Fitness

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.