Allergens; Oral Disease
Contents in in this issue:
- “Allergens as a Cause of Disease,”
- “Oral Disease—A Nutritional Deficiency.”
The following is a transcription of the February 1966 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Allergens as a Cause of Disease
One of the new concepts in the causation of disease is represented by the discovery of allergens. An allergen by definition is an agent, exogenous or endogenous in origin, capable of inciting an allergy. An allergy “connotes an altered reaction of the tissues in certain individuals on exposure to agents which, in similar amounts are innocuous to other persons.” (Merck’s Index, Tenth Ed.) The immature state of the knowledge in this field is emphasized by the fact that Merck’s Index fails in its discussion to take into account the possibility of an endogenous or autogenous allergen. It assumes that all allergens are of extrinsic sources.
Harry Beckman, in his latest book, Pharmacology in Clinical Practice (Saunders, 1952) makes the same mistake. He says, “Susceptible individuals, sensitized by foreign substances (allergens), develop specific antibodies (reagins) against them and store them in their tissues. When they are assailed later by these allergens there occurs an allergen-reagin reaction in which histamine is released.”
Histamine, of course, is the agent that then creates most of the symptoms of allergy. The existence of the endogenous allergen is now becoming an item of scientific recognition, though suspected and hypothesized for almost fifty years.
Pressman reported in 1951 the existence of anti-lung and anti-kidney antibody and that they were immunologically similar and could be a cause of glomerular nephritis.1 Such allergens have also been called autoantibodies and natural tissue antibodies in the literature. In his article Pressman listed also multiple sclerosis, rheumatic heart disease, periarteritis nodosa, and lupus erythematosus as said to be in this category. In pernicious anemia too, antibodies to red cell proteins are known to exist.
Jahiel and Jahiel reported in The Journal of Allergy (21:102, 1950) that “these experiments suggest that the partial hydrolysis of autogenous proteins, tissue destruction and liberation of endocellular material, and reabsorption of an excretory product can under certain conditions, give rise to autogenous allergens and provoke pathological changes in a previously sensitized tissue.” Here we have the most important physiological discovery in a century laid down in this unassuming statement.
Suppose the primary lesion is the necrotic area in a beriberi heart that often follows a “coronary attack” (the leading cause of death in the United States). The anti-heart antibody created by the released heart allergens due to the special state of affairs (a necrotic island in the heart) may kill the patient who otherwise would survive the blow. These anti-heart antibodies become a constant inhibitory influence that blocks normal repair processes, blocks normal function to such an extent that the oral administration of a few milligrams of the heart allergen may show a change for the better in the heart performance in ten minutes, if recorded on phonocardiographic tape. The change being a renewed muscular vigor exhibited by a reduced contracting time.
Atherosclerosis too, is now suspected to be in this category of antibody induced disease.2 Drs. Y.S. Lewis and D.E. Smith of Argonne National Laboratory reported the destruction of mast cells and consequent development of atherosclerosis by injections of mast cell antibody, in test animals. The various degenerative diseases thought to be due to antibody excess are all those in which no reasonable etiological cause has otherwise been found.
Normally a healthy endocrine system protects us from these eventualities, but as Sir Robert McCarrison demonstrated in 1918, the first damaging effect of refined foods is upon the function of our endocrine glands, with the thymus, adrenal, and pituitary among the first to be damaged.
Another definite aggravating feature of malnutrition and endocrine failure is a crippling of the normal acid-alkaline balances of the body fluids. Alkalosis aggravates all allergies, a blood pH of 7.3 to 7.4 is normal. Often it is found in allergic victims as high as 7.7. Correcting the blood pH often and almost always does relieve the symptoms within hours. The saliva seems to accurately reflect the blood alkalinity and affords a simple means for testing, which the patient himself can follow. Seawater is effective in this correction of alkalinity by reason of its content of calcium chloride and sulfate. Most of the “miracles” produced by seawater are due to this correction of alkalosis, we believe.
It is very probable that the specialists who deal in allergies are too busy looking at the forest to see the trees. They go to great lengths to determine the specific allergens, provide small doses of the offending substances to reduce the patient’s sensitivity, while the blood pH is so high that no appreciable results are possible. The real problem that created the hypersensitivity—the hyperalkalinity—is entirely overlooked.
We wish to note here that the minute-dose principle of homeopathic medicine is very well justified by the experience of allergy specialists. Then too, another homeopathic principle is reestablished, the much-ridiculed hypothesis that to cure a symptom, use the drug that creates identical symptoms, but in smaller dosage. And determine the degree of dosage attenuation by test on the patient. Homeopathic doctors had reported dosages of one part in ten trillion to produce specific reactions and have been severely ridiculed for their acceptance of the efficacy of such dilutions.
Now Dr. Irving Langmuir of General Electric has shown that such dilutions were the only ones effective—of silver iodide—in causing raindrop formation in the science of rainmaking, and that if more than the effective dilution were used—one milligram to the cubic mile of air—the effect was reversed, and a drought was secured instead of rain.3 Sometimes facts are harder to believe than fiction. It is unfortunate when people must suffer from preventable and curable disease just because other healthier persons refuse to consider the evidence.
Probably the biggest thing to show above the horizon just now in the biological field is this discovery that all biological growth, mammalian at least, is controlled from conception to death by the physiological influence of allergens, also known as microzyma (Bechamp), evocator (Needham), cytost (Turck), necrosin (Menken), biophore (Drennan), proteinogen (Northrup), protogene (Beadle), id and idant (Weismann), allelocatalyst (Robertson), X-substance (Mast and Pace), and protomorphogen (Lee and Hanson).
A point arises here that deserves careful consideration. Syphilis was once known as “The Great Imitator” for its effects on various tissues of the body simulated almost every known disease, at times. Now Dr. Sulzberger in the Journal of Allergy of March 1950, page 94, has told us:
“It is therefore correct to say that today the great imitator syphilis has been to a large degree supplanted by the greater imitator ‘drug reaction.’
“The far-reaching practical implications of this fact were once expressed to me clearly when I visited Dr. L. Dienes, the pathologist of the Massachusetts General Hospital, and he said: ‘If, as you state, the manifestations of drug reactions can so closely mimic those of other diseases, then a good physician, when baffled by a disease of obscure genesis, should not so often say, Take this medicine, but more often say, Now stop taking that medicine.’
“It is important for my thesis here to note that dermatologic studies have shown that certain drugs are much more likely than others to produce allergic disease and possess what Rostenberg Jr. and the speaker have called a high ‘sensitizing potential.’ Phenolphthalein, arsphenamine, and salicylates are common causes of allergic reactions; other drugs, for example, cascara sagrada, probably self-administered by just as great a number of people, are nevertheless essentially negligible as elicitors of allergies. Moreover, particular drugs and chemicals are inclined to produce their own particular forms of allergic disease, and other allergenic chemicals, other forms—e.g., salicylates tend to produce urticaria and angioneurotic edema; sulfonamides, scarlatiniform, morbilliform, or nodose eruption; mercury and quinine, eczematous reactions; arsphenamines, exfoliating dermatitis; antipyrine and phenolphthalein, their characteristic fixed polychromatic plaques; and penicillin, either generalized urticaria or dyshidrosis-like or ‘phytid-like’ manifestation of the hands and dermatophytosis-like eruptions of feet and groins.
“The reasons why some substances are highly allergenic, and others scarcely so or perhaps not at all, still almost completely escape us. Above all, we remain almost entirely ignorant of the why and wherefore of the tendency of a particular substance to produce its particular type of allergic disease. These are fertile fields, and most challenging ones for study. The great unifying concept of allergy provides the hope that by discovering some of the reasons for the relative sensitizing potentials and the selective proclivities of particular inanimate chemical agents to produce particular forms of disease, one may disclose certain of the most fundamental reasons for the predisposition, resistance, and characteristic responses to many infections.”
Here, we may remark, that this imitation of so many diseases by syphilis as well as by ill-chosen drugs is due to a common cause—the release by the syphilitic organism or by the drug of the local tissue allergen that is being attacked—in the case of the drug by the doctor’s prescription aimed at the target lesion, in the case of the syphilis organism, the natural effect of the infective agent on a weakened (by malnutrition) victim. The syphilis organism causes anemia—by releasing red cell antigen through the effect of its enzymes. It, no doubt, can cause paresis or locomotor ataxia the same way.
If the drug were administered in properly chosen homeopathic dosage, it no doubt would have been successful. It is correct to accomplish the cure of an allergy by the proper dosage of the same allergen that causes it (so say all allergists), but if more than this is administered or released by a drug the condition will be aggravated. Parenterally injected drugs are far more dangerous in this connection, in fact. It is, we are sure, relatively difficult to aggravate an allergic state with orally administered allergens. We have very efficient defenses against oral overdosages of such factors, otherwise the food allergies would often be far more fatal.
We normally depend upon the regular intake of bacterial antigens in our drinking water (termed pyrogens by the hypodermist), which help guard us against commonly present infectious diseases. These must be carefully removed from water used to carry parenteral medication, or severe fevers result from the smallest amount injected. (To the immunized individual—he is allergic to the germ that supplied the allergen if it is put into his bloodstream.) He is immune to that same germ, if it arrives in his food, by reason of his sensitization.
References
- Journal of Allergy, 22:387, September 1951.
- Science News Letter, April 25, 1959.
- Time Magazine, p. 93, June 12, 1950.
Oral Disease—A Nutritional Deficiency
At the Thirteenth World Congress of Dentistry at Cologne, Germany, in 1962, Dr. A. Aslander presented his experiences with tooth nutrition since 1938.
His theory, which proved to be true, after using it as a guide in treating his three children, was very simple. He believed that mineral deficiency caused by poor tooth nutrition was the underlying cause of dental caries. His original acquaintance with this theory came about through learning of the experience of an isolated parish in Norway in which it had been the custom for years to consume not only the meal of the sheep but their bones as well. He stated:
“In persons above forty years of age who had grown up during the bone-eating period dental caries was almost unknown, but in the younger generation with better table manners dental caries was common. It should be noted that all of the elements known to be essential tooth nutrients are found in bone meal and herring bones.”
Dr. Aslander further advised:
“A tooth is an independent individual that grows out of the soil. Thus, the common laws of nutrition must be applied. If an organism is undernourished, it will develop poorly; in severe cases, when one or more nutrients are either lacking altogether or present in too small quantities, the organism, for instance, a plant, will develop a special deficiency disease. The same applies to a tooth.”
In northern Sweden, where he was raised on a farm, the land was deficient in phosphate. This deficiency, together with changed eating habits, Dr. Aslander presumed contributed to his own poor teeth. Dental caries was prevalent among local Swedish children. This fact and his own experience made him decide to try his nutritional theories on his children. From the time of birth, he fed them supplemental calcium phosphate. At two years of age, bone meal, including trace minerals, were added to presumably furnish complete tooth nutrients.
After ten years of this regime, his children were caries free. This, he stated, was “an event in a community in which otherwise all the children suffered often severely from dental decay.” Other children remained caries free too, when they followed his diet, Dr. Aslander stated. He also said:
“When a tooth receives complete nutrition, it grows normally. And a normal tooth is free from dental caries. Thus, complete tooth nutrition is bound by physical laws to produce teeth that are immune against dental caries…
“The greater the part played by foods poor in minerals, such as sugar and white bread, in the daily fare, the greater the mineral starvation.”
The effects of proper food are so evident that no one should make a mistake. Apparently, we Americans must reduce the consumption of these impoverished foods if we wish to retard the prevalence of dental decay.
