Fitness

So much is known about the B vitamins that entire volumes are written about them. If the known facts were universally applied, the improvement in world health would probably be beyond imagination. Yet knowledge of many of these vitamins is so limited that it can only be described as a state of ignorance.

This group of perhaps 20 or more vitamins is called the vitamin-B complex because it is complex. Every month or two a new substance is separated from liver, yeast, and/or wheat germ. One, pan gamic acid, spoken of by some investigators as vitamin B15, promises to be important in energy production. Another, lipoic acid, is being written about. Vitamins B13 and B14 are now reported. Others can be expected.

The last three B vitamins to be well established are variously called the anti-fatigue, antitoxic, or anti-stress vitamins. These three appear to be unnecessary under normal conditions or to be needed in such small amounts that they can be made in the body or perhaps by bacteria in the intestines. Even though a diet contains all previously known nutrients and is adequate to support health under normal conditions, it can still be inadequate during conditions of stress unless these anti-stress vitamins are supplied. Stress is anything which puts an extra load on the body. Conditions of stress are produced by drugs, chemicals, infections, surgery, noise, excessive fatigue, psychological upsets, resentments, hatreds, and. hundreds of other factors. It now appears that all nutrients are needed in larger amounts during stress than under normal circumstances.

When animals on seemingly adequate diets are submitted to stress, widespread damage occurs in their bodies. If these animals, however, are given fresh or dried liver or a crude liver concentrate, little harm is done. For example, when the strength of animals was tested by making them swim in ice water, the animals on “normal” diets could swim only three to ten minutes before drowning; animals given the same diet fortified with liver swam two hours or longer and lived to swim again.

When liver is given, the harmful effects of such stressor agents as atabrine, excessive amounts of the thyroid hormone or milk sugar, extreme heat or cold, lack of oxygen, X-rays, and various drugs have been prevented or decreased. Animals subjected to stress but not given liver often die unexpectedly, apparently of heart failure,’ although they may have all the outward appearances of good health. Liver of all varieties appears to be the richest source of the anti-stress vitamins; kidney, soybean flour, and brewers’ yeast contain some.

A number of other B vitamins have been so little studied that their distribution in foods is largely unknown, the amount needed is a mystery and, if deficiencies of them commonly occur, they are not recognized. Since the deficiencies produced experimentally are not recognized in humans, the assumption is that these vitamins are amply supplied by food or by intestinal bacteria, an assumption which I believe is not always true.

The richest source of the B vitamin, biotin, is yeast. Animals lacking this vitamin develop eczema, or dermatitis; their hair falls out; they are particularly susceptible to heart abnormalities and lung infections. If cancers are transplanted, they grow rapidly in biotin-deficient animals. Growth is extremely stunted in young animals; adults become emaciated; death comes quickly to both.

A substance in egg white, avidin, can combine with biotin in the intestinal tract and prevent it from reaching the blood. Dr. V. P. Sydenstricker of the University of Alabama studied, biotin deficiencies produced in human volunteers on adequate diets containing egg white. The first symptom noticed was mental depression. In time the subjects developed dry peeling skin, extreme fatigue, muscular pain, nausea, and distress around the heart. The mental depression became intensified to what Dr. Sydenstricker described as “panic.” All the symptoms disappeared in three to five days after biotin was added to the diet.

I know a physician, too overworked to follow nutritional research, who tells mothers to add beaten raw egg to their baby’s formula, starting at the third month. I have seen nine of these children covered with severe eczema which promptly cleared when the egg was withdrawn, and yeast and yogurt were added to the diet. The many recipes calling for uncooked egg white should be discarded. Eggs should be cooked until the white is firm, especially for persons “allergic to eggs.”