“The Challenge Continues”
The following is a transcription of the Second Quarter 1979 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
The Challenge Continues
Yes! We find the challenge continues from pre-nativity even unto death. Old hazards abound and new hazards continue to arise. The facts of life are always with us, for, as Huxley said: “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” To ignore them because they cannot be portrayed by sketch, design, equation, or understanding does not cause them to be less real. Throughout life some facts must be accepted and evaluated as an essential prerequisite. For instance, from the day Ben Franklin flew a kite in a rainstorm, electricity has not revealed the secret of its exerted energy. The apparent difference is that nutrition deals more in probabilities over a long period rather than statistical figures for a short period. These long-term effects have probably been the barrier to progress in the understanding of biological phenomenal facts since the study of nutrition began. And electricity is no more understood than is nutrition. Yet we do not minimize or ignore its practical utilization.
We believe it appropriate, at this time, to again remind you that it took the British navy doctors over 200 years to recognize the cause of scurvy because a few sailors on their ships, eating stale vitamin-robbed food, did not get scurvy. And even today, problems involving nutritional matters are scoffed at for not being 100 percent perfectly answered by presumably educated scientists who should know better. The reason nutrition cannot present indisputable proof of involvement in various body functions is that its complexity of action in alimentation has never been properly and fully researched.
The Natural Food Complex
Natural food consists of such known elements or compounds as carbohydrates, proteins, fats and minerals found to be necessary in the diet of the animal organism to provide the essential constituents of all living cells for growth and maintenance. Although microscopic in size, normal living cells are capable, alone or interacting with other cells, of performing the necessary fundamental functions of life, but only if properly fed. As a step in feeding, the process of digestion is necessary to convert the food into an assimilable form through the complex action of secretions containing enzymes of saliva, gastric, pancreatic, and intestinal juices in the alimentary canal. Then absorbed into the bloodstream, nutrients are transported to the capillaries for release into the capillary field to bathe the cells so they may carry on their specific duties in the body metabolism. This process has been going on for thousands of years, but every now and then someone thinks a shortcut or a little cheating will improve the system. But it has never worked. As Rene Descartes said, way back in 1637:
“The preservation of health, which is without doubt, of all the blessings in this life, the first and fundamental one; for the mind is intimately dependent on the condition and relation of the organs of the body.”
Nutrition and Health
All parts of the body, mind, and soul are contiguous and dependent on one another for support and vitality through the proper nourishment of the entire cellular structure. The quoted Rene knew this over 300 years ago. How did such a sensible nutritional fact get lost or discarded for so many years? Just recently we have had to relearn the truth that all body actions are found to be increasingly dependent on whole nutrition for maintenance of the entire united human system.
Dividing the various bodily systems into specialties of various systems and neglecting nutrition for the past 50 years—in fact, relegating nutrition to a bastard status in most medical schools—have failed to solve the health problems in this country. Statistical figures for the entire period show a continual decrease in overall good health status and a continual increase in health costs. The theory of buying more calories for less money, or less calories for heavy weights, has failed to keep us healthy. But, as an advertising gimmick, it has been worth billions of dollars to food processors. Calorimetric measurements of the muscular energy released by the oxidation of foodstuffs in the human body have been very misleading and, in general, have made it difficult for persons to ingest the very nutrients needed for health. As a result, such caloric viands seem to promote continual hunger, mysterious infant deaths, more doctor’s bills and an “I’m not feeling very well” population.
The sad part of the fabled caloric picture is that this so-called “piece of academic foolishness” has set nutritional research back approximately 25 years. But, as they say, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Apparently “the pudding” is no longer very nutritious, as the substitute ingredients on the package label will attest. Most of the tradeoffs of the processed food industry (and recommended by their high-priced advertising cohorts), such as cholesterol-free (?) hydrogenated fats and oils for cooking and baking, margarine for butter, imitation coffee cream for natural cream, substitute scrambled eggs (colored with marigold dye) for the hen’s real product, so-called ice cream concoctions and some others, have been found to be more fattening than the real products for which substituted. Recently some sugar-free products have joined the listing of nonfattening fakes.
In This Slimming Business, author Dr. John Yudkin advises that the processed carbohydrates, sugar and starch, are a greater source of excess cholesterol and body fat than our usual diet of butter and eggs. The essential fatty acids found in these two excellent foods together with more protein and calcium also found in whole milk, cream, cheese and homemade yogurt can form the nucleus of a good diet. In addition, the fresh untreated oils from seeds, especially flaxseed, are a source of the raw unsaturated fatty acids, including the heat-labile Wulzen factor in linolenic and linoleic acids. The importance of the unsaturated fatty acids (the erstwhile F factor) in nutrition cannot be overemphasized, as they are involved in many systemic parts. They are particularly involved in the assimilation of calcium and in its transportation to the teeth and bones of the skeletal system, to the muscular system, as an aid in the assimilation of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, and in providing some basic material for hormone production.
The Importance of Minerals and Vitamin D
We ordinarily find that unless extremely thwarted, the parathyroid glands produce sufficient parathyroid hormone to regulate both calcium and phosphorus during the growth period. It has been stated that “calcium is to phosphorus what thunder is to lightning.” And the importance of bone growth in the young is undoubtedly the reason that nature provided the proper balance in the milk of each and every mother animal species. It is daily becoming more and more apparent that the supply and regulation of assimilated calcium and its balanced ratio of ten to four with phosphorus is one of the most important bodily functions through an entire lifetime. If not supplied with sufficient assimilable calcium the pregnant female will lose calcium from her bones and teeth to furnish needed calcium for the growing fetus. The pregnant or lactating mother requires upwards of 1,300 milligrams of calcium a day to form sound teeth and bones in her offspring. And, during the fast-growing first year of life, an insufficient supply of calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium (to furnish the hardness too often credited to fluoride) could result in stunted growth, malformed bones, and teeth crowded into the arches of jaws too narrow to accommodate them.
Natural vitamin D3 aids in the assimilation of bone minerals and also provides the antirachitic factor found in fish liver oils. As a bonus the fish liver oils also are a source of vitamin A, which has been proved to be very beneficial for eye and kidney health and for the normal maintenance of mucosal epithelium. Therefore, it is often called the anti-infective vitamin. Although vitamins were unknown in the early 1900s, cod liver oil was often prescribed as a tonic in so-called rundown conditions. When vitamins became known in the 1920s, vitamin D was traditional and became known as the sunshine vitamin. In the summertime when milk cows and goats are pastured in sunlit areas, the action of sunshine on their hide promotes skin absorption and also the urge for the animal to lick it off. Sunshine is probably the earliest remedy known in the treatment of the defective bone growth found in rickets due to the lack of needed minerals and vitamin D. So, if uninhibited, animals are seldom subject to bone disease. It is also the reason that summer-produced raw milk (as well as the butter, cheese, yogurt, and other products made from it) furnishes more of the necessary assimilable foods for growth and maintenance than is possible in sunless winter areas, when grass is unavailable.
We have observed that smart animals lie in the shade during the hottest part of the day, but dumb people too often overexpose their body to the hot sunshine and suffer irradiation burns that have been known, in some instances, to incite cancer of the skin in later years. So, ingenious engineers invented a lamp, for clinical use, to provide the cold ultraviolet rays, called artificial sunshine, in which the hot infrared rays have been filtered out. Originally, the ultraviolet ray was used to treat an alkaloid sterol from ergot called ergosterol. Ergot is a yeast mold found on rye and other grain stalks and generally considered as hazardous in cattle food because of its action as a powerful vasoconstrictor, an abortive and as a common allergen. As all pasteurized milk is treated with synthetic vitamin D, perhaps the so-called milk allergy, in addition to an enzyme deficiency, may also be caused by the ergot in the synthetic D2. In all probability such a test has never been made.
In a more expeditious method of producing synthetic vitamin D, ergosterol is activated by bombarding it with low velocity electrons. The D2 produced contains not less than ten thousand USP units of vitamin D per gram. It is called calciferol to distinguish it from the cholecalciferol of the natural vitamin D3. But medical confusion regarding vitamin D dosage has inhibited its use since the synthesized product came on the market as “viosterol” in the early 1940s. Because of the high concentration of vitamin D2 in this product, the dosage of one minim, for infants, was too potent and in some instances caused a sick baby to suffer from nausea, convulsions, rickets, and possibly death. Drug doses of some vitamins have been known to cause the very diseases the doctor is trying to prevent. So, we have been advised, viosterol ended up “in a sea of litigation.”
Mineral Loss and the Aged
We never outgrow our need for minerals, especially calcium, which is a constant need throughout life. In the aged a short supply may be due to an insufficient supply in the food or poor absorption from the intestines, possibly due to the loss of teeth, poor mastication or some other cause of incomplete digestion. This shortage of calcium may end up in osteomalacia, the rickets of old age. Interestingly, evidence is mounting that calcium deficiency contributes to the bone loss of osteoporosis. Because of the greater storage of calcium in the femur, the reverse process so weakens the bone that it may eventually give way and the person so afflicted falls, causing the so-called broken hip. The break usually occurs at the weak point between the head of the femur and the greater trochanter. In females the bone density may start to decrease at approximately age thirty-five and in males about ten years later. The earlier date for females is at least in part due to waning ovarian function. It is also due to insufficient sunlight or vitamin D, muscles weakened by loss of mobility, a lack of minerals in the diet, or the inability to assimilate available calcium. Then too, the need for calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, manganese, zinc, iron, and copper increases with age to replace the minerals lost in the urine as immobility increases. So, more exercise, vitamins, dietary minerals, and sufficient unsaturated fatty acids (the F factor) to aid in the transportation of calcium and its assimilation by the muscles—especially the hard working heart muscle—and to replace the loss of bone structure would no doubt tend to eliminate some of the problems.
The Malnutrition Problem Continues
We are now advised that nutritional and clinical scientists find that approximately one half of our population is malnourished. Food processors are providing more and more additives and fewer and fewer nutrients, in a beautiful package at a much higher price. Even the advertising firm employee is stumped as he ponders: “I don’t know how to tell them, after taking out the sugar, preservatives, artificial coloring, additives and prizes only the box is left.”
Some of these unnatural additives must be classed as contaminants that interfere with enzyme formation and promote systemic imbalances. They often contribute to malnutrition and have also been known to contribute to glandular failure. Some clinicians have found that chemotherapy, especially in the aged, tends to contribute to glandular disturbance of the liver, pancreas, parathyroids, prostate, and very often a serious dysfunction of the adrenal glands. In this regard, we quote from an orthodox doctor’s letter to Medical News, entitled “Our Daily Poison”:
“Food additives and the modern processed foodstuffs containing them are probably responsible for many of the ailments afflicting modern civilized man. And, their use in turn leads to the huge intake of further strange chemicals known as pharmaceutical preparations, themselves often chemical conglomerates. We thus poison ourselves with food and then attempt to cure the result with more of the same. We are crazy!”
Yes! We are crazy to go along with such shenanigans. We are paying an exorbitant price for so-called healthcare because of biased information about drugs and food processing and too little honest public information about nutrition. Actually, we don’t have a doctor shortage—just too many patients. It has taken millions of advertising dollars to increase the patient load through promotion of this slogan, “If aspirin doesn’t help, see your doctor.” In the majority of cases aspirin is not the answer, as it only treats symptoms and not the cause.
Drug Misuse Increasing
Only recently we have learned through a report by Michael Birkley, program specialist for Wisconsin’s Bureau of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuses:
“We have the ability to deny the existence of what’s in front of us. The elderly are more involved with drug misuse than any other age group. It’s the best kept open secret in the world, and drug programs for the elderly are the least represented among drug abuse services. We have created a whole generation of throwaways.”
Recently a Senate subcommittee on the use of drugs in nursing homes found ample evidence that the residents were given tranquilizers to make them easier to care for with much less help. They also found inefficiency in administering drugs. Between 20 and 40 percent were “administered in error,” and a “high incidence” of adverse reactions was uncovered. Appropriately, the deputy director of the National Institute on Aging has warned: “Relatively little is known about drug effects in relation to the age of the individual, yet drugs are administered more extensively to patients as they grow older.” Of over eight million people taking sleeping pills during 1977, records reveal that 39 percent were over 60 years of age and that this segment of the population had increased to 32 million. Also, prescription errors increased proportionately. One of the reasons given for this situation is that many doctors are relying on their own outdated training. Then too, the turnover of new and outdated drugs is terrific.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse has found that for an older person with reduced liver or kidney function, a drug dose that might be safe under other circumstances could prove to be a very toxic one. The liver and kidneys must function properly to detoxify and eliminate toxic material from the body. This no doubt explains why some elderly people have died from overdoses of prescription drugs. Dr. Albert A. Fisk, director of the geriatric clinic at Family Hospital in Milwaukee, explains it this way:
“Suppose an eighty-year-old person took a tranquilizer. It will take that person four times as long to reduce its effect to one half its original potency as it would a thirty-year-old person. That’s a marked difference. They need much less, if they need it at all. We’ve grown up with the concept that there’s a solution to every problem, a mechanical solution. One of the ways is some kind of pill. It’s been ingrained into the American public. If you’re constipated, take a laxative. If you have a headache, take an aspirin. If you have a cold, take penicillin. It’s part of the American psychology.”
Doctor, we must disagree as the pharmaceutical companies’ continual high priced advertising has ingrained a selfish un-American psychology. With millions of dollars at stake, their interests must be vested, and certainly open to question. We do, however, find that Dr. Fisk, like us, is encouraged by the more sophisticated attitude people are now taking toward medication, as he stated: “They realize that it’s better to take care of the cause rather than the symptoms. There will be more controls of medication, which I think is a good thing.”
Prescription Practices Criticized
Researchers who have studied past prescribing have concluded that the average physician is insufficiently trained in current clinical pharmacology. Being unaware of alternatives, they are often misled by “detail men” and glib industry advertising. Just recently Dr. John A. Oates, director of the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University, said: “There is a lack of information in general about drugs. We must enhance education in clinical pharmacology at a very basic level in order to increase physician knowledge.”
In the United States over eight million persons are presently using sleeping pills at least once a year and more than 25 million prescriptions for such hypnotic drugs are written annually. Some clinicians advise that in regard to insomnia, hypnotics lose their effectiveness after one week of use, yet prescriptions are usually written for one month with renewal privileges. Although hypnotic barbiturates have declined in use since the Controlled Substances Act in 1973, their place has been taken by the benzodiazepines such as Dalmane, Valium, and Librium, according to a recent report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences. The panel of experts decided that “the hazardous features of the benzodiazepines” are little understood by prescribing physicians. The per patient use of this type of drug for such long periods is now being questioned as a further deterrent to health. Modern orthodox medicine continues to be baffled by premature aging, cancer, heart, and vascular conditions and some other diseases that have generally increased despite the billions of dollars appropriated, begged, and presumably spent for medical research. But as the current song states: “All your money won’t another minute buy.”
Health Care a Misnomer
In this regard, Dr. Theodore Cooper, the dean of the Cornell Medical College, recently remarked that the National Cancer Institute’s budget has quadrupled in just seven years and that cancer research now “faces a crisis of credibility.” So, too, does the American Medical Association (AMA), who has sponsored much of the attempted research and entirely neglected to consider nutritional research in this area. Having disdained their true purpose of health promotion, much to the consternation of many previously supporting members, the organization is said to have evolved into a politically active medical union, in which the elected AMA doctors are allowed to serve more or less as figureheads. Such a health monopoly seems to fulfill the prophecy made by Dr. Benjamin Rush over 200 years ago. This selfish attitude is costly.
A late national health report shows the 1977 health bill was $163 billion, or $737 per person, and consumed almost 9 percent of the Gross National Product (GNP), the highest share ever recorded. In 1950 only one half that much went for healthcare. Records now reveal that healthcare expenditures have risen from eight dollars per person per month in 1955, to almost 40 dollars per person per month at present. In the ten years from 1965 to 1975, the charge for some hospital rooms tripled and physicians fees doubled. Regardless of this vast expenditure the general health status has declined, as heart and vascular disease and cancer continue their one-two status as killers, and the incidence of cancer continues to increase. New medical technology, space age innovations, taxpayers’ hospital dollars, duplication of expensive, competing hospital equipment, and highly touted wonder drugs and cures apparently have failed to make a major improvement in overcoming the degenerative diseases now affecting our public health. The health of our nation, it would seem, requires a better focus on the cause and prevention of disease rather than on all these costly attempts to disguise symptoms.
The October 17, 1977 issue of U.S. News and World Report reaffirms this attitude in their statement:
“There is a growing recognition among professionals that medical science, for all its expertise and ‘gee whiz’ machines, actually has a limited impact on control of today’s major diseases, heart ailments, cancer and others. Far more important may be diet, behavior and environmental conditions in determining the toll from such illnesses.”
Notes from an Interested Party
“I myself am just an interested bystander, but feel it is good to pass on a good word and by that much to help overcome public apathy.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, MD
I have a lot of respect for Dr. Holmes, an early free thinker, who—much to the consternation of his practicing colleagues at that time—endorsed the observations of Semmelweis that puerperal fever in the mother, following childbirth, was due to the unclean hands of the attending physician. We now know that this simple, more sterile precaution has saved the lives of millions of mothers. However, they attempted to ostracize him. Similar earlier procedures against Semmelweis had driven him insane. Apparently Dr. Holmes was made of sterner stuff, as he practiced medicine until 80 and enjoyed life as an author up to his 90th year. Down through medical history it has been the nontraditionalists like Dr. Holmes, and many others, whose progressive methods have been adopted years after the originator has practically been hounded to death. Verification of this fact occurred recently when the California Supreme Court Chief Justice advised: “It is by the alternatives to orthodoxy that medical progress has been made.”
A hip disability incurred during WWI, loss of an established practice, immobilization in body casts for five years as a bed patient suffering excruciating pain, acquiring an ankylosing spondylitis due to lack of mobility, a Vincent’s angina infection causing a loss of teeth and, finally, at the end of this hospitalization period the nebulous prognosis by several orthopedic specialists that I probably would never walk again, now seems like a bad dream to this nutritional convert. Through prayer, supplication, the aid of a kind elderly orthopedic surgeon very knowledgeable in treating suppurating wounds, chiropractic, and osteopathic treatments of the spine and a more selective nutritional regimen, I have fully recovered my health and mobility. I have walked for 45 years, raised a family, do yardwork and gardening, jog, dance, bowl, and am often mistaken for someone much younger. And, during these past 20 years, like Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, I have attempted “to pass on a good word” through nutritional facts as declared by Dr. Royal Lee and other investigators, as well as my own experiences in being a human guinea pig.
“He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”
—Shakespeare
In retiring as editor of Applied Trophology, I wish to thank all who have aided me, in any way, and pray that your knowledge and ability to heal will continue to be serviceable.
Sincerely, Alvan A. Kupper, DDS
