The Sedimentation Rate—Its Significance
The following is a transcription of the July 1957 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Also in this issue:
- Cardiovascular Diseases Treated with a Total Extract of Heart Muscle—a Clinical Contribution
- Heart Attack Deaths Increase Among Women
- Tip of the Month (Hot Weather)
- Q&A
- High Points of Cardiotrophin PMG
- Ten Chief Causes of Death—Wisconsin
The Sedimentation Rate—Its Significance
When a citrated blood specimen stands over a period of time, the red cells settle out. The rate at which this occurs is known as the sedimentation rate. There is no agreement at this time as to why this occurs. But it is agreed that the sedimentation rate has definite clinical significance. It is known that increased fibrinogen increases the sedimentation rate, while an increase in serum albumin decreases it.
We believe the sedimentation rate is an index of free protomorphogen residues in the bloodstream. These can only come from: (a) tissue damage (trauma, burns, the effects of bacterial proteolysins, certain disease states accompanied by tissue lysis) (b) pregnancy, where the embryo mitotic activity releases large amounts of protomorphogens, or (c) sex hormones promote the earmarking and probably the protective “wrapping” of protomorphogens for sex gland use, thereby decreasing the protomorphogens’ tendency to act to promote sedimentation. (See Ref. 1 for background data.)
Since the liver is responsible for albumin synthesis, and since albumin is no doubt one of the adsorptive eliminators of protomorphogen released by trauma, bacterial tissue destruction, etc., it is obvious that liver damage can be indicated by an abnormally high sedimentation rate.
In rheumatoid arthritis the sedimentation rate is high, and it goes up and down in parallel with exacerbation of the disease. Our theory here is that a damaged liver permits the uncontrolled chain reaction of protomorphogen release, due initially to proteolytic antibodies (natural tissue antibodies) secondary to the known predisposing causes (infection, malnutrition). These proteolytic antibodies release some protomorphogen, the end products of which in turn act to cause more inflammation and release more protomorphogen.
This may be why liver lipotrophic factors favor the control of rheumatoid arthritis. (More of the essential albumin is made that adsorbs and detoxifies protomorphogen.)
The nutritional deficiencies that aggravate arthritis can also include the vitamin group that has to do with the protective wrapping of the protomorphogens—the E and F complexes in particular, with special reference to F2.
It has long been known that tocopherol deficiency results in chromosome disintegration.2
Normally, these free protomorphogens are picked up by phagocytes and carried to the liver for bile route disposal. But if they are unwrapped by reason of a lack of the essential factors, they will be able to act as antigens, stimulating the formation of antibodies by the reticuloendothelial cells, and the victim becomes a chronic sufferer from some mysterious “idiopathic” disease. It may be a clear syndrome such as pernicious anemia, diabetes, ulcerative colitis, or stomach ulcers, or it may be a part of tuberculosis or heart disease, the lung or heart antibody simply inhibiting repair to the extent that the patient’s “vitality” is supposed to have declined to a dangerous point.
To improve the sedimentation rate, the first thing of course is to get at the cause. Natural vitamin C and calcium lactate are primary. If the cause is bacterial, these phagocyte activators are again primary. If the cause is traumatic injury, the very same thing is true; the phagocyte is our detoxifier, whether the tissue damage is from burns or from a hammer on the thumb.
The fat-soluble groups of E and F are of high secondary importance. They protect the tissue reserves from the chain reaction release that tends to occur from the irritating effect of the histamine and guanidine residues that are freed by the enzymatic destruction of the antibody-antigen reactions that occur whenever and wherever antibody meets antigen, whether it is in the nasal membranes in hay fever, in an abscessed tooth, or in a hammered thumb. Do not forget it is the normal level of natural tissue antibody in the circulating blood that prevents any organ or tissue from overgrowth. And conversely, in all probability it is overproduction of a specific antibody that causes atrophy, whether it is pernicious anemia, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, or muscular dystrophy.
A high sedimentation rate is the index of an acute breakdown in the control of protomorphogen protection. It indicates to the doctor that his patient is in a serious state, that he had better know what to do if he expects to cheat the grim reaper.
Fatigue poisons cause an increase in sedimentation rate, requiring up to 24 hours for restoration to normal.3 The same authority tells us that arthritis, tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, and gonorrhea are the main diseases where sedimentation rate is most significant. These are all conditions of great tissue damage.4
This, of course, would be true if such tissue damage were to be the source of free protomorphogen residues that serve to act on the sedimentation rate. We have here the explanation of the problem expressed by Kolmer: “But little is known about the true nature of sedimentation; nor are the reasons why it is accelerated in the presence of pregnancy well understood.”5
The sludging of blood after the blood passes through tissue areas that have been injured, as studied by Knisely et al.,6 is a finding that we can see is highly significant. Together with the knowledge that fatigue has similar effects—at least overfatigue does—we can see how losing a night’s sleep, such as on a long train ride, can predispose to a coronary thrombosis or a cerebral thrombosis. Endocardiographic recordings are startlingly degenerated by such experiences as loss of sleep. Many people are walking on such thin ice, as it were, of malnutrition that they are, as Dr. Hugh Sinclair has commented, like his test animals on deficient food, “walking invitations to disaster.”7
This blood sludging is characteristic of degenerative disease in general and no doubt owes its presence to a combination of deficiencies of the protomorphogen-protective vitamins and to the cooked-protein diets, wherein the heat-labile amino acids are lost, so that blood albumin and globulin are reduced, and poor antibody production follows. The victim has a lowered resistance, loses his teeth like Dr. Pottenger’s animals on pasteurized milk, and, like those animals, develops chronic arthritis—among a series of other reactions.
Dr. Ernest Klein has found that incipient coronary victims have a shortened coagulation time and high hemoglobin. He found that fruit or vegetable juices at once started a reversal of the tendency to danger.8 (Report enclosed—reprint from Prevention.) This effect is no doubt due to the vitamin K in such foods. Recently Dr. Hunter Doles of Norfolk, Virginia, reported a tremendous increase in coronary thrombosis since the use of deep-freeze fruit juices and other foods has become common. He attributes this development to the oxidative loss of the vitamin K in such foods. (More details on this are reported in the August issue of Vitamin News.)
This is a serious finding. We have always considered deep-freeze foods equivalent to fresh. Apparently, there is no way to cheat nature. We get into more and more complications when we presume to proceed on our own assumptions. If we want to get our vitamin C complex with its K, E, A, P, and F, all we need to do—even if we are traveling on a sailing ship three months between landings—is to sprout some wheat or other seed that will keep indefinitely (lotus seeds three thousand years old have been grown) and eat a little every day. The terrible tolls once taken by scurvy from seagoing people were also pitifully unnecessary.
But the main cause of death in this country, heart disease, is just as preventable. It is another missing group of vitamins, lost in throwing out the germ (too perishable to leave in after processing), that aggravates the situation. Vitamin complexes G and K now seem to be the top requirement to stop this cause of almost a million deaths per year.
If you insist on eating from the deep-freeze supply, better take a few capsules of Chlorophyll Complex, the best source we know of natural vitamin K, which is protected from oxidation by the capsule’s coating. You might notice a few other reactions too, from the other vitamins present. I can say it is a lot better, as well as a lot cheaper, than the royal jelly so much talked about today, in that a lot more people will report a vitality buildup. After all, it is the clinical test that tells the story.
References
- “Recent Progress in Hormone Research,” Vol. III, p. 297.
- The Vitamins, Interscience, p. 459.
- Rev. Physiol., 9:152.
- Rev. Physiol., 2:90.
- “Clinical Diagnosis by Laboratory Examinations,” pp. 19–21, 1943.
- Surg., 51:220–236, 1946.
- Applied Trophology, Vol 1, No. 5 (May 1957).
- Klein, Ernest, Dr. Reprint from Prevention.
Cardiovascular Diseases Treated with a Total Extract of Heart Muscle—A Clinical Contribution
Grigolato, A. Merli, and V. Noseda. Minerva Med., 47:178–182, January 24, 1956, (in Italian), Turin, Italy.
A total extract of heart muscle (Ricosen) was given to patients suffering from the anginal syndrome. There was a complete disappearance of the attacks or a decrease in their intensity and frequency. Ricosen has both a direct and an indirect dilating effect on the coronary arteries, and it regulates the metabolism of the myocardial fibers. In patients with congestive heart failure, Ricosen, when given together with cardiotonics, increases the action of digitalis, helps it be better utilized, and reduces or neutralizes its toxic effect. Treatment with Ricosen is more useful if given at intervals between one cycle of therapy with digitalis and another. The extract does not have a hypotensive effect. It is beneficial when used in patients with hypertension. The benefit is due to the action of Ricosen on the coronary circulation and on the regulation of the metabolism of the myocardial fibers.
—J.A.M.A., p. 476, June 2, 1956
Editor’s note: Our heart protomorphogen Cardiotrophin (S-P) is equivalent to the product referred to above.
Heart Attack Deaths Increase Among Women
Since 1940 a startling change has occurred in the number of men versus number of women who die from heart attacks, reports Dr. Wilber A. Thomas, Department of Pathology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, in the April issue of Nutrition Reviews.
Before 1940 there were two men for every woman victim, but since then women victims have so increased that the ratio is now about one to one, he reported. This and other unexpected facts were revealed by a study of 17,000 autopsies performed between 1910 and 1954 on victims of heart disease. The study was made to determine the prevalence of acute myocardial infarction, one of the most common causes of death in the United States.
The condition is caused by an inadequate supply of blood to the heart muscle and results in “heart attacks” that usually bring severe pain and disablement. Twenty-five to thirty-five percent of the victims of these attacks die from them.
Another unexpected finding concerns the difference between white and Negro populations, with five times as many white victims as Negro ones. A difference between the two races was known to exist before, but this latest study shows that the difference is increasing rather than decreasing, Dr. Thomas reported. He cautioned against attributing it to genetic factors until every other possibility, especially dietary habits, has been exhausted.
—Reprinted from Science News Letter, March 30, 1957.
Tip of the Month (Hot Weather)
Hot weather requires a replacement of the blood salts we lose in all osmotic water elimination. Take a half teaspoon of Carbamide [A-C Carbamide] in a glass of water once or twice a day, use Upjohn’s Citrocarbonate now and then, and use Vitamin F Tablets [Cataplex F Tablets] if you are much exposed to sun. Vitamin F is the antidote to excess vitamin D, stops sunstroke in its tracks. Use Calcium Lactate for the fatigue of hot weather, with the vitamin F.
Questions and Answers
Q. The value of vitamin E in heart therapy, etc., as compared to digitalis, and in what oher pathology is it indicated?
A. See Endocardiograph literature for details of spotting specific vitamin deficiencies affecting the heart. Once this is done and proper nutrients supplied, the digitalis becomes less and less necessary.
Q. How much fresh beef heart would a person have to consume to give the same effect as one Cardiotrophin tablet?
A. Two to four ounces.
High Points of Standard Process Nutritional Adjuncts
Cardiotrophin PMG: This is the cytotrophic extract of heart (bovine) containing the heart protomorphogen, developed with the thought of rebuilding and increasing the tonicity and elasticity of the heart muscle. In the diabetic Cardiotrophin helps control blood sugar, probably by activating the absorption of sugar from the blood by the muscle cell.
Ten Chief Causes of Death—Wisconsin
Average for three year period, 1953–55.
|
Number |
Rate 100/000 pop. | |
|
1. Heart disease |
13,658 |
379.1 |
|
2. Cancer |
5,767 |
160.1 |
| 3. Cardiovascular lesions |
4,290 |
119.1 |
|
4. ACCIDENTS |
2,003 |
55.6 |
—Health, April/May/June 1957, Quarterly Bulletin of the Wisconsin State Board of Health
