Category Archives: Historical Archives

Historical Archives

Obesity and the Physiology of Osmotic Transfers

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: “Most overweight people have an obviously disordered endocrine balance,” writes Dr. Lee in this speculative paper on the nature of weight gain and loss. While historically the thyroid has always been considered the main dysfunctional endocrine gland when it comes to obesity, Dr. Lee points to another player, one “higher up the chain” of the endocrine system—the pituitary gland. With some modern researchers claiming the cause of obesity to be resistance of the pituitary to the hormone leptin, Dr. Lee appears to have been on the right track—once again years ahead of his time. 1954.

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Historical Archives

The Nutritional Approach to the Prevention of Disease

By J.F. Wischhusen and N.O. Gunderson, MD

Summary: “Scientists have been almost entirely preoccupied by the concept that bacteria cause disease, rather than by a much more important concept—that adequate nutrition causes good health and relative freedom from disease.” This basic principle, stated so eloquently by the authors of this essay from the journal Science Counselor, aptly defines the divide between the fields of nutrition and medicine. Were we to stop consuming substandard foods such as pasteurized milk and foods grown on soils deficient in trace minerals, the authors explain, then we would not need medical treatments for degenerative diseases such as rheumatism, arthritis, gastrointestinal disorders, nervous and mental diseases, and cancer, because they would be largely nonexistent (as they are in preindustrial societies that stick to their traditional diets). “Remove the true underlying cause of disease—malnutrition,” the authors add, “and it will usually be found that the disease germs cannot exist or propagate in an animal body that is healthy.” From Science Counselor, 1950. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 48.

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Historical Archives

Nutrition in Health and Disease

By Sir Robert McCarrison, MD

Summary: In this 1936 article from the British Medical Journal, nutrition pioneer Sir Dr. Robert McCarrison lays out some of the basic principles of nutrition—principles that have long been lost by a modern world that has convinced itself that processed foods are sufficient substitutes for whole natural foods. In addition to the fundamental truth that only whole foods can properly nourish the body, McCarrison discusses specific dysfunctions that occur in the two body systems affected most immediately by a poor diet—the gastrointestinal tract and the endocrine system. From the British Medical Journal, 1936.

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Historical Archives

Nutrition and Vitamins in Relation to the Heart

By Richard L. Chipman, MD

Summary: In this profound lecture from 1953, Dr. Richard Chipman elucidates the differences between natural and synthetic vitamins in terms of their effects on the human heart. Whereas lab-made vitamins comprise single chemical compounds, he explains, natural vitamins—or vitamins as they are found in food—are infinitely more complex, comprising “groups of associated principles of synergistic nature” that, if taken apart, “are no longer capable of producing [their] normal nutritional and metabolic effect.” Thus it is no surprise, he adds, that in studies synthetic vitamins failed to show positive effects on heart health, and in some cases even made matters worse, while natural vitamin complexes proved literally to be lifesavers. Dr. Chipman’s words will make you reconsider not just what vitamins truly are but what they are truly capable of in restoring human health. From The Journal of Medical-Physical Research, 1953. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special reprint 5-54.

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Historical Archives

Nonreaginic Allergy in Theory and Practice

By Granville F. Knight, MD

Summary: A discussion of food allergies well ahead of its time. Dr. Knight distinguishes “nonreaginic” allergies (i.e., no antibodies) from the classic antibody-antigen type, placing the percentage of population suffering the former at ninety percent—a remarkable observation given that this paper was published in 1954. The focus of the article is the Coca Pulse Test, a method of determining nonreaginic allergies to foods and environmental compounds by taking measurements of one’s pulse before and after ingesting or inhaling a suspected allergen. From the Journal of Applied Nutrition. Reprint 100, 1954.

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Historical Archives

Margarine: A Counterfeit Food

By Kenneth de Courcy

Summary: This reprint of a 1957 article on margarine production epitomizes two fundamentally opposed philosophies of food production that emerged from the Industrial Revolution. On the one hand, large scale manufacturers strove to deliver food to consumers at the lowest cost possible, using novel chemical and thermal methods to preserve and manipulate foodstuffs regardless of the effect on the foods’ nutritional quality. (Indeed, industrial food processing was the reason the vitamins were discovered in the first place, the inadvertent removal of the then-unknown nutrients leading to mysterious epidemics across the globe.) Nutritionists, on the other hand, decried industrial adulteration of the food supply, citing copious evidence that eating foods in as natural a state as possible is critical for the growth, upkeep, and immunity of the human body. In this article the author, an advocate of commercial food manufacturing, sells margarine as a sort of modern super food, with a nutritional value “as high as that of butter” simply because the two contain the same amount of fat and calories per ounce. Such sophistry is what allowed food manufacturers to run roughshod over America’s food supply, as noted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, which reprinted the article so its audience could see margarine precisely for what it is—a “counterfeit food” made from “refined, rancid, and otherwise unfit food sources.” From World Science Review, 1957. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 106.

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Historical Archives

Nutrition and Dental Disease

By Allison G. James, DDS

Summary: A dentist warns that refined grain and sugar products are “the chief causative factor in dental caries [cavities] and paradentosis [gum disease].” The author also discusses the body’s important calcium-phosphorus ratio and warns against eating too much “heat-sterilized food.” The esteemed Dr. Francis M. Pottenger Jr., MD—author of the famous Pottenger’s Cats—comments at the end of the article. From Annals of Western Medicine and Surgery, Reprint 34, 1947.

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Historical Archives

Nutrition and Arthritis

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this monumental 1952 pamphlet, Dr. Royal Lee argues that arthritis is the direct result of nutrient deficiencies brought about by the overconsumption of cooked and processed foods. Insufficient intake of vitamins A, C, and G; various minerals; and the woefully forgotten Wulzen factor—an “anti-stiffness” agent for joints found in raw sugarcane juice and raw cream—all help contribute to the disease, Dr. Lee writes. (Interestingly, while raw cream was shown to prevent joint stiffness in test animals, pasteurized cream provided no such protection, which may explain why arthritis became epidemic in the USA after food processors began pasteurizing the nation’s milk supply.) Dr. Lee not only shows how these deficiencies lead to the arthritis-inducing conditions of acidosis and toxic bowel, he also delineates precise supplement protocols to reverse the arthritic condition, featuring his famous raw food concentrate formulas Betalco and Minaplex (known today as Betacol and Organically Bound Minerals). Dr. Lee also backs up his ideas with several carefully documented case studies showing how patients reversed crippling cases of arthritis using his protocol. This compilation is a tour de force of nutritional therapy—indispensable for all health practitioners and anyone else interested in restoring wellness through diet. From the Vitamin Products Company, 1952.

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Historical Archives

Normal Blood Sugar Level

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee at his prescient best. Anticipating ideas such as the glycemic index and insulin resistance by about four decades, Dr. Lee laments the negative effects of high-glycemic foods such as refined sugar, which “disturb the body mechanisms,” he says. From Let’s Live magazine, 1958.

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Historical Archives

A New Theory of Diet and Coronary Thrombosis

By Ernest Klein, MD

Summary: In this 1954 article from the legendary health magazine Prevention, Dr. Ernest Klein describes his remarkable discovery of a possible predictor of coronary thrombosis (the cause of most heart attacks) as well as a means of its prevention through a simple dietetic therapy. Unfortunately, Dr. Klein’s ideas—based on his observation and treatment of hundreds of patients—were never tested by other researchers because of the refusal of medical officialdom to even entertain them. In fact, upon publication of his findings, Dr. Klein was summarily fired by the hospital he worked at, as was his daughter. It is doubtful, Prevention’s editors opine, that Dr. Klein’s theory was the final word on heart disease and its prevention, but the fact that his findings were suppressed by the medical establishment and never pursued by other investigators is nothing short of scandalous. Unfortunately, obstructing alternative treatments for preventing disease remains stock and trade for medicine, an industry that profits from managing illness, not deterring it. From Prevention magazine, 1954. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 96.

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Historical Archives

New Sugar-Making Method Claimed By Milwaukee Dentist

Author unknown

Summary: A grave error of conventional nutrition is the failure to distinguish sources of a nutrient. By this way of thinking, all “sugar” becomes the same thing, whether the term refers to isolated molecules derived from the chemical breakdown of cornstarch or to molecules of the same constitution but surrounded by a group of vitamins and minerals that happen to perfectly assist their metabolism in the body. And so modern nutrition sees no difference between the raw juice of sugarcane and the white purified crystals it becomes after industrial processing. Yet there is a difference, a profound one, as renowned nutritionist and inventor Dr. Royal Lee points out in this 1943 article. Raw sugarcane juice is actually a great source of many vitamins, Dr. Lee explains, and while these micronutrients are lost in the process of refining, the body still needs them to properly metabolize sugar molecules. Thus overconsumption of refined sugar must necessarily dysregulate our metabolism, manifesting as conditions such as diabetes and obesity. In the early 1940s, in an effort to help bring “healthy sugar” to the public, Dr. Lee invented a cold-evaporation technique that retained and preserved all the micronutrients naturally found in sugarcane. That process, described here, might have helped prevent the decay of our national health, had our officials had the sense to realize that not all sources of a nutrient are equal. From the Portsmouth Herald, 1943.

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Historical Archives

Maternal Malnutrition and Congenital Deformity

By Howard H. Hillemann, PhD

Summary: In this lecture from 1958, Oregon State professor Dr. Howard Hillemann breaks down the number of birth defects occurring in the United States by cause, noting in particular the increasing numbers of defects attributable to environmental chemicals, food additives, and prenatal malnutrition. The report includes a comprehensive discussion of the role of vitamins and minerals in prenatal nutrition, addressing each nutrient individually. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, reprint 66B, 1958.

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Historical Archives

The Neglect of Natural Principles in Current Medical Practice

By Surgeon Captain T.L. Cleave, MD

Summary: In 1974 Dr. Thomas L. Cleave, Surgeon Captain of the British Royal Navy, wrote the brilliant but virtually ignored text The Sacharrine Disease: Conditions Caused by the Taking of Refined Carbohydrates Such as Sugar and White Flour. Decades before that, Dr. Cleave wrote this thirty-page article urging the medical profession to reconnect with the natural laws of health from which humankind evolved, specifically by promoting the consumption of whole, natural foods over the processed and overcooked products of commercial food manufacturing. Citing the work of Weston A. Price as an example of understanding natural law, Dr. Cleave argues that industrialized food production caused cheap, processed, carbohydrate-based foods to predominate in the modern diet, resulting in consequences for human health that have been nothing less than disastrous. From the Journal of the Royal Naval Medical Service, 1956. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

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Historical Archives

Is It Possible to Influence Multiple Sclerosis by a Certain Diet Regime?

By J. Evers, MD

Summary: In this preliminary report, translated from its original in German, a physician describes his success in treating multiple sclerosis using a diet of mostly raw whole foods. “Controlled examinations of my patients by experienced specialists (neurologists, internists, and ophthalmologists) acknowledge…remarkable improvements,” Dr. J. Evers writes. “Patients who had been treated by every other possible means and saw their condition get worse—and in some cases appeared entirely without hope—have been improved by my dietary treatment.” Dr. Evers treated nearly 600 patients in all, yet conventional medicine completely ignored his findings. From German Medical Weekly, 1947. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 90.

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Historical Archives

Natural Vitamin E for Heart Diseases

Authors unknown

Summary: A riveting article documenting the success of vitamin E therapy in the treatment of heart disease, published by the British journal Popular Science Digest. The key to this success, the authors emphasize, is the use of natural vitamin E over synthetic, the former having been shown to be “highly effective in the treatment of coronary disease, the incidence of which appears to be linked with a deficiency of vitamin E in the diet dating from the beginning of the century, when millers discarded vitamin E in the processing of grain.” While the authors mistakenly confuse isolated natural alpha-tocopherol with the natural vitamin E complex (which includes alpha-tocopherol but other factors in addition), they sum the case for natural vitamin therapy over pharmaceutical drugs brilliantly: “Alpha tocopherol (vitamin E) therapy has the distinctive feature of improving the function of damaged hearts by attacking the underlying pathological changes. Heretofore, the drugs at the disposal of the cardiologist such as digitalis, quinidine, the mercurial diuretics, and nitro-glycerine have helped to re-establish more normal function, but have left the basic pathology unaltered.” In other words, vitamins treat the cause, not the symptoms, as drugs do. The overwhelming clinical success reported in treating heart disease with vitamin E, the article concludes, “is a case for the closest and completely unbiased examination, by those competent to do so, of the claims of those who have developed and sponsored vitamin E therapy.” Words that still ring true today. From Popular Science Digest, 1953. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 40A.

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Historical Archives

Natural Versus Synthetic Supplements

By Judith A. DeCava

Summary: This manifesto of whole food nutrition should be standard reading for anyone even thinking about taking or prescribing vitamin supplements. In it clinical nutritionist and researcher Judith DeCava spells out the precise differences between natural and synthetic supplements in light of modern nutritional discoveries. While science today ballyhoos the health benefits of phytochemicals such as lycopene and anthocyanins, for instance, DeCava notes that these substances are effective only when they are ingested as part of the food they come naturally packaged in; when chemically isolated or artificially synthesized, “they never seem to work as well.” This is similar to the message of Dr. Royal Lee, who eighty years ago insisted that vitamins are not isolated chemicals, as chemists and pharmacists defined them, but are complexes of cooperating compounds that work together synergistically to perform a nutritive function. While isolated food fractions may have a pharmacological (drug-like) effect, they are not nutritive, Dr. Lee warned, and do not belong in the category of nutrient. From Whole Food Nutrition Journal, 2003.

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Historical Archives

Natural Versus Artificial Nitrates

By Sir Albert Howard

Summary: In this 1945 article from Organic Gardening magazine, Sir Albert Howard, father of the British organic farming movement, writes about the inherent inferiority of artificial soil fertilizers, specifically synthetic nitrates. He quotes the magazine New English Weekly: “It is always good to see the difference between natural and laboratory products emphasized, in recognition of the imponderable elements with which Nature endows substances, which can by no scientific skill be added to the synthetic product.” He also cites a study from an American university showing that “natural nitrates have something that the artificial lacks, and there is no completely adequate substitute for it in the field of [artificial] agricultural fertilizers.” Substituting crude imitations for Nature’s complex, synergistic compounds is a great way to destroy the health of soil and crops, he adds. Howard, the author of the classic book on organic farming An Agricultural Testament, was also the mentor of J.I. Rodale, the founder of Prevention magazine. From Organic Gardening, 1945. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 13.

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Historical Archives

Insulin Potentiation Therapy

By Steven Ayre, MD

Summary: A compelling overview of an alternative therapy for cancer based on the fact that cancer cells feed exclusively on glucose. To capture as much glucose as possible, cancer cells have many insulin receptors—ten times more than any normal cell in the human body. In standard chemotherapy, the chemotherapeutic drugs cannot tell the difference between cancerous cells and normal cells, so they kill them both indiscriminately. But when such drugs are delivered along with insulin, the insulin shuttles them preferentially into the cancer cells. The result of such targeting is the sparing of normal cells and the necessity of a smaller dose of drug to get the job done. “Insulin Potentiation Therapy appears to be a wonderful new way of treating cancer,” Dr. Ayre concludes. From The Cancer Cure Foundation, circa 2005.

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Historical Archives

Low Blood Sugar and Hyperinsulinism

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: Dr. George Goodheart, the founder of Applied Kinesiology, describes the biochemical, musculoskeletal, and hormonal response of patients suffering from hyperinsulinism and offers a very simple but still overlooked step to help remedy the problem: “What does not seem to be understood or practiced is that sugar and all carbohydrates cause this dysfunction and that sugar and high carbohydrates must be restricted.” This is one of the earliest chiropractic papers on what was soon to become a huge area of holistic healing. From the Digest of Chiropractic Economics, circa 1965. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

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Historical Archives

Lithogenesis and Hypovitaminosis

By W.J. McCormick, MD

Summary: In this 1946 article, medical doctor W.J. McCormick looks at the relationship between vitamin C status in the body and lithogenesis—the formation of calculi, or stones, in an internal organ. “Clinical observations and laboratory experimentation by the author on the effect of administration of vitamin C in altering the physiochemical properties of the urine and other body fluids, principally in eliminating deposition of phosphates, has led to the hypothesis of C hypovitaminosis as the basic etiological factor in lithogenesis in general.” Note: Dr. McCormick equates vitamin C with ascorbic acid, though, as Dr. Royal Lee often pointed out, the latter is just one of the many factors that form the true vitamin C complex. From the journal Medical Record, 1946. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

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