Rheumatic Fever and Heart Disease
The following is a transcription of the March 1958 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Also in this issue:
- Quality Protein in Diet
- The Effect of Raw vs. Pasteurized Milk on Dental Caries in the Rat
- Tip of the Month (Epistaxis)
- High Points of Cardiotrophin PMG
Rheumatic Fever and Heart Disease
The relationship between rheumatic fever and heart disease has always been a mystery. Doctors Aaron Kellner and Theodore Robertson of New York announced their discovery of a “missing link” in this mystery at the Second World Congress of Cardiology and the 27th Scientific Session of the American Heart Association at Washington, November 1954.
This discovery was the demonstration that a proteolytic enzyme from streptococcus had the ability to cause specific damage to heart valves and muscle when injected into test animals. They called the enzyme a “potent cardiotoxin.”
Those who have given a little thought to Applied Protomorphology need no more explanation as to how this streptococcus enzyme works. It releases into the bloodstream the protein residues from heart tissue, which then act as “foreign proteins” and instigate the formation of antibodies to these heart proteins. (“Natural tissue antibody”—if you want to look it up in the literature, see pages 465 to 475 in Immunity by Sidney Raffel, published by Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953.) These antibodies circulate in the blood and actually inhibit the repair processes of the heart, according to the clinical evidence available by observing any rheumatic fever patient.
If we supply an antigenic extract of heart tissue (beef heart) for oral administration, it is absorbed through the mucous membrane of the alimentary tract, meets the heart antibody in the bloodstream, and reduces this inhibitory effect so promptly that if a cardiographic recording is made before and 15 minutes after ingestion of Cardiotrophin (beef heart extract), very pronounced improvement in the heart function is observable in the victim of excess cardiac antibody.
This is one of the measurable reactions that cannot be attributed to psychosomatic suggestion by the hypercritical skeptic of progress. The Endocardiograph is an ideal device to demonstrate this effect. (See graph reproductions following.) Patients who have had a coronary lesion also commonly have triggered off the production of cardiac antibodies and appear to be suffering from a debilitated state of heart tissue, which heals far more slowly than normal.
In our discussion of the sedimentation rate in the July 1957 issue, we noted that an increased sedimentation rate was common in rheumatic fever and that it resulted from the release into the bloodstream of tissue residues that were abnormal. It is obvious that an enzyme like this streptococcal cardiotoxin would be active in creating a high sedimentation rate.
Our normal defense to such potent bacterial invasions is an intact adrenal, secondary to good nutrition. Refined and cooked foods, lacking the vitamins required by the adrenal (the C complex and the B complex, with special reference to the tyrosinase in the first and the pantothenic acid in the second), set the stage for an attack of rheumatic fever. Rinehart has reported the value of vitamin P in reducing the sedimentation rate in rheumatic fever.1
The relationship of vitamin E complex to heart disease becomes apparent here. In vitamin E deficiency, the cell chromosomes disintegrate.2 This releases the antigenic tissue factors that create the natural tissue antibody, which thereafter inhibits heart repair. The muscle cell damage known to follow vitamin E deficiency is, we feel, a direct result of this process. The most critically active function of vitamin E is to prevent oxidative destruction of the protective insulating wrapping of the determinant “blueprints” of the cell chromosome.
The oxygen demand of the tissues may increase to 250 percent of normal by reason of vitamin E deficiency.3 This effect, it is very obvious, immediately throws a tremendous unnecessary load on the heart, since the blood volume to be pumped is directly proportional to oxygen demand. The E deficiency creates a terrific overload and at the very same time undermines the integrity of the muscular tissue by promoting the production of heart tissue antibody.
Below Are Two Heart Graphs to Show the Effect of Cardiotrophin
[The original issue of Applied Trophology shows two images of Endocardiograph recordings, with the following captions:]
[Image with caption:] This patient shows poor muscle tone, as evidenced by the low first sound and a high second sound. In a normal patient, the first sound would be twice as high as the second sound, thus indicating proper heart muscle function.
[Image with caption:] This graph was taken of the same person a few minutes after one Cardiotrophin tablet was taken. You will notice that the first sound has been increased to the normal relative amplitude and the accentuated second sound was brought down toward normal.
No wonder test animals put on a diet of no vitamin E but everything else necessary soon drop dead from heart failure—at the rate of about 50 percent per year.4
The vitamin C complex, with its vitamin P component, is synergistic in that ascorbic acid helps the antioxidant reaction of the E, while the P factor provides calcium in the proper form to aid the formation of thrombin, the precursor to connective tissue, so that capillary weakness is forestalled5 and the protein intercellular substance is maintained. Scurvy is inherently connective tissue disintegration.
The C complex has an additional physiological function—that of promoting increased oxygen-carrying capacity of erythrocytes, helping thereby to reduce the load on the heart.6 With so many factors cooperating to maintain physiological balances, it is easy to comprehend the sudden death from a combined effect of the multiple forms of deficiency.
Vitamin F, the unsaturated fatty acid complex, now newly in the news since its relationship to cholesterol control is established (this is old news to us—write for our 1941 review of vitamin F and its use in prostate disease: Lee Foundation Reprint No. 1 and Reprint No. 3), is important to the heart, since the second sound disappears in case of deficiency (see subjoined Endocardiograms).
Why is this? Simply that vitamin F promotes calcium diffusion from the blood to muscle cells, and where the heart muscle is starved of this element, the contraction cycle collapses before completion of the contraction, resulting in a tapering off of velocity of outgoing blood from the heart, so that there is no check-valve sound from aortic or pulmonary back pressure. Sometimes one area shows the missing sound and sometimes another does, depending on the state of the right or left ventricular muscle; if pulmonary hypertension from weak adrenals is present, the right side will be the most fatigued and show the most definite weakening or loss of the second sound.
Vitamin F is a member of the E complex. It was first discovered in wheat-germ oil. Yet it is not present in any wheat or other grain product unless the grain is milled within a few days of its conversion into bread or other food. The vitamin F is lost via oxidation (just as the tocopherol group is) at the rate of 10 percent a day in flour or meal after the wax seal of the intact grain seed has been broken. Heat does not affect these vitamins, but just as for vitamin K, the oxygen of the air makes quick work of them once their natural protective mechanism is damaged.
We might point out here the newly found fact that vitamin K—lost in vegetable foods stored in a deep-freezer—protects us against coronary thrombosis, and there is a 3,000 percent increase in coronary thrombosis in areas where there has occurred a general use of deep-freeze units.7
We seem to find it hard to circumvent basic laws of nutrition. Nature has capital punishment waiting for the law violator, and it is sad to realize that no warnings are available for the innocent, gullible victims of civilization. As far back as 1911, tooth decay was known to be a disease contracted only by eaters of the refined foods of civilization,8 but few people are told that the food we eat today is the body we live in tomorrow; that if we fail to eat tissue-building foods, our body will progressively disintegrate; and decayed teeth are a warning of more trouble to come—arthritis, heart disease, liver disease, and even mental disease. (Mental disease may even precede all other symptoms of pellagra, says Harris in his book Clinical Pellagra, and an actual psychosis of a severe type may be the first manifestation.)
Heart disease and mental symptoms, however, are a lot easier to treat by nutritional replacement than are arthritis and dental disease, where structural damage precedes the symptoms. It is a lot harder for nature to rebuild destroyed tissues than it is for her to correct functional disorders. Soft tissues regenerate a lot more successfully than bones and teeth.
“The studies described suggest that the normal body does indeed possess means for defending itself against cancer and that these means are wanting in patients with advanced disease.”9 Compare this quote with the fact that cancer implanted into test animals fails to grow unless they have been fed refined foods for sometime previous.10 This looks like the simple matter of addition—two plus two equals four.
References
- Rinehart, J.F. “Observations on Treatment of Rheumatic Fever with Vitamin P.” Rheumat. Dis., p. 11, 1945.
- The Vitamins, p. 459. Interscience, 1942.
- Houchin and Manill. Biol. Chem., Vol. 146, p. 301, 1942.
- Annals N.Y. Acad. Science, Vol. 52, p. 256, 1949.
- Raunert, Z. Urol., 32, 630, 1938.
- Peterson, J.M. Science News Letter, 40(9):137, August 30, 1941.
- Vitamin News, p. 215. Vitamin Products Company, July 1957.
- Pickerill, H.P. The Prevention of Dental Caries and Oral Sepsis, p. 360. London: Baliere, Lyndall & Cox, 1911: “It has been amply demonstrated that the prevalence of caries is due to the habitual consumption of ‘artificials,’ as opposed to ‘natural articles of diets.’”
- Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research Report, p. 35,
- Engel, R.W., and Copeland, D.H. Cancer Research, Vol. 12, pp. 211–215, 1952.
Quality Protein in Diet
Children getting either too little protein or a poor-quality protein in their food may still grow normally but will be much more susceptible to infections.
This was indicated by the results of feeding experiments on mice reported by Dr. Rene J. Dubos and Russell W. Schaedler, Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.
Inadequate protein nutrition is extremely prevalent in the underprivileged parts of the world. It causes much disease directly and has an indirect effect by lowering resistance to infection.
The inadequacy is of two kinds, Dr. Dubos explained—quantity and qualitatively poor because the diet is low in certain essential amino acids. Protein deficiency is particularly grave for children because it results in poor growth and certain metabolic disorders.
Mice, shortly after weaning, were fed cafeteria-style on all the known nutritional factors. The protein and carbohydrate contents of the diet were the only variables. After two weeks on the diet, the mice were infected with varying amounts of tuberculosis-causing and other types of bacteria. All the diets allowed normal growth rates, but the mice that ate a diet containing only 8 percent casein, a principal protein of milk, were much more susceptible to all types of infection than mice receiving 20 percent casein.
The amount of protein, however, was not the only cause of lowered resistance. Some of the animals got 22 percent protein in the form of commercial food pellets yet showed almost as low a resistance as mice receiving only 8 percent casein. Since the pellets contained mostly plant materials, it is apparent that the quality of the protein, as well as the quantity, is important, the scientists reported.
The resistance to infection in the low-protein group was increased by adding amino acids to the diets. These studies show resistance to infection is controlled by nutritional factors different from those needed to gain weight.
—Reprinted from Science News Letter, November 30, 1957.
The Effect of Raw vs. Pasteurized Milk on Dental Caries in the Rat
Summary: The ingestion by growing rats of a coarse corn diet containing 30 percent heat-processed whole-milk powder resulted in a significant increase in the incidence of occlusal dental caries as compared to results obtained with rats receiving an identical diet containing non-heat-treated whole-milk powder. When the rats received the heat-processed milk diet and in addition received daily supplements of [raw] whole-milk powder by stomach tube, the dental caries increment as well as the pronounced failure of the animals to gain weight were returned to the levels of the controls. It is suggested that milk powder contains a heat-labile factor that confers some pronounced degree of anticariogenicity, mediated by way of the systemic circulation.
—Muhler, Joseph C. Journal of Nutrition, 61(2):281–287, 1957.
Tip of the Month (Epistaxis)
Epistaxis (nosebleed) is known to be caused and aggravated by magnesium hydroxide (milk of magnesia).
High Points of Standard Process Nutritional Adjuncts
Cardiotrophin [PMG]: This is the cytotrophic extract of heart (bovine) containing the heart protomorphogen (see below) developed with the thought of rebuilding and increasing the tonicity and elasticity of the heart muscle. In the diabetic Cardiotrophin helps to control blood sugar, probably by activating the absorption of sugar from the blood by the muscle cell.
A protomorphogen is that fraction of the chromosome of the cell that catalyzes the synthesis of new cell protein in growth and repair.
For more information on the subject of protomorphogens, recommended reading is the book Protomorphology by Lee and Hansen. This book contains the complete theoretical aspects of the study of protomorphology.
(Price: $8.50, sent on 10-day approval.)
