was never found to be toxic.

Since vitamin D is stored, the cheapest source I know of for adults is a capsule of 25,000 units each which can be taken once a week, as after breakfast on Sunday. When the requirements are unusually high, as during adolescence, pregnancy, and menopause, such a capsule might be taken to advantage every Wednesday and Sunday. These capsules, although available,” are so little used that druggists often tell customers they cannot be sold without a prescription. The Food and Drug Administration has asked that the 50,000 unit capsules of vitamin D be sold only on prescription but not the 25,000 unit capsule. Since vitamin D, like vitamin A, cannot be absorbed unless in the presence of fat and bile, this vitamin should be taken after a meal containing some fat.

The positive results gained by taking adequate vitamin D throughout adult life are identical with the advantages of having ample calcium, to be discussed in chapter 21. Since adults can absorb calcium without vitamin D, the taking of this vitamin is similar to buying fire insurance: you hope you will never need it, but if you do, it is wonderful to have.

An advantage is that vitamin D helps to prevent tooth decay. All decay is apparently caused by sugar being broken down by bacteria-produced enzymes into lactic and pyruvic acids; any acid can combine with calcium. If the saliva can reach the area where the acids are being formed, and if it contains ample amounts of dissolved calcium, these acids are neutralized by the salivary calcium, and no decay results. Dental erosion appears to be prevented in the same manner. Although the subject is still controversial, an increasing amount of evidence 4 indicates that both the enamel and dentin of mature teeth can be built up provided the nutrition is adequate; probably the two most important nutrients in such rebuilding are calcium and vitamin D.

Ample vitamin D undoubtedly plays an important role in the prevention of pyorrhea. If the diet is made adequate and all infection is removed, even severe pyorrhea can usually be arrested. Although pyorrhea is a disease involving infection and resulting from multiple nutritional deficiencies, the loss of teeth is caused by decalcification of the bones. When too little calcium is supplied the tissues, minerals are withdrawn from the jaw bones; the bones themselves become smaller and recede from around the teeth. As the bones recede, the gums likewise recede, exposing more of the tooth surface. The teeth appear longer than they should be, and the gums cannot fit tightly around the base of each tooth. Eventually, so little bone structure remains that it cannot hold the teeth firmly in place; the teeth, though they may be free from decay, become loose and must be removed.

Even when the teeth and all infection are removed, the destruction of jaw bones does not cease, nor does this destruction cease to be a problem. Dentures can fit well only when sufficient jaw bone remains on which to anchor them. If the nutrition is poor, so much bone tissue can be lost even six months or less after perfectly fitting dentures are made that the dentures shift, wobble, or refuse to stay in place. One of the delightful memories of my childhood is an occasion when a malnourished Methodist minister, apparently believing that the gospel was more effective when thundered, shouted his upper dentures into the congregation. An innocent dentist was probably blamed even by this good Christian; at least a dentist usually is. It is not a dentist’s fault that a person’s diet cannot maintain normal bone structure.

Often set after set of dentures have to be made as the destruction continues. Furthermore, persons whose bones are undergoing rapid destruction are so deficient in calcium that they are nervous wrecks; often they cannot stand to wear dentures no matter how well they fit. For a time a dentist referred to me many patients who complained that new dentures did not fit. As soon as the patients’ diet was made adequate and their nerves relaxed, there were no more complaints.

It is undisputed that vitamin D aids the absorption of calcium, favors its retention, and improves its utilization.

Certainly it is a fact that calcium is needed by adults; this mineral helps to relax nerves, induce sound sleep, and decrease sensitiveness to pain. The National Research Council concedes that small amounts of vitamin D are desirable for people working at night, for elderly persons, and for nuns and others whose clothing shields them from the sunlight. According to this Council, however, “vigorous persons leading normal lives” appear not to need vitamin D. What about the almost vigorous person leading an almost normal life? It seems to me the scientific scientists are indulging in unscientific double talk here.

Vitamin D is scantily distributed in foods. There is some in egg yolks provided the hens sat in the sunshine and preened their feathers well; .50 to 200 eggs daily might supply your needs quite adequately if modern hens were not forced to live in shaded cages. Caviar contains some vitamin D; there is a little in the milk from cows pastured on high mountain slopes. Artificially produced vitamin-D milk is excellent, but as a sole source it has little value in my opinion. Fish-liver oils are the only natural foods containing sufficient quantities of this vitamin to promote health; that is, if you call them natural foods as my children do.

Vitamin D can be produced in foods or oils by exposure to ultraviolet light; the commercial concentrate, viosterol, is made bv such a method. This vitamin is formed by ultraviolet light from sunshine in the oils on the skin, provided you have oils on your skin and the shortest rays from the sun reach the earth. In winter, these rays do not penetrate our atmospheric blanket; during the summer they reach the top of the Empire State Building but usually not the street below it. Sunshine would be an excellent source of this vitamin if it were not for the facts that people are surrounded by smog, wear clothes, live in houses, have bathtubs and hot-water heaters, and listen to soap operas.

Most medical textbooks say that vitamin D is formed by sunlight on the oils in the skin although it was proved 16 years ago 1 that the oils must first be on the skin, then exposed to ultraviolet light, and later absorbed back into the body. If persons take a bath before going into the sunshine, the oils are washed off, and no vitamin D is formed; if they do not bathe before exposure to sunshine but bathe immediately afterward, the oils are removed before the vitamin can be absorbed into the body. Most of the oils appear to be washed off by cold water, and still larger quantities by warm water; warm soapy water does the job thoroughly. Time was when wood was hard to split, water hard to carry, and soap hard to make (and smelled too bad to use anyway); the Saturday-night bath was then a family institution. During the remainder of the week the oils stayed on the skin and absorbed any ultraviolet rays which reached them. The early settlers described the Indians as being great of stature with teeth “as even as piano keys,” both the advantages of having no hot-water heaters and no soap. Now as a nation we are bath-happy and soap-happy; I, for one, call it progress.

There are to be found in any medical library many books and thousands of articles concerning the need of vitamin D by children. Except for a few articles and short paragraphs on diseases known as osteomalacia, meaning literally bad bones, and osteoporosis, meaning porous bones, the need of adults for vitamin D is rarely mentioned. These diseases are identical except in degree; bad bones are worse than porous bones. In both, so few minerals are available that the bones become porous and honeycombed; the persons so afflicted may become shorter and may suffer from muscle cramps, twitches, and even convulsions, or tetany. Osteoporosis is usually painless, but in osteomalacia pain is experienced, especially in the hips; such pain is customarily spoken of as rheumatism; spontaneous fractures and breaks may occur. This disease is common in China and India, particularly when the need for minerals is increased by pregnancy and «becomes more piteous” (p. 684 of ref. 2, p. 36) with each child, especially when the mother “suckles her infant in the vain hope of thus warding off her tragic fertility.” Skeletal remains indicate that the Norse colony founded by Eric the Red in Greenland gradually became extinct because the pelvic deformities of women suffering from osteomalacia hindered childbirth; it is thought that the colonists did not eat the local diet of fish and fish-liver oils; too little vitamin D could be obtained from the Arctic sun. Osteomalacia results from famines and food shortages during and after wars. It occurs in American and English cities “where solitary old people live in proud self-respecting poverty rather than apply for charity” (p. 684 of ref. 2, p. 36). This disease can be cured by vitamin D alone, but to speed recovery calcium and phosphorus are customarily given with the vitamin.

Sir Robert McCarrison, the great English physician, wrote of osteomalacia in India among the Mohammedan women observing the custom of purdah. These women veil their faces at adolescence and rarely go outside their homes. No milk or other food rich in calcium is eaten. Vitamin D, however, either from sunshine or cod-liver oil, so increases the absorption and utilization of the meager dietary calcium that health is restored. Here, at last, is proof that vitamin D alone, without any increase in calcium or phosphorus, can help adults as well as rapidly growing children.

Americans have no more cause to worry about osteomalacia than about scurvy; 60 per cent or more of our population, however, obtain too little calcium in their diets. Much of this supply fails to reach the blood. Calcium is tricky in that it does not dissolve easily; your teeth and bones, even though washed by saliva or tissue fluid, do not dissolve. Unless calcium from food is dissolved, it remains in the intestine and is lost in the feces. The calcium supply to the tissues can be increased by eating more foods containing calcium or by obtaining ample vitamin D; both should be adequate.

Although I have never been up a night with a sick child, I know of nothing which brings me greater comfort as a mother than the knowledge that vitamin C can help in emergencies. Other mothers feel the same. For example, a friend’s little boy, then the only child, died of meningitis. Three children were born later. The mother’s fear that something would happen to one of these children was ruining her life and theirs. During polio season they were not allowed to go to a pool or mingle in crowds. The mother gathered files of articles concerning diseases from newspapers and magazines; she became overcautious about sanitation and still lived in fear and dread. 1 saw her recently for the first time in years; the children were at a park, swimming. I commented on her change of attitude.

“I never worry about them any more,” she answered. “At the first sniffle I give extra vitamin C. The kids haven’t been sick a day in two years.”

My first personal experience with massive doses of vitamin C came when my Geordie, then five years old, had the mumps. One morning when we awoke, the evidence was unmistakable. Starting at 7 A.M., I gave him 1,000 milligrams of “melted” vitamin C and a little calcium powder in ;4 glass of pineapple, apricot, or orange juice every hour except when he slept, making a total of 10 grams during the day. By that evening, all swelling was gone, and there was no further sign of illness. Within the next two months every member of our family including me-which proves I am younger than you think I am-had the one-day mumps. The children have now weathered most of the childhood “diseases” in the same delightful fashion. There has been no irritability, nausea, or vomiting; no meals have been missed; after vitamin C has been given, there has been no fever.

My only other personal experience occurred a year ago when I returned from an out-of-town trip to find that my daughter Barbara, then three years old, was ill. She had appeared to be well when put to bed, but when she was checked shortly before my return, her breathing was labored, her skin Hushed and burning, and her rectal temperature 1040 F. Fortunately, she was thirsty. I immediately gave her 2,000 milligrams of vitamin C in juice. Her temperature appeared to be normal within 15 minutes; she slept soundly the remainder of the night, awoke full of her usual vivacity, and went to play school that morning. She had no further evidence of illness. The amounts of vitamin C I have found effective with my children may be inadequate for youngsters who have received smaller amounts of this vitamin. I try to keep their tissues saturated at all times; at least I cannot recall having seen a bruise on either child.

The quantity of vitamin C to take depends on the type . and severity of the illness and whether it is of short duration or chronic. Large amounts are usually needed at first to saturate the tissues; the quantities can later be reduced. Persons suffering from arthritis, asthma, or other chronic diseases have often taken drugs for months or even years; these drugs must apparently be detoxified before vitamin C is available to the tissues. For example, two years ago I was consulted by a man who had come to California for his health in 1927. He had suffered with severe asthma for several years before and continuously since that time; he told me that during this entire period he had taken mugs daily. Although I planned the most adequate diet for him that I could and recommended what I considered to be massive doses of vitamin C, he showed little improvement from September until December; his symptoms then disappeared and have not returned. It is my belief that results were slow in his case and similar cases because of the drugs remaining in his body.

The quantity of vitamin C most advantageous under all circumstances for all persons can probably never be known. Our requirements vary daily. Almost every person is exposed to chemicals from water purifiers, smog, smoke, or smoking; from arsenic, DDT, and other pesticides, traces of which are found in fruits, vegetables, meats, and milk; many people take drugs occasionally; and most of us are threatened by one or more infections per year. Each individual must find his own dosage, depending upon his own symptoms and the number of toxic substances he is exposed to. If you are going to use massive doses over a prolonged period, however, do it only when your diet is adequate in every respect and with your physician’s permission and under his care. During normal times, use natural sources first: a glass of orange juice daily; salads; and fresh fruits for desserts and midmeals. Watch for bruises; if they occur, know that your intake of vitamin C is not meeting your needs; then supplement your natural sources if you need to.

Although massive doses of vitamin C appear not to be toxic, much research must be done before any long-term harm can be ruled out. If harm is caused by massive doses, however, it appears to be far less than that done by a disease. Large amounts of this vitamin often act as a diuretic, causing excessive urination, corresponding dehydration, and extreme thirst. These symptoms are largely prevented if calcium is taken with the vitamin. If calcium is not taken, extreme nervousness sometimes results; therefore let us be cautious.

The greatest value of massive doses of vitamin C will never be shown by research or found in a laboratory. It is in the hearts and prayers of the parents of the nation. They will render silent tribute to the wonderful scientists and physicians who have brought them peace of mind.

Dr. Klenner, Chief of Staff at the Memorial Hospital in Reidsville, North Carolina, appears to have given the largest quantities of this vitamin to date, usually by injection.” It was my good fortune to visit with Dr. Klenner recently and hear him lecture. He showed slides of hospital records and fever charts and told of case after case of meningitis, encephalitis, polio, virus pneumonia, and serious complications following scarlet fever and other diseases treated with massive amounts of vitamin C. Many patients had not been expected to live; often penicillin, aureomycin, and other antibiotics had been given without success; in most instances, fevers ranged from 103 to 105° F. Within a few minutes after the vitamin was injected, fevers started to drop and temperatures often reached normal within a few hours. Usually the patient enjoyed the next meal and was ready to be discharged from the hospital in two or three days. The amount of vitamin given varied with the severity of the illness. The initial dose was usually 2,000 to 6,000 milligrams .( 2 to 6 grams), Iollowed four and eight hours later by a second and a third injection of 2,000 to 4,000 milligrams if the temperature did not remain normal; injections were continued around the clock when needed.

Dr. Klenner told of an eighteen-month-old girl suffering from polio. The mother reported that the child had become paralyzed following a convulsion, after which she soon lost consciousness. When Dr. Klenner first saw the child, her little body was blue, stiff, and cold to the touch; he could neither hear heart sounds nor feel her pulse; her rectal temperature was 100° F. The only sign of life he could detect was a suggestion of moisture condensed on a minor held to her mouth. The mother was convinced that the child was already dead. Dr. Klenner injected 6,000 milligrams of vitamin C into her blood; four hours later the child was cheerful and alert, holding a bottle with her right hand, though her left side was paralyzed. A second injection was given; soon the child was laughing and holding her bottle with both hands, all signs of paralysis gone. Dr. Klenner quite understandably speaks of vitamin C as “the antibiotic par excellence.” A physician who has obtained striking results in treating polio with vitamin C at the Los Angeles County Hospital matched Dr. Klenner’s enthusiasm with the remark, “If anything should be called a miracle drug, it is vitamin C.”

With his extremely ill patients, Dr. Klenner found that no vitamin C whatsoever could be detected in the blood only a few minutes after massive doses were injected; nor was any vitamin C found in the urine. It is his belief that this vitamin combines immediately with toxins and/or virus, thus causing the fever to drop. In cases where the fever rises again later, he believes that too little vitamin C has been given in the initial dose; that virus not destroyed multiplies and again causes the temperature to increase. For this reason, he emphasizes that if the original dose is sufficiently large, no further massive amounts need be given.

Many other investigators have studied the effect of massive doses of vitamin C. In an attempt to saturate the tissues, physicians have recommended as much as 1,000 milligrams every hour during the day from 1 to 3 days to persons suffering from arthritis, gout and almost any infectious disease, infection, or allergy, the same amount being repeated during subsequent acute attacks. They have also recommended that this quantity be taken immediately at the onset of a cold or any infection and that the vitamin be stopped as soon as the symptoms have disappeared. On the other hand, satisfactory results have been reported when an allergy or lead poisoning has been treated with as little as 300 milligrams daily. These problems, however, are medical ones; our problem is prevention.

Physicians have pointed out that patients with polio, for example, have often been sick several days before a doctor is called in and a diagnosis made. By the time such cases are cleared by a social worker and a March-of-Dimes committee and are actually checked into a hospital, they are in what has been described as “a sorry state.” Vitamin C has proved to be most effective when taken at the onset of an infection, at which time a patient rarely sees his physician. Relatively smaller amounts are needed than those required after an illness becomes serious. If sufficient quantities of the vitamin are obtained, often serious illness may be prevented. It appears desirable, therefore, for persons to learn when large amounts of vitamin C should be taken and how much should be taken. Such information has great comfort value.

I asked 15 physicians if they felt it wise to recommend that families keep high-potency, vitamin-C tablets in the medicine chest and use them at the onset of any illness. The most frequent reply was, “They are certainly safer than aspirin.” Several physicians remarked, “Tell people to take them when they need to, but the rest of the time to stick to orange juice and natural sources.” Others pointed out the importance of advising large initial doses rather than smaller frequent ones, the total of which might be larger than would be needed if the original dose were sufficient.

When persons are too ill to eat or retain food and/or to digest or absorb it easily, as were Dr. Klenner’s patients, injections of vitamin C are obviously advantageous. If the vitamin is taken immediately at the onset of an illness, however, such difficulties rarely arise. Occasionally undissolved tablets can be seen in the stools, particularly if diarrhea occurs. For this reason I usually tell people to bring one cup of water to a boil, add to it 50 tablets of vitamin C of 500 milligrams each or 100 tablets of 250 milligrams each, stir until the tablets are dissolved, pour the solution into a glass jar, and keep it refrigerated. Since tablets do not contain the enzymes found in natural foods, the synthetic vitamin is quite stable to heat. Each teaspoon of this solution would contain 500 milligrams; one or two tablespoons added to any sweet juice are quite palatable. Less vitamin C is needed if the solution is taken in fresh, canned, or frozen orange juice to which are added the juice of a lemon, sugar to taste, and perhaps W teaspoon of a calcium salt 3 (p. 181); the fresh citrus juices supply vitamin P, or rutin, which prevents vitamin C from being destroyed in the body by oxygen; the calcium helps to prevent the toxic substances from entering the cells. An adult can take tablets of both vitamin C and calcium. Since the vitamin is an acid, large amounts can cause severe burning of the throat and stomach. When more vitamin C is taken than is needed, the acid being thrown off in the urine usually causes a burning sensation when voided.

Although it has been known for centuries that a person dying of scurvy could make a startling and dramatic recovery if fresh foods were given him, vitamin C can bring about other startling and dramatic recoveries only recently discovered. Most of the research being done is still unpublished; only a few articles have yet reached the medical journals.  Aside from helping to build collagen, this vitamin appears to be a busybody with its fingers in every pie. When toxic or poison substances gain access to the body, adequate vitamin C, if available, detoxifies them, making them harmless. The toxic substance apparently combines with the vitamin, and the two are excreted together in the urine; this combination is now given the name of ascorbigen.  It has long been known that during infections and diseases, vitamin C disappears from the blood and urine; that the more vitamin C given, the less ill the person usually is, and the more quickly he recovers; and that 20 to 40 times more of the vitamin has to be given during illnesses to keep the tissues saturated than during periods of health. Furthermore, antibodies are unable to render bacteria harmless unless vitamin C is adequately supplied. Antibodies must be helped by a complement; if there is no vitamin C, there is no complement. Vitamin C seems equally helpful whether the disease is caused by virus or bacteria or is non-infectious, as is gout, arthritis, or a stomach or duodenal ulcer. Almost endless infections and diseases have been studied: colds, polio, rheumatic fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, infections of the prostate, ears, eyes, sinuses and tonsils, the childhood diseases and many others. In every case, vitamin C appears to be the good little Christian ready tc soothe the aching brow.  It has been found that vitamin C can prevent or cure chemical poisoning. This vitamin has been valuable in correcting the toxic effects of lead, bromide, arsenic, benzene, and many other substances which sometimes gain access to the body, especially of persons doing industrial work.  Studies have proved that vitamin C helps to prevent allergies; if enough is given, it can detoxify the harmful effects of allergins which have entered the blood, whether they be pollens, dusts, dandruff, or foods. This vitamin seems to be equally effective in treating all varieties of allergies, whether rhinitis (stuffy nose and/or postnasal drip), hay fever, asthma, eczema, or hives; spectacular relief often results from massive doses of vitamin C. Even the effects of poison oak and poison ivy often disappear when sufficient vitamin C is taken.  Any foreign substance reaching the blood appears to be more or less toxic; the harm is prevented by vitamin C, but the vitamin itself is destroyed in the process. For example, every drug apparently destroys vitamin C in the body. When a drug promises to save your life, the vitamin destruction is unimportant; if it is being taken promiscuously without a physician’s prescription, both the drug and the vitamin loss may be unnecessary. It has been found that a single tablet of anyone of several drugs widely used and considered harmless can continue to destroy vitamin C in the body for three weeks after the drug is taken. The Journal of the American Medical Association carried an editorial entitled “Is Aspirin a Dangerous Drug?” I pointing out that aspirin had proved more dangerous in England and Europe than in America because our diets contained more vitamin C with which to detoxify it.  This vitamin appears to play no major role in producing energy; yet it helps to prevent fatigue. For example, a group of soldiers was given vitamin C until the tissues were saturated. Their performance was compared with that of a similar group not given the vitamin. After maneuvers involving carrying heavy equipment, walking miles, and climbing mountains, the soldiers given vitamin C experienced little fatigue, recovered quickly, and had no leg cramps, whereas the other soldiers suffered severely from cramps and fatigue and did not completely recover for days. The harmful “ashes” left from incompletely burned fats, known as acetone bodies, which accumulate in the tissues when the blood sugar falls below normal, is a major cause of fatigue; these acetone bodies are detoxified by vitamin C.  Vitamin C seems to help everything by being destroyed by everything. For a nutrition consultant, the situation as regards vitamin C becomes progressively more embarrassing. No one seems to be in danger of coming down with scurvy; yet almost every person has abnormalities which vitamin C has been proved to help. In order to do good work, a nutritionist seems to have to accept the fact that people think him a crackpot hipped on liver, yeast, orange juice, and vitamin-C tablets.  The quantity of vitamin C needed to detoxify a foreign substance depends upon the amount of that substance gaining access to the body. Relatively small quantities are required by the healthy person to prevent harm, particularly when adequate calcium is absorbed (p. 132). Many toxic substances, however, might enter the body simultaneously. For example, a person suffering from allergies and doing industrial work where toxic chemicals have reached his blood might suffer from a serious infection which prevents him from eating and for which he is given various drugs; his temporary need for vitamin C would be tremendous indeed. Fortunately, even massive doses of this vitamin are thought to be harmless; any excess not needed in the body is quickly lost in the urine.

Scar tissue formed in healing wounds and injuries is a connective tissue made of collagen which depends on both vitamin C and calcium for strength. During the First World War it was noticed that wounds healed slowly or failed to heal unless fresh foods were eaten. Experiments prove that speed of healing and strength of the scar tissue are directly proportional to the vitamin-C intake. Operative patients deficient in this vitamin not only heal slowly, but their wounds frequently break open. When 4,000 milligrams or more of vitamin C has been given daily to such patients, the speed of healing is often dramatic. Medical journals have urged all physicians to recommend large amounts of this vitamin before and after surgery.

Vitamin C is especially important in the healing of broken bones. When it is lacking, a collagen bone base fails to form; hence the ends of the broken parts are unable to knit. Such abnormal healing occurs frequently in older persons whose diets are notoriously deficient in multiple nutrients. Bones heal readily at any age when an adequate diet is given and steps are taken to assure normal absorption. Protein, calcium, vitamin D and other nutrients, however, are equally as important as are large amounts of vitamin C.

Although not yet understood, vitamin C apparently plays a role in maintaining normal vision. In healthy eyes, the vitamin is concentrated in the lens; the vitamin is lacking or reduced in the lens of persons having certain types of cataract. Experimental cataracts have been produced by a restricted vitamin-C intake. Marked improvement in eye infections and inflammation of the eyes often follows when large amounts of vitamin C are taken.

This vitamin cannot be stored in the body. The tissues, however, can be saturated as a sponge might be saturated with water. The state of saturation, in which every cell has all of this vitamin it can use, is considered to be most compatible with health. After saturation occurs, any excess vitamin C obtained is promptly thrown off in the urine. The amount of vitamin C found in foods, blood, or urine can easily be measured. The tissues of seemingly healthy persons whose diets have been inadequate frequently soak up as much as 4,000 milligrams of this vitamin before any is excreted; this amount is equivalent to 40 glasses of fresh citrus juice. After saturation, the amount of vitamin obtained minus that lost in the urine gives the requirement for a particular day. By this method requirements of different people under various circumstances have been studied.

About 50 milligrams of vitamin C appears to be needed daily by the genuinely healthy adult to prevent scurvy, provided his tissues are already saturated; 75 to 100 milligrams is recommended by the National Research Council as the minimum intake. This amount can be supplied by a glass of fresh orange or grapefruit juice. The scurvy-preventing requirements of vitamin C appear to increase with advancing years, probably because absorption is often faulty and much of this vitamin is destroyed in the intestine when the stomach fails to produce normal amounts of hydrochloric acid. Studies show that the aged are appallingly deficient in this vitamin. Dr. Walter H. Eddy of Columbia University pointed out years ago that many signs considered typical of old age are actually symptoms of scurvy: wrinkles, or loss of elasticity of the skin; loss of teeth; brittleness of bones. Certainly the person who wishes to retain his youthfulness should see that his ascorbic-acid intake is ample.

The vitamin C in all plants is produced, by the aid of enzymes, under conditions of warmth and moisture at which the plant grows best. Unfortunately, the action of the enzymes is reversible; they can quickly destroy what they have made. After a food is harvested, the destruction of the vitamin occurs most rapidly under the same conditions as those at which the plant grew best, that is, in a heated market or a warm room. Furthermore, the enzymes destroy the vitamin by combining it with oxygen; hence, if a fruit or vegetable is peeled or chopped, the destruction is unusually rapid. The enzymes are kept inactive by refrigeration or are destroyed by heat at about 1400 F. Since the vitamin dissolves in water, much or all of it is lost when foods are washed slowly, soaked, or boiled. The average housewife, untrained in nutrition, is a genius at destroying vitamin C before the food can be swallowed.

For practical purposes, the best source of this vitamin is citrus fruits and juices. Fresh orange juice averages 130 milligrams for an eight-ounce glass; grapefruit and lemon and canned orange juice, about 100 milligrams. Frozen orange juice may be as rich as fresh or may contain little, depending on the type of oranges from which the juice came, the method of extraction, and the length of time it has been stored. Often culls, containing little vitamin C, are used for juice. In general, the sweeter oranges, to which no sugar need be added, have the highest vitamin-C content. Other juices, such as apple, pineapple, or grape, are not good sources, whether canned, frozen, or fresh. Tomato juice may supply 30 milligrams of vitamin C per glass or may contain none. A ripe pimiento or bell pepper or one California persimmon often contain 300 milligrams of vitamin C, whereas lh cup of guavas may supply 1,000 milligrams.

Tomatoes, both fresh and canned, all salad greens, fresh strawberries, and raw cabbage average 30 to 50 milligrams per serving. Green vegetables, such as spinach, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli, may be good sources, but 50 to 90 per cent is often lost in the water in which these foods are cooked. Apples, bananas, lettuce, potatoes, and peas may supply only 20 to 30 milligrams per serving but are important sources because of the quantities eaten. Foods such as butter, cheese, eggs, all breadstuffs, and dry beans lack ascorbic acid. Milk and cooked meat other than liver contain almost none.

Climate, soil, the degree of ripeness, storage, temperatures and methods of handling, cooking, canning or freezing all affect the vitamin-C content of foods. Little ascorbic acid is destroyed when foods are quickly frozen, but losses of 90 per cent may occur within an hour after the food has thawed. The variations are so great that tables of food analysis are of little value; hence they have been omitted.

Since citrus juices are the most dependable sources of vitamin C, a glass should be drunk daily by every child and adult. It is wise to serve a fresh salad at each lunch and dinner and to have appetizers of fresh fruit on the menu frequently. Studies have shown that people living on the Pacific Coast buy three times more vitamin C on the same budget than do those on the Atlantic Coast. Even today when frozen foods are widely used, fewer vitamin-C deficiencies occur in summer and fall when fresh foods are available than in winter and spring. This deficiency is especially common among the poor of all ages and the aged of all economic groups. If care is given to the purchase and preparation of food and the planning of menus, adequate vitamin C can be obtained even when little money is available.

The changes in collagen breakdown can be swift, harmful, and hidden. For this reason, a bruise should be interpreted as a danger signal, indicating that more vitamin C should be added immediately to your diet.

Although the word vitamin was not coined until this fi century, vitamin C has been known for over 200 years; its deficiency disease, scurvy, has played a major role in history. In 1754 James Lind wrote a treatise on scurvy recommending lemon juice for its prevention or cure. Despite the fact that we live in a land of plenty and our need for this vitamin can scarcely be called news, surveys show that three-fourths of our populations receive less than the minimum daily allowance recommended by the National Research Council.

All fresh, growing foods contain vitamin C, or ascorbic acid. The richest sources are citrus fruits, guavas, ripe bell peppers and pimientos, and the seed pods of wild roses, known as rose hips. During World War II, the English extracted quantities of vitamin C from rose hips, simultaneously using hops from beer for the B vitamins; a wit remarked that England’s magnificent strength was maintained by “her hips and her hops.” Tomato juice, cabbage, and fresh strawberries are fair sources. Scurvy has resulted whenever people have been unable to get fresh foods.

One function of vitamin C is to help form and maintain a strong cement-like material, known as collagen, which holds together every cell in your body. The amount of collagen required uses about a third of all the body protein. The collagen serves much the same purpose as cement does in a brick building except that the “concrete” in a healthy body is in the form of a stiff jelly, like gristle or a tough gelatin, known as connective tissue; thus every cell in your body “reposes” in a protective bed of jelly. This connective tissue is concentrated in the cartilage, the ligaments, the walls of all the blood vessels, the base of the bones and of the developing teeth, and gives all of these structures both great strength and elasticity. Although vitamin C is necessary for the formation of this tough jelly, adequate calcium must be present before the “[el” can set.’ Calcium is not part of the structure; it merely has a stiffening effect much as pectin does. In fact, pectin is to the plant world what connective tissue is to the animal body; neither can be formed without vitamin C or be strong in the absence of adequate calcium.

Strong connective tissue plays a role of far greater importance than has heretofore been appreciated. Cell walls are only a few molecules thick; almost any harmful substance can penetrate them, whether it be virus, poisons, toxins, dangerous drugs, allergins or other foreign materials which often gain access to the body. Strong connective tissue is not easily penetrated; thus the cells are protected. An undersupply of vitamin C, however, allows this tissue to break down; a lack of calcium allows it to weaken; protective doors are flung open, and pirates are invited in.

The walls of blood vessels must be able to expand or contract, depending on the amount of blood needed at a certain place and time; hence elasticity and strength are of paramount importance. Normal blood vessels are amazingly elastic, like rubber bands. Although a partial lack of vitamin C causes changes in all blood-vessel walls, those of the capillaries, made of single cells cemented with minute quantities of connective tissues, are affected most. When a deficiency exists, therefore, the capillary walls readily break down, and blood is freed into the tissues. These tiny hemorrhages occur first in the intestinal walls, the bone marrow and joints, sometimes causing pain spoken of as “rheumatism.” When the walls break near the surface of the skin, the freed blood discolors to produce a bruise. Regardless of the severity of a blow, a bruise shows brittleness and loss of elasticity in the blood-vessel walls; it is usually the first visual evidence of a vitamin-C deficiency, especially in women and children. “Pink toothbrush” may be the first symptom in men, who bruise infrequently because their muscles are generally harder than women’s. Bruises and bleeding gums are both important danger signals. When adequate vitamin C is added to the diet, however, the capillary walls become strong within 24 hours.

A subtle lack of this vitamin causes profound changes in growing teeth. A deficiency in childhood causes slow dental growth or temporary cessation of growth. The dentin formed during a deficiency is porous and soft; if decay later penetrates the enamel, it meets little resistance; the pulp quickly becomes infected; the tooth dies and is probably lost. Experiments with labeled minerals show that when vitamin C is added to the diet of a child lacking it, normal dentin formation is resumed within a few hours.

If vitamin C is inadequate, the foundation of the bones partially breaks down, minerals are lost, the bones become rarefied and brittle and lack elasticity and strength; such bones break easily. Even when generous amounts of calcium and phosphorus are available, they cannot be deposited in the bones because the collagen base is too weak to hold them.

If vitamin C is generously added to a diet otherwise adequate and the vitamin is well absorbed, dramatic changes take place in the bones whether during childhood or advanced age. New bone foundation forms within 24 hours, and minerals, if available, are quickly laid down. Bones thus continually change; a deficiency of vitamin C during the winter, followed by generous amounts from summer fruits and vegetables, produces alternate softening and strengthening of the bones, causing them to break easily at one time and to resist fractures at another.

Gum tissue fits tightly around the base of each tooth in a healthy mouth; it does not bleed even when brushed vigorously with a stiff-bristled brush. If vitamin C is undersupplied, the gums become puffy and spongy and bleed easily. Ever-present bacteria live on the dead cells of the gum tissue, and infections such as pyorrhea pockets often develop. When such patients have the pockets cleaned out and an adequate diet is eaten, soreness and inflammation often show marked improvement in a few days. A lack of vitamin A or niacin, however, also causes susceptibility to gum infections.

In pyorrhea the gums not only bleed easily and become infected, but much bone surrounding the teeth is destroyed, causing them to become loose. When guinea pigs (used experimentally because most animals produce their own vitamin C) are kept only mildly deficient in this nutrient, a condition strikingly similar to pyorrhea develops in nine months, which is equivalent to 40 years of human life, the age when pyorrhea most frequently appears. It seems probable that a subtle undersupply of vitamin C over a period of years plays a causative role in the onset of pyorrhea. Typical pyorrhea, however, is not uncommon among malnourished children and adolescents. If the infection is not too far advanced, an entirely adequate diet unusually high in vitamin C can restore oral health.

Although one could argue endlessly as to the differences between experimental animals and humans, the fact remains that almost everything learned about positive health has first been found in experimental animals and its counterpart later recognized in humans. I know of no exception. In our present state of ignorance concerning the B vitamins, it seems to me we must have caution in believing that the cheap B vitamins supply all the body requirements, that bacterial synthesis in the intestines takes care of the other B-vitamin needs of each individual, and that the B vitamins still little known or unknown are not important.

Let us consider, for example, heart disease. Heart failure is not produced in animals when they are deficient in vitamins A, C, D, and K, in any of the minerals, or in sugar, protein, or fat. Heart damage or collapse or failure is produced when animals are undersupplied with almost anyone of the B vitamins. The thousands of persons who have died from the B-complex-deficiency disease, beriberi, have died of heart failure. In Denmark during World War I and in England during World War II, when wheat germ remained in all breadstuffs and decreased calories reduced the B-vitamin requirements, the incidence of deaths from heart disease dropped markedly. Dr. Morrison’s spectacular results in treating coronary occlusion and coronary thrombosis with B vitamins cannot be ignored. Animals under stress not given the anti-stress B vitamins die of heart collapse, often while still having all the appearances of health. There is absolutely no proof that the human counterpart of these deaths is not widespread.

Six times more men than women die of heart attacks. It is recognized that men, as a rule, need much larger amounts of B vitamins than women do; men are usually larger, have more muscle tissue, do harder physical work, take more vigorous exercise, are submitted to greater and more numerous stresses, and often drink larger amounts of coffee and alcohol, each of which increases the need for the B vitamins. Perhaps men’s greater need for these vitamins has caused more men than women to die of heart disease.

The scientist working with deficient animals for years learns to predict when death will occur. Similarly, those of us in clinical nutrition can sometimes predict death with depressing accuracy. One has only to watch an individual, learn of his dietary habits, and estimate his vitamin-B requirements to guess the severity of his deficiencies. He may appear to be healthy, but usually many telltale signs are obvious.

Not long ago a friend invited me to a lecture on psychology. She was much annoyed afterward because I commented that I could not listen to what the lecturer said for observing his numerous symptoms of multiple B-vitamin deficiencies and especially the way he breathed. I told her that unless he improved his diet, he would die soon of a bad heart.

“Oh, you” she exclaimed in disgust. “All you can think of is nutrition I” the following week, when this man actually dropped dead, her disgust changed to amazement. I recently watched another seemingly healthy man who sneered at the idea of adequate nutrition but whose requirements for the B vitamins were extremely high; some 10 days after I had predicted that he could not live long, he died of heart disease. Anyone working in clinical nutrition could cite similar examples. Try it yourself. You will find it so easy as to be frightening. A man who has had warning in the form of a heart attack is lucky indeed because he usually takes more rest and thus decreases his vitamin requirements and/or improves his nutrition so that his body needs are met.

The statistics, “885,190 men died of heart failure last year,” are cold and meaningless. But after you have known dozens of these men and seen the sadness of their children and the loneliness of their widows, these statistics become cruelly and tragically alive. You find you care not one iota that the findings proved by animal research are not yet accepted as proved with humans. If the work with animals indicates that lives can be saved, we should apply this knowledge and let the proof come later. A doctor friend, as intolerant as I with the purely scientific attitude, asks persons who defend it, “Have you yet time?”

What kind of men are they who are being taken off by heart failure? They are not the lumberjacks, the ditch diggers, or others who can eat large amounts of food and in so doing obtain at least a certain amount of nutrients. Rather, they are our leaders, our executives, our outstanding men, whose lives are largely sedentary. A friend of mine especially interested in this phase of nutrition has kept hundreds of clippings from newspapers: “Stettinius Collapses of Heart Failure,” “General Arnold Dies from Heart Attack,” and on and on.

At the height of Wendell Willkie’s career he died of pneumonia, although physicians have prevented such deaths since the sulfonamides came into use; the real cause was the coronary attack which preceded the infection. Within recent years other important figures have died of heart disease: Maurice J. Tobin. former Secretary of Labor; John H. Paxton, American Consul; Stephen Early and Joseph H. Short, White House press secretaries; Francis A. Truslow, appointed Minister to Brazil; and Beauford H. Jester, Governor of Texas. Outstanding men in all fields have recently died of heart attacks when still young: fhe Reverend Joseph P. Connor, priest and composer; Dr. Donald A. Stauffer, educator, poet, critic, and novelist; Horace Underwood, educator; Michel Licht, poet and translator; William J. Conners, Jr., publisher of the Buffalo Courier; Roger Riis, Readers Digest roving editor; Fulton Oursler, author of best sellers; Dr. Louis Wirth, sociologist; Edwin Leland James, managing editor of the New York Times; Joseph K. Howard, editor, author, and historian; Albert L. Baker, wartime leader of the Manhattan Project; Arthur Szuk, miniature painter and caricaturist; Leo Pasvolsky, economics expert; David L. Behncke, president of Air Line Pilots’ Association; Walter Geist, president of Allis-Chahners Manufacturing Company; and Lewis Brown, president of the Johns-Manville Corporation. The Army and Navy have been saddened by untimely deaths from heart disease: Captain W. R. Edsall, skipper of the battleship Missouri; Admiral Forrest Sherman, U. S. Chief of Naval Operations; Major General Bryant Moore, Commander of the U. S. Ninth Corps; Major General Robert A. Soule, former division commander in Korea; Dr. Walter Van Dyke Bingham, the Army’s chief psychologist; and Major Samuel Woodfill, Medal of Honor winner. Sports fans grieved on hearing that heart attacks had taken Joseph Jackson, baseball’s great hitter; Norman Ross, former Olympic swimming champion; “Big Bill” Tilden, the tennis champion; Joe H. Palmer, sports writer; and Jacob J. Galomb, of the nation’s largest sports equipment enterprise. Entertainers felt little like entertaining after the news that their colleagues were gone: Al Jolson, singer and comedian; John Garfield, actor of stage and screen; J. Edward Bromberg, character actor; Val Lewton, movie producer, Lamar Trotti, oscar-winning screen writer and producer; and young Hank Williams, singer and composer, who died when only twenty-nine. Not one man among these was old when a heart attack stopped his career. The average age of this group was only fifty-five years when death came. More than one-fourth of these outstanding people did not live to celebrate their fiftieth birthday. My friend adds another clipping from almost every newspaper he picks up.

Brilliant men are often taken at their very prime of life, perhaps in their early forties, after they have gained the education and experience which qualify them for splendid leadership. The years they should have lived would have been the years when their contribution would have been greatest. No country can afford the loss of such a tremendous asset.

Recently I had the opportunity to study such a person, a man of fifty-five years, 190 pounds, with a magnificent physique so rare in middle-aged men. This man is brilliant; moral strength, character, and integrity show in every line of his face. As an international leader, he is making no small contribution toward world peace, but the pressure he is under is unrelenting. Like so many leaders, his work keeps him traveling constantly. He must eat in restaurants where it is literally impossible to obtain adequate B vitamins; he is being entertained by hostesses from coast to coast, and guest meals, as a rule, are even nutritionally inferior to restaurant meals. Women who ordinarily serve whole-wheat breads, milk, perhaps fruit for dessert at family meals substitute white rolls, wine, coffee, and some oversweet pastry when entertaining. A psychologist friend says that when one offers food to one’s guests, one is really offering love; if this be love, I say that it lacks depth. Since graciousness demands that such food be eaten, this man has gained 20 hated pounds during the last year. He tries to maintain his health and normal weight by vigorous exercise. In this case it is tennis, not ordinary tennis but hard games played with professionals.

Although one might consider this man to be in perfect health, close scrutiny and conversation revealed many signs of deficiencies: attacks of gout, showing rapid tissue destruction brought on by stress; concern over elimination; fatigue from exertion which should have caused no fatigue; nervous twitches when extremely exhausted; such exhaustion being fought off with coffee, and tension relaxed by whisky and soda. Although this man expressed the desire for 25 more years of useful, active life, my reaction was, thinking of his large frame, his added pounds, the tremendous pressure of his work, the intensity of his athletics, and the dire inadequacy of his food, that he would be lucky indeed to live another five years. Never in my life have I wanted so much to help another human being; yet this brilliant person knows so little about the needs of his body and I so little about psychology that I failed to do anything more than to antagonize him. One can only pray to God that this man and the thousands of wonderful men like him can learn the rudiments of nutrition before it is too late.

The circumstances in the lives of our leaders who have died at their prime in recent years are frighteningly similar to this man’s. Yet few persons, if any, can study nutrition without obtaining the conviction that everyone of these men could have enjoyed 20 or 5O more productive years.

It will be long before our state of ignorance can be changed to one of enlightenment. In the meantime, let us be open-minded, remembering that the experimental work with animals does eventually find its human counterpart and that the counterpart of the scientist’s report, “The animals died apparently of heart congestion although they still had the appearance of good health,” may be found in the widow’s anguished cry, “He was never sick a day in his life.”

Let us be cautious in feeling secure that a mere capsule of mixed B vitamins will supply the body’s requirements. Let us realize that, in respect to the B vitamins at least, our needs must be met largely by wholesome foods chosen with utmost care. Let us keep on the alert for new findings, being aware that the nutrients which may have the greatest effect upon our health are still to be discovered. Let us stay open-minded to the fact that although nutrition is known to be important in maintaining health, the extent of that importance is still to be learned.

Since these vitamins are concerned with the production of energy, the more exercise you take and/or the harder you work, the more of these vitamins you need. Obviously, your requirement will be higher on the days you work hard than when you are vacationing. Also the less sleep you get, the more of these vitamins you need.
The requirement of all vitamins appears to be greatly increased by stress. Your need, therefore, will depend upon the number and severity of stresses you are under. A person might be upset over a pending divorce (stress 1), working long hours under pressure (stress 2), getting too little sleep (stress 3), taking thyroid tablets and benzedrine to keep going (stresses 4 and 5) and sleeping tablets to relax (stress (3), worrying over a sick child (stress 7), and suffering from a sinus infection (stress 8); his requirements for these vitamins are tremendous indeed. I frequently find persons harassed by as many as 15 or 20 different stressor agents at one time. If you are such a person, it seems to me you have three possibilities: live on yeast, liver, yogurt, wheat germ, and even B-vitamin tablets; or remove the stresses; or look forward to ill health.

Your need for these vitamins also appears to be in proportion to the amount of liquid you drink. Years ago, Dr. George R. Cowgill of Yale University produced B-vitamin deficiencies in animals by force-feeding them water. Alcoholic drinks of all varieties increase the need for the B vitamins; these vitamins are needed in utilizing the alcohol in the body and are washed through the body by the liquid. Recently-I am sincerely sorry to write this-scientists at the University of Wisconsin have produced multiple B-vitamin deficiencies merely by feeding animals coffee. Animals thrived when given caffeine without water. It would appear that caffeine, by stimulating the heart beat, increases the flow of blood plasma through the kidneys and thus causes more of the B vitamins to be lost in the urine. So far no one seems to have investigated tea, but it is a fairly safe bet that the effect will be the same as that of coffee.

Heavy coffee drinkers almost invariably show symptoms of B-vitamin deficiencies even when their diets are excellent. I strongly suspect drinking large amounts of coffee is one factor contributing to the graying of hair and perhaps to baldness. Even drinking too much water may be unwise. This problem of liquid intake is probably more important than is appreciated.

Through the years I have been consulted by many persons who make a fetish of building health. For example, a woman recently told me that her breakfast was whole-grain cereal, hand ground immediately before it was cooked, on which she put powdered whey, bone meal, sunflower seeds, powdered milk, yeast, rice polish, cream, and “raw” sugar. Her husband commented that it was like compiling a compost heat>; he was (understandably) intolerant of her ideas (an understatement). Even with such carefully selected foods, this woman and others not unlike her showed symptoms of severe B-vitamin deficiencies. Invariably I find these people not only believe that one should drink eight glasses of water daily but actually do it. Large amounts of water, coffee, beer, soft drinks, or any liquid wash these vitamins out of your body. On very hot days when B vitamins are lost in perspiration and you drink large amounts of liquids, your need for these vitamins is tremendously increased.

It seems to me there is only one way to determine the quantity of these vitamins which will make you feel your best: find your own dosage. Learn how to vary the amounts from day to day depending upon your own body structure, the quantity and type of food you eat, the strain of your work and exercise, the stresses you are under, and the amount of liquid you drink. For example, during the summer when I vacation in the mountains, I eat yogurt occasionally and take only a tablespoon of yeast daily, usually in juice. When working moderately hard, I drink 1 or 2 glasses of tiger’s milk made with 112 cup of yeast and have some yogurt daily. If under stress, I eat 1 cup of yogurt and % pound of fresh liver or take 2 tablespoons of desiccated liver in addition to the tiger’s milk; on the days when the going is really tough, I have liver and yogurt and drink a quart of tiger’s milk containing 1 cup of yeast.

The one day when I experienced the most exuberant feeling of well-being and felt that my mind was clearest was a time when I was under considerable strain. I was asked to give an intensive post-graduate course in nutrition to physicians and dentists. The procedure was to lecture from 9 A.M. until 5 P.M. with a five-minute break every hour. I was told that the last lecturer to give such a course had blacked out from exhaustion at the end of the day. I realized that if I were to sell nutrition, I had to stay rested and my mind alert. Frankly, I was frightened. I therefore had fruit with yogurt, liver and tiger’s milk at breakfast; milk and a huge serving of lobster for lunch, chosen because lobster is rich in glycogen which would be changed slowly to sugar as the protein digested and would thus give a sustained pickup; and tiger’s milk at 10 A.M. and 2 and 4 P.M. Although I stood except during lunch and spoke without a microphone, I did not experience one second of fatigue throughout the day or evening or even the next day when I kept expecting a letdown. This experience convinced me that, for the relatively healthy person, fatigue can be completely prevented.

The real test, I believe, is this: if you are never tired, the chances are that your intake of B vitamins is adequate or that your intestinal bacteria are pretty efficient. If you experience fatigue, your intake is probably too low. A man said to me recently, “You never realize how terribly tired you were until you’ve found out you don’t need to be tired at all.”