Heart disease is widely accepted as the number one killer, the leading cause of death in the United States. This conclusion is backed by the Centers for Disease Control and is common knowledge to the average person. But what if it were wrong? What if heart disease is the symptom and not the cause?
It may just be that vitamin deficiencies are the actual culprit, the true source, the real leading cause of death in the United States. This may sound crazy, maybe even a little farfetched, but bear with me while I explain.
In the 1930s the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research discovered a revolutionary link between vitamin deficiencies and heart disease. Here are the basics of what they found:
Vitamin B1
- Studies showed deficiencies in vitamin B1 were linked to labored breathing (dyspnea); palpitations during exertion; abnormally rapid heart rate (tachycardia); and excess watery fluid buildup in cavities or tissues (edema).
- Vitamin B1 deficiency showed to increase the likelihood of rheumatic fever (which causes inflammation in the heart); arteriosclerotic (thickening or hardening of the walls of the coronary arteries); and syphilitic heart disease (a syphilis infection in the heart).
- Beriberi disease, an inflammation of the nerves that can lead to heart failure, is caused by vitamin B1 deficiency.
Vitamin C
- Vitamin C was found to be especially important to patients currently suffering cardiac failure.
- The study also found that “sudden death from heart disease in relatively young or middle-aged persons is caused, in a measure, by blood vessel and heart disease resulting from a lack of sufficient foods containing vitamin C…”
The article is comprised of multiple excerpts from prestigious scientific journals of the day, but they all express the same conclusion: vitamin deficiencies, especially vitamins B1 and C, play a huge role in heart disease.
Why are vitamin deficiencies so common?
Simple—processed foods!
Whole foods contain functional vitamin complexes while processed foods don’t. That’s why heart disease has risen exponentially in recent decades. This quote from the introduction to the first chapter of Foundations of Trophotherapy II, a compilation of work and research from Dr. Royal Lee and his contemporaries, illustrates the mass intake of processed foods in the American diet: “Let’s look at the numbers: data collected in 2013 by the USDA and FDA and released in 2015 show that an astonishing 70 percent of the American diet consists of processed foods.”
Let me reiterate, 70 percent processed foods!
That number seem too high? I thought so too, until I took a moment to really think about where we come into contact with all this refined food. One of the main sources is all those fast food restaurants that peddle white flour and sugar, additives and preservatives, and a whole list of chemical ingredients you’ve probably never heard of and most likely can’t pronounce. You can barely drive five miles in any direction without running into at least one fast food joint.
Then there’s the grocery store. These massive buildings are filled with rows upon rows of sugary cereals, fattening chips, frozen meals, microwave lunches, candies, and sodas. The list goes on and on. I remember a nutrition course I took in college. The professor told us to shop the outside area rather than the inner aisles, and we’d have all we needed. That means the ten-plus inner aisles are filled with foods your body doesn’t need! But wait—even the perimeter of the grocery store is filled with pasteurized dairy, so much of that nutrition is missing too.
Starting to see the connection? The processed foods Americans consume on such a grand scale are grossly lacking in macro- and micronutrients. These huge vitamin deficiencies are one of the main causes of heart disease. Therefore they are quite possibly the true perpetrators—the real number one killer in the United States.
Dr. Lee said it best back in the 1940s: if we don’t change our diets back to whole, natural foods, then the human race will continue “to dig their graves with their forks and knives.”
Photo from iStock/phototake
