Applied Trophology, Vol. 9, No. 8
(August 1965)

Inositol, Potassium, and Phosphoric Acid; Fluoridation

Contents in this issue:

• “Inositol, Potassium, and Phosphoric Acid,”
• “Fluoridation?”

he following is a transcription of the August 1965 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.

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Inositol, Potassium, and Phosphoric Acid

In The Vitamins in Medicine, the authors, Bicknell and Prescott, state, “The function of inositol is unknown.” The clinical effects, however, are well known and give us an insight into the possible biochemical role of inositol.

1. Inositol deficiency is characterized by slow growth and normocytic anemia.¹
2. Inositol has a high antiketogenic effect in test animals fed high-fat diets.²
3. Inositol administration reduced blood cholesterol in patients with initially high levels.³
4. Inositol reduced serum cholesterol and phospholipids in diabetic patients.⁴
5. Skin eruptions and stubborn pruritic lesions were successfully treated by inositol administration.⁵
6. Inositol may increase peristalsis and has been considered an important factor in gastrointestinal motility.⁶
7. Synergizes with choline, biotin, pantothenic acid and other B vitamins in preventing fatty degeneration of the liver.⁷
8. Inositol has been found important in promoting lactation. The use of high inositol-containing feeds like wheat bran for cows is known to be an important economic factor in the dairy business.⁸
9. Lindane, the synthetic bug poison, is a specific antimetabolite for inositol and can cause death by interference with its utilization.⁹
10. Inositol was found to inhibit tumor growth. It has been used as a standard of reference for testing tumor growth inhibitory factors.¹⁰

Inositol has a molecular structure quite similar to glucose, the blood sugar. (Please distinguish here between natural glucose and the synthetic concoction sold as corn sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, etc.) This sugar-like substance is found in our bodies in the brain, spinal cord, red blood cells, muscle tissue, and the tissues of the eye. Apparently, it is found mostly in tissues having a high phosphagen content. It is also normally found in nature in the leaves and seeds of plants and in certain cereal grains, as phytin.

The molecular structure of inositol may be a clue to its function. It differs from glucose in that it does not act as fuel to supply energy for living tissue. The inherent power of inositol comes from reactions, very complex biochemically, that revolve around hexose phosphates of various kinds (one of which is known as phosphagen or dipotassium-creatine-hexose-phosphate).⁹ When the sugar (the hexose) is oxidized to produce energy, the phosphagen will disintegrate and lose its components by way of the blood and kidneys unless maybe inositol is present to take the place temporarily of the hexose (until the next meal), thereby preventing valuable parts of the fuel-utilizing mechanism from being junked. Just as a ship must load up with stone ballast if there is no cargo to carry, to keep her from capsizing.

It is known that vitamin E and the unsaturated fatty acids (linolenic, linoleic and arachidonic) cooperate in this protection of the sugar metabolizing cycle. Meyerhof long ago showed that oxygen assimilation depended on vitamin E, and later investigators have demonstrated that vitamin E deficiency permits a waste of oxygen (and fuel) up to 2½ times normal. In muscular dystrophy due to vitamin E deficiency, urinary loss of creatin is characteristic. Potassium and phosphate losses are parallel, showing that it is the phosphagen that is disintegrating. There are several links in this chain of phosphagen protection, and unless the investigator knows about them, he may so mismanage his experiments as to decide that inositol (or any other one factor) may be unnecessary. Inositol and vitamin E supplement each other as muscular nutrients and have been found of nutritional value in muscular dystrophy.

Note that muscular function is impaired by inositol deficiency, that the liver converts sugar excessively to fat if inositol is absent, and that growth and lactation are also impaired by inositol deficiency. (Lactation involves sugar metabolism to form lactose.) It would appear that every diabetic, every pregnant female, and every nursing mother needs inositol. Of course, normally and naturally they would get inositol, for natural whole wheat contains an ample amount. But in our day of refined foods, white bleached flour, refined sugar, to say nothing of the synthetic glucose and hydrogenated synthetic fats that raise blood cholesterol, acute inositol deficiency may occur. We know most diabetics feel far better and note a progressive drop in sugar with inositol normally in their diet.

The cooking of foods and pasteurizing of milk have a lot to do with depriving us of inositol. To assimilate the phytates in whole grains the enzyme phosphatase (often called phytase) is essential. The human digestive system does not secrete this enzyme, although the rat digestive system does. In this feature, as in the case of the need for vitamin C, the rat has an advantage over us, as he makes his own vitamin C and his own phosphatase. Due to this dissimilarity in the human and rat digestive systems, it is apparent that using the rat unit system as a basis for measuring vitamins for humans is in error. The U.S. Department of Agriculture concurred in this premise on page 12 of their 1939 Yearbook:

“No one animal will do to represent the reactions of all animals, including human beings; nor can it be said positively that because one kind of animal reacts thus and so in a given experiment, other kinds of animals will react in the same manner; or because one kind of animal needs such and such an amount of a given nutrient, therefore another kind of animal needs a proportionate amount. All such conclusions must be tested directly on the other animal.”

It is regrettable that in the past 25 years the FDA (so-called consumer protector) and their AMA colleagues in anti-quackery seemingly have not sponsored sufficient basic biochemical research in nutrition to learn of this situation.

Unless we get phosphatase in our food, we cannot assimilate phytates, which are salts of inositol-phosphoric acid. We may suffer from alkalosis due to the lack of the releases of phosphoric acid, develop calcium deposits of hypertrophic arthritis, the deposits of bursitis, of kidney stones, and at the same time fail to maintain the integrity of our bones because we cannot assimilate or even transport the mineral elements of bone. We may lose our teeth, incur osteoporosis, and break our hip bones from their weakness at an unduly early age.

In Deaf Smith County, Texas, where the bone minerals and the enzyme activator manganese is high in the soil, the average age of victims of broken hips is 20 years more than the average for the rest of Texas.¹¹

There is plenty of phosphatase in the raw whole grains, in bran, or in unpasteurized milk. Note: Dr. F.M. Pottenger Jr., who fed cats raw milk and compared the report of this feeding with cats fed cooked meat and pasteurized milk, observed that the first reaction was constipation (failure of peristalsis), then loss of teeth, liver disease, heart disease, and finally arthritis in every animal, while the control animals on raw milk were perfectly healthy. The destruction of phosphatase and the resultant deficiency of inositol and phosphoric acid alone would explain all these reactions. The cooking of cereals and the pasteurizing of milk and cheese have destroyed the phosphatase in the common food sources of that enzyme, so essential to the assimilation of calcium, iron, and other minerals. The mineral elements of foods fail to be assimilated in the absence of certain enzymes of the phytase and phosphatase group. These enzymes are not found in the human digestive system.¹²

The importance of potassium, in fact its real function in the tissues, is here apparent for the first time. Matthews tells us “potassium is necessary for the life of every living thing so far tested.” He also notes that the male test animal needs twice as much potassium as the female. The sperm requirement for phosphagen is the reason. The need of the sperm for stored power is like that of a rocket or torpedo; it can travel thousands of times its length. However, in the human female, hypopotassemia has often been found to cause painful menstruation. Potassium deficiency is sometimes associated with alkalosis. Correction of an acid-base disturbance very often creates the need for potassium. ¹³

Phosphagen is a compound, like nitroglycerine, of endothermic formation. Apparently, it is so highly developed in certain sedentary persons as to make their bodies actually combustible.

Potassium is often deficient in our refined foods. This can result in deficiency and a predisposition to hyperirritability or “nervousness,” the timing mechanism of the heart and nervous system in general being under the influence of potassium. This element is also important in muscular contraction and in utilization of carbohydrates. Disturbances in fluid balance, i.e., weight loss through dehydration, are common manifestations of potassium deficiency. Clinical signs and symptoms of potassium deficiency have been reported, in some cases, as due to habitual abuse of laxatives.¹⁴

Potassium deficiency can also cause paralysis.¹⁵

The adrenals regulate potassium use and disposal. If the adrenals are damaged (as in Addison’s disease) phosphagen is not formed; the victim is weak, has flabby tissues, a viscous blood and poor circulation. He cannot get rid of potassium taken in; to him it is poison. He cannot retain sodium and has to eat salt in great amounts. Common licorice can normalize the sodium-potassium levels of the body fluids of these patients. Licorice tea made from the shredded or chopped root is one way to use it.

Adrenal weakness in lesser severity is a common disorder. The victim has no stamina, tires easily, suffers with complications of the thyroid and possibly has sex gland type symptoms. Many menopausal complaints are of this origin in all probability. The value of a common proprietary remedy for female complaints was recently found to be the licorice used for covering up the unpleasant taste of the drugs it contained, instead of the drugs themselves.

It is an established fact that without potassium our adrenals cannot function. Without potassium, we cannot store sugar in the liver. Without potassium, our autonomic nervous system gets out of gear; we have a reduced and subnormal activity of the vagus system, and a consequent unbalance of our autonomic controls that can bring on a host of troubles that are mysterious and unrecognized as being a result of nutritional incompetence. Among these are listed eye weakness, loss of accommodation, nervous instability, rise in blood pressure, rapid heart, slow healing rate, low sugar tolerance, neurasthenia, atonic constipation, and reduced activity of the liver and pancreas.

References

1. Jukes, et al. Nutrition, 33:1–2, 1947.
2. Wiebelhaus, et al. Biochem., 13:379–388, 1947.
3. Balatre, et al. R. Soc. Biol., 143:1032–1033, 1949.
4. Felch, C., and Dotti, L.B. Proc. Soc. Exper. Biol. & Med., 72:376–378, November 1949.
5. Vorhaus, et al. Jol. Dig. Dis., 10:45, 1943.
6. Martin, et al. Jol. Dig. Dis., 8:390, 1941.
7. Gavin, G., and McHenry, E.W. Biol. Chem., pp. 139, 485, 1941.
8. Kirkwood, S., and Phillips, B.H. Biol. Chem., pp. 163, 251, 1946.
9. Beard, H.H. Creatine and Creatinine Metabolism, p. 185. Pub. Co., 1943.
10. Science, Vol. 97, No. 2527, p. 515, June 4, 1943.
11. Barnett, L.B. Am. Acad. Appl. Nutrition, 7:318.
12. Hutchinson, Sir Robert. Food and Dietetics. Williams and Wilkins Co., Baltimore, 1948.
13. Uralic, et al. “Clinical Manifestations of Hypopotassemia.” Am. J. Med. Sci., 233:603–615, June 1957.
14. Acta Med. Scand., 166:407, 1960.
15. Nutrition Reviews, p. 298, October 1957.

[Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article was first published in the December 1957 issue of Applied Trophotherapy.]

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Fluoridation?

According to the Journal of the Michigan House of Representatives, 72nd Legislature, Regular Session of 1964, the Committee on Water Fluoridation has called for a two-year moratorium on fluoridating water supplies in the state.

The report noted that “illnesses from fluoride in water and acute and chronic fluoride intoxication have been reported in numbers,” and that “no control of fluoride intake into the human body is possible. Intake from sources other than water, namely food, drugs, and air contaminated by fluoride, is unpredictable. Even if a constant fluoride level in drinking water could be maintained throughout a water system, the amount of water drunk varies from person to person and tolerance to drugs differs in individuals.”

—National Health Federation Bulletin, Vol. X, No. 12, December 1964