Fitness

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.”