Susceptibility to Malnutrition
Contents in this issue:
- “Susceptibility to Malnutrition.”
The following is a transcription of the Fourth Quarter 1973 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Susceptibility to Malnutrition
Why?
As a result of the Watergate testimony the average citizen assumes, and it is generally more or less accepted, that you can do anything as long as you can get away with it.
The favored large food industries often replace natural foods with processed or partial substitutes, synthetic vitamins, extenders, and enhancers with no consideration of nutritional unbalance or damage. Usually cited are cost savings, industrial sterilization, uniform flavor, dispersion, and, if pushed hard enough, FDA standards.
As a result of the lowered food values in the U.S. diet, physical and mental health have steadily declined. Our faith and trust in the old, nutritionally minded “family doctor” has, in many instances, misled us into trusting the newer chemotherapy regime, often with unknown side effects and outmoded dietary advice—which is usually confirmed by industrially biased experts and government officials.
Apparently, such advice, the continued pollution of our air, food and water, the change in agricultural policy since World War II, and the intentional neglect of providing an adequate course in nutrition in medical schools have all been more or less at fault in our poor health record. Why should the United States be the only influential nation in the World Health Organization that has shown no increase in life expectancy in twenty years?
Sickening Results
Recently, the New York Times furnished a summary of the American health profile for 1968, the last year for which figures had been compiled, as follows (condensed report):
- Arteriosclerosis (also known as hardening of the arteries). A condition associated with heart attacks and strokes and the leading cause of death in the U.S. In 1968, 927,660 deaths occurred, or more than 48 percent of deaths from all other causes. It is estimated that one quarter of all American adults have “either definite or suspected” heart disease.
- Cancer. As the second leading cause of death, cancer killed 318,910 persons, or about one in every six deaths. It is estimated that 625,000 new cancer cases are diagnosed yearly and that one of every four Americans will contract cancer at some time in his lifetime. Of cancer deaths in 1967, 56 percent were over age 65 and 44 percent under 65.
- Mental illness. One in every 10 persons (or about 20 million Americans) suffers from some form of mental or emotional illness. Some 2,579,600 persons were treated in various psychiatric facilities in 1968. The largest number of first admissions to hospitals was for alcoholism and schizophrenia.
- Arthritis has become one of the most widespread chronic diseases in the United States. Arthritis and rheumatic diseases afflict about 17 million Americans. They cause 12.2 million days of lost work and 205 million days of restricted activity annually.
- Blindness. It is estimated that 5.39 million Americans have some form of visual impairment; 435,000 of them are legally blind. Vision deficits are found largely among the elderly. Visual impairment is caused chiefly by such aging-connected diseases as glaucoma and cataracts. More than 10 percent of all hospital patients are eye patients.
- Cerebral palsy. A severe nervous disorder, cerebral palsy afflicts 750,000 Americans, and 25,000 palsied infants are born annually.
- Epilepsy. Experts estimate that from one to two million Americans suffer from some type of epileptic seizures.
- Deafness. One out of every ten Americans has some degree of hearing loss, and 236,000 are totally deaf.
- Multiple sclerosis. About 250,000 adults have become afflicted with this very debilitating neurological disease.
- Muscular dystrophy. A wasting disease that afflicts more than 200,000 persons. Nearly two-thirds of these are children between three and thirteen. Almost all die before adulthood.
Additional Comment
To the above summary we would like to add the following:
- Diabetes mellitus. Also called sugar diabetes and sometimes termed the scourge of modern living. It now ranks third in the killer diseases in this country. Dr. Elliot P. Joslin, a leading authority on this condition in the late 1920s, said: “In another fifty years the American people will all be diabetic.” We find he made an over-enthusiastic error, although the uptrend has been appalling. According to Metropolitan Life Insurance statistics, this disease jumped from 27th place in 1900 to its present place. We doubt that it will supersede the one and two rankings of cardiovascular conditions and cancer, although it is presumed to be a contributory factor in these conditions. Diabetics are usually considered prone to heart attacks.
- Dental health. Only recently, Dr. Abraham E. Nizel, professor of oral health services at Tufts University Dental School, in Medford, Massachusetts, testified before a Senate committee on nutrition and human needs that tooth decay is a number one problem in America. He said: “If all the hundred thousand dentists in this country did nothing but fill teeth all year long, as many new cavities would occur by the year’s end as had been filled.”
This is nothing to smile about as, according to the American Dental Association, we now have one billion cavities, or about four for every man, woman, and child. A fifth of all adults, or twenty-five million Americans, have lost all their teeth and an equal number of lost at least halt their teeth. On entering school, the average child has three decayed teeth and by the age of fifteen a third of the teeth are decayed, filled, or missing. Ninety-five percent of all school-age children have multiple tooth decay. Apparently, “Look, Ma, no cavities!” is only TV propaganda.
Commentary
In view of these dental statistics, after over a quarter century of fluoridation of drinking water, we wonder if such ineffective results have been worth the bitter resentment and social conflict caused in our country by this mass medical treatment of a condition. The prescribing or use of any medicament should conform to individual patient-doctor relationship. There is now a whole range of fluoridated drugs and proprietary fluorine supplements and drugs, such as some corticosteroids, fluoridated to enhance their activity.
In 1956, scientists R. Feltman and G. Kosel found inorganic fluoride in 35 out of 39 commonly prescribed drugs which they investigated (Northwest Med., 55:663–664). Now, we must consider the enormous growth, in recent years, of industrial fluorine compounds; their potential for pollution of air, soil and water, and the effect of their constant increase in the environment. To preserve our health resources for posterity we must give our immediate attention to reducing chemical pollution. The flow of run-off water from chemically fertilized soil, irrigation drainage water and fluoridated sewage water into our lakes and rivers should now be protested.
Are the people of Mexico smarter than we are? At least they seem to be better conservationists than we are. They are forcing the U.S. to install desalinization plants to remove chemicals from irrigation drainage water…from some of our western states, before it runs into their rivers. We continue to run the industrial waste chemical sodium fluoride through our bodies, possibly with much individual damage, and dump it into our lakes and rivers through our sewage systems, for an industry that did not know how to get rid of it. It has worked out as a highly profitable industrial nonpollution strategy. Through some of their henchmen, the dentist-maligned sugar industry promoted the fluoridation of water at its inception, as a diversionary tactic to increase sugar sales. Increased sugar consumption in the past twenty years, as well as the dental statistics regarding loss of teeth, seems to bear out their maneuver.
A Warning
Industrial pollution has killed Lake Erie. In our other lakes, how long will it be before we recycle these chemicals in our so-called fresh drinking water? In the not-to-distant future we will be recycling fluoridated water from these lakes to be refluoridated into an overdosage. Is anyone testing? The local water works employee just keeps adding a specified amount to the source of water regardless of its contamination by fluoridated commercial fertilizers and pesticide soil residue.
This type of pollution must have our immediate attention or we will be obliged to drink more and more of the waste chemicals of industry. Certainly, malnutrition through loss of proper metabolism is increased as the enzyme inhibiting action of sodium fluoride and other chemicals is increased. By combining with various mineral catalysts, these inorganic chemicals can curtail the activities of a wide variety of enzymes and thereby create systemic dysfunction through lack of complete metabolism. For, as Dr. Samuel Epstein of the Boston Children’s Cancer Research Foundation has said, “There are probably many food additives, drugs and environmental agents which create harmful byproducts during their metabolism in the human body.” Naturally, the question arises as to how many of these poisonous byproducts the body can overcome before it succumbs.
Present-day doctors are specialized but the body is not, so it must be evaluated in its entirety. Dental caries and periodontal disease are systemic degenerative diseases the same as arthritis, diabetes, and some heart and vascular conditions are said to be. They generally will only respond to treatment when the adequate building materials are furnished by whole nutrition.
About Nutrition
Whole nutrition should furnish the important tooth minerals calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and organic fluorine, as well as amino acids and vitamins so necessary for a healthy mouth and good teeth. As the baker said, “Anything less than all the ingredients spoils the cake.” If interested further we suggest you request a copy of Applied Trophology, Volume 14, First Quarter 1971, entitled “Magnesium in Health and Life,” and Volume 11, May 1967, “Cavity Reduction Through Nutrition.”
In citing some of the quoted dental statistics, David Wilson, MD, a former head of the Mississippi Medical Center and also a former president of the American Hospital Association, stated:
“People should remember how many times they’ve taken a child to the doctor and he hands out a lollipop. The physician just doesn’t know about dental care…The people themselves aren’t interested in good dental care. They’ve learned to live with dental disease. They go to dentists to get patched up only when it becomes absolutely intolerable.”
Apparently, Dr. Wilson realized that the lollipop did not represent good nutrition and that good dental health and systemic health were synonymous. In a recent interview, Dr. Alexander Schmidt, the new commissioner of the FDA, had this to say regarding the role of physicians in correcting poor U.S. eating habits: “It is generally conceded that MDs know less about nutrition than they should.”
So, we must also concede that in relation to the dental caries situation, the majority of dentists as a group also know less about nutrition than they should. We must presume that only the individual patient treatment in preventive dentistry and preventive medicine, in conjunction with a good nutritional regime, can stop the increasing loss of health in this country.
Good whole nutrition, less chemicalized food, and especially less mass medication through food of our meat animals and fowl, should provide an excellent starting point. We note that the countries that rank above us on the World Health Organization chart have never used or abandoned mass medication of animals and poultry through treatment of foods. It is for this reason that several countries have, for some time, refused to import our meat.
It is also interesting to note that healthier countries such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, West Germany, Belgium, Japan, France and Italy have labeled artificial fluoridation as unsafe, illegal, unwarranted; having controversial benefits, possible genetic damage through birth defects or mutations, and acting as another contaminant or pollutant. They have determined that “water furnishes the body fluids that carry the physical and chemical characteristics required in the cycle of life” and should not be contaminated.
In our country scientists have determined that “chemicals in our food, air and water may cause birth defects and mutations which can be passed on through generations.” Perhaps with this in mind, in 1966 the FDA limited all prenatal preparations containing added fluorine compounds for sale “by prescription only.” Yet 5 percent of all newly born children show malformations within the first five years of life. Also, chromosomal abnormalities occur in 8 percent of all conceptions and in 30 percent of spontaneous abortions. No one knows the risks we take in consuming thousands of additive chemicals in our food and water. Also unknown are the cumulative effects or synergistic action, in combination, as we must always consume them.
Nutrition and Health Research
Also in the New York Times, Jane Brody cited the fact that many distinguished critics were perturbed that most doctors are “unprepared” or “uninterested” in nutrition, despite the fact that two-thirds of public health and chronic disease problems are related to American eating habits. The experts also viewed nutrition research as “mediocre” and based on “a lot of animal feeding experiments that are not particularly relevant to human development.”
Up to now research projects in this country have been slanted toward food industry commercially oriented projects. They have entirely neglected nutrition and food safety and confused Science with Sell. Both public and private funds have failed miserably to aid in consumer nutritional research or in health-related education. Most of this research money is controlled and spent by sickness-oriented organizations. Sad to relate is the fact that healthful nutritional research usually has its inception in healthier foreign countries.
For instance, we currently have the headline “Saccharin Ban Taking Effect in Japan.” Use of saccharin in Japan will be prohibited starting immediately in consequence of an action taken by the government Health and Welfare Ministry back in early May of 1973. The ban will be for all but special cases such as use for diabetic patients. The action was prompted by the mounting public anxiety about all the synthetic products used as food additives. As a result of this study, our FDA has now instituted a study of saccharin, now used by the ton in this country, particularly in diet foods and diet soft drinks.
Since January 1, 1973, the general use of nitrates and nitrites in food has been banned in Norway, as a result of investigation since 1971. The Norwegians found that nitrates and amines such as cyclohexylamine, an organic compound naturally present in certain protein foods, combine to form nitrosamines. Nitrosamines were found to be capable of causing cancer in many organs, especially the liver, in all species of animals upon which they have been tested. In concentrates of only five parts per million they are said to be capable of producing tumors. Nitrates metabolize into nitrites in the intestine and destroy our favorable intestinal bacteria. Nitrite poisoning may cause a cyanosis by destroying the red blood cells, through the reaction of oxidizing the hemoglobin to methemoglobin. This reaction is prevalent in infants and may result in an unidentified blue baby diagnosis.
In this country sodium nitrate (saltpeter) and sodium nitrite are used in pickling meats and as a coloring agent and preservative in processing corned beef, ham, bacon, wieners, other sausages, and lunch meats. A sucrose solution of corn syrup is used as a dispersing agent. They are claimed to be not harmful in the amount used. But how does one know how many hot dogs a kid will eat on any occasion? Not long ago, Representative L.H. Fountain deplored the “excessive and possibly unnecessary use of nitrites and nitrates” and asked for better public protection.
It was the Canadian Food and Drug Directorate that had the University of Wisconsin Research Foundation test the cyclamates on rats. The test revealed a low live birth rate. A German report showed liver changes in guinea pigs and rabbits. Further tests showed that it produced cyclohexylamine in the body, a potential danger to some cardiac patients with high blood pressure. Another test found sodium cyclamate would raise the level of protein-bound iodine, which in a blood test would suggest hyperthyroidism instead of just an excess of cyclamate. This could fool the doctor into treating a wrong condition.
After reviewing new evidence in 1956, the FDA announced: “There is no evidence that cyclamates at present-use levels are a hazard to health.” However, it was later banned, with the proviso that present stock on hand could be used. Now in a battle between giants, the Sugar Foundation desires the present status and pharmaceutical manufacturers are demanding reevaluation.
A Nutritional Revolution
Cortez Enloe Jr., MD, brought the battle against malnutrition up to date when he stated, at an Annual National Dairy Council Meeting:
“Just as the chemotherapy revolution, started by Pasteur, made the pharmaceutical industry partners with the health professionals in combating infectious diseases, so the nutritional revolution will make the agriculture and food industries partners with the health professionals in the fight against degenerative disease.”
Historically, much of Pasteur’s theory of infection does not apply as, apparently, the well-fed healthy individuals who nursed the patients suffering from infectious diseases were usually not affected by exposure to the contagion. Pasteur apparently found wisdom when, during his final illness, he said to his friend Professor Renon: “The germ is nothing, the soil is everything.”
As R. Lindsay Robb of the British Soil Association has said:
“There is convincing evidence of the relationship between human malnutrition and soil nutrition, between faulty diet and ill health, between soil health and human health. But, whatever the source of malnutrition—inadequate diet, social and economic conditions, or a combination of these—it leads to impaired vigor and vitality and this in turn to an increase in disease, with lowered resistance to combat it and longer recovery periods under medical treatment.”
Tuberculosis must be considered as a prime example of this pattern. Until the infected patient becomes well nourished, medicaments have little if any value. Scientists have known for years that pathogenic germs cannot live in the soil of a healthy body. Yet, many physicians deliberately ignore this fact and continue to deal with effects rather than causes. They do not seem to recognize the fact that disease agents are opportunists lying in wait for the propitious time to act. Usually, the primary cause for their action is lowered resistance due to malnutrition. As an example, Professor Robb cited Sir Albert Howard’s cows in India, rubbing noses across the fence with sick critters wasting away with hoof and mouth disease. Being vigorous and healthy, they did not contract the disease.
Degenerative Diseases Affect Children
The estimated number of deaths from heart attacks rose from less than 928,000 in 1968 to over a million in 1972, an increase of approximately 18,000 per year. Statistics reveal males to be more prone to attacks than females.
Dr. Jack Wilmore, a physiologist at the University of California at Davis, says: “Heart trouble begins in childhood. There are probably some children between the ages of two and four with early heart attack signs.” This could be a carry-over of malnutrition of the mother during pregnancy. He further advised: “The time to prevent heart disease is when your boy is young. Don’t let him become obese. Watch the amount of saturated fats he eats. Encourage exercise. These things are even more urgent if there is a history of heart disease in your family.”
Dr. Paul N. Yu, the immediate past president of the American Heart Association, in a recent visit to Milwaukee stated: “The pediatrician rather than the heart specialist may be the most effective to reduce death and illness due to heart disease.” He mentioned that about 10 percent of the U.S. fighting force killed in Vietnam were found to have a potentially disabling atherosclerosis. He was also quoted as saying: “For the most part we are still treating the end stage of the disease…we shouldn’t be too hopeful about drastically reducing the toll of deaths and heart disease in the near future.”
Preventive medicine is rapidly coming to the fore. However, many physicians are going to be left behind, for, as Time researchers have found, “The field of nutrition is terra incognita for the average doctor. Courses are not widely taught in medical schools, and even among specialists there are substantive disagreements.”
In this era of rapidly increasing “diseases of civilization,” we find that dentists, as specialists, also disagree as to the mass treatment of water fluoridation vs. individual treatment and specific individual nutritional advice. Contrary to some professional organization teaching and governmental agency promotion, there is no average man nor is there an average diet, and, we might add, no average supplementation.
As E. Cheraskin, MD, DMD, says: “There are countless genetic, congenital, and environmental challenges to the body that account for the enormous variation in individual need for nutrients.” We suggest reading Dr. Cheraskin’s latest book, Predictive Medicine—a Study in Strategy, Pacific Press.
