Questions and Answers About Cardio-Vascular Diseases
We love to hear from our website visitors who are interested in lowering their cholesterol and removing plaque from arteries. Most of our visitors find the answer to their questions about our cholesterol reducer below. If you have a question about hardened arteries or another heart condition that is not answered here, feel free to email us at rayellis@saveyourheart.com. We will usually respond to your question within 24 to 48 hours.
Q. What is the Pauling Therapy?
A. The Pauling Therapy is a nutritional supplement specifically designed to support your body’s natural ability to dissolve built-up plaque in your coronary arteries and repair the damage done to them by long-term mechanical and oxidative stress.
Research shows that occlusive coronary artery disease (atherosclerosis) is a nutritional deficiency disease. And, like any disease caused by poor nutrition, it can be reversed by giving your body the nutrients it needs to correct the damage caused by the deficiency.
Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to get enough of these heart-healthy nutrients from your diet. Nutritional supplements are needed to help your body repair the damage caused by years of improper nutrition and maintain a healthy cardiovascular system.
The Pauling Therapy is based on 300 years of scientific / medical research and clinical experience. These studies were published in well-respected, peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals. This information is NOT hidden, but neither is it well-known. And, since nutritional science is not taught in most medical schools, most medical doctors are not aware of this research.
Q. Why is it called the Pauling Therapy?
A. The original formula introduced back in 1996 was dubbed The Pauling Therapy by our customers because it was based on the research of Dr. Linus Pauling and Dr. Matthias Rath. In fact, even to this day, our formulas are the only ones on the market based on the discoveries of these two scientists and those pioneers who preceded them.
Q. What are the ingredients of the Pauling Therapy?
The ingredients of Pauling Therapy include:
| INGREDIENT | AMOUNT | % DV |
| Vitamin A
(as natural beta-carotene) |
10,000 IU | 200 |
| B-2
Riboflavin |
4 mg | 235 |
| Vitamin B-3
Niacin (inositol hexaniacinate – nonflush) |
450 mg | 2250 |
| Vitamin B-6 (Pyridoxine HCL) | 50 mg | 2500 |
| Vitamin B-9
Folic Acid |
450 mcg | 113 |
| Vitamin B-12
(methylcobalamin) |
1,000 mcg | 16,667 |
| Vitamin C
(Ascorbic Acid) |
3,000 mg | 5,000 |
| Vitamin D-3 | 2,000 IU | 500 |
| Vitamin E
(natural d-alpha tocopheryl succinate and mixed tocopherols) |
600 IU | 2,000 |
| L-Lysine
(amino acid) |
3000 mg | * |
| L-Proline
(amino acid) |
550 mg | * |
| L-Arginine
(amino acid) |
250 mg | * |
| L-Carnitine
(amino acid) |
300 mg | * |
| L-Taurine
(amino acid) |
1100 mg | * |
| Creatine | 900 mg | * |
| Magnesium
(Citrate) |
200 mg | 50 |
| Zinc
(oxide) |
30 mg | 200 |
| Coenzyme Q10 | 100 mg | * |
| Citrus Bioflavonoids | 100 mg | * |
Other Ingredients: Stevia and Sodium Bicarbonate
(to neutralize the solution in 8 oz of water to a pH of 7).
*Daily Value has not been established for this nutrient
Q. Why were these ingredients chosen?
A. These ingredients were chosen because scientific research has determined that these are the nutrients needed to support your body’s natural ability to dissolve built-up plaque in your coronary arteries and repair the damage done to them by long-term mechanical and oxidative stress.
Q. How much of the Pauling Therapy should I take? What’s the dosage?
A. For those with active heart disease we recommend at least 2 scoops per day (the daily dose designated on the jar). It is safe to take 3 times the daily dose (6 scoops). For those who want the quickest results Dr. Pauling recommended Titrating to Bowel Tolerance (TBC). TBC means taking as much of the Pauling Therapy as you can up to the point where you get loose bowels, then backing off somewhat on the dose and staying there for a week or so. You can then try to slowly up the dose over time. Most people can build up a tolerance for high doses (remember no more than 6 scoops per day!). Once you get the results you are looking for, you can drop down to the recommended daily dose of 2 scoops per day.
For those with a family history of cardiovascular disease we recommend 2 scoops per day in order to keep your cardiovascular system healthy.
For those with no family history of cardiovascular disease we recommend 1 – 2 scoops per day.
We would also like to point out that many people have Heart Disease and don’t know it. In fact, half of the people who die from heart attacks never had any symptoms and had normal cholesterol!
Q. I have had a coronary by-pass operation/angioplasty/stents, etc. Is the Pauling Therapy safe for me?
A. Yes it is. It is unfortunate that most of our clients have gone through everything the Heart Disease Industry can throw at them BEFORE they discover the Pauling Therapy! (We say unfortunate because preventing CVD, is obviously better than trying to cure it.)
We have yet to receive a report of an adverse reaction from someone on the Pauling Therapy with a bypass, stent, etc. In fact, just the opposite is true. Many people have told us that they were going downhill after these operations, but after putting themselves on the Pauling Therapy, feel much better (and have the numbers to prove it!). You can read their stories by clicking on the Customer Experiences link.
Bypasses and stents have this nasty habit of collecting plaque even faster than the original! Although we do not have hard and fast statistics to back this up, putting yourself on the Pauling Therapy should prevent plaque from ruining these expensive investments.
We strongly recommend that you give the Pauling Therapy a good try (at least 6 months) BEFORE undergoing these procedures. Many of our clients tell us that they were able to avoid the surgery their doctor said was necessary and life saving simply by giving their cardiovascular system the nutrition it needed to heal itself. Your body is very smart. It knows how to heal itself. But it can’t do that, unless you give it the raw materials it needs to make the repairs!
Q. Why doesn’t my doctor / cardiologist know about the Pauling Therapy?
A. Up until recently, medical schools offered no courses in nutrition. Because of this, most medical doctors know little more than the general public about the effect of nutrition on preventing or curing disease. So, asking you doctor if taking a particular supplement would be good for you makes about as much sense as asking your plumber or electrician.
Doctors are not gods. The don’t know everything about everything. They only know what they are taught. And if they are taught nothing about nutrition, then they will know nothing about nutrition. This is why many people put more faith in the opinions of the clerk working in their local health food store than they do in the nutritional advice they get from their doctor.
Fortunately this is changing (although rather slowly). More and more medical schools are adding courses in nutrition. And more and more research is being done on the relationship between good nutrition and good health. The medical profession is finally (and perhaps somewhat reluctantly) accepting the wisdom of their founder, Hippocrates, when he said, “Let food be your medicine and let medicine be your food.”
Q. Why does my Doctor / Cardiologist say that vitamins will do me no good?
A. We have three answers to this question.
Answer 1
Because your Doctor / Cardiologist is ignorant.
Allow me to quote from Dr. Matthias Rath’s book Eradicating Heart Disease:
“Vitamins belong to the most powerful agents in the fight against heart disease.This fact has been established by studies of thousands of people over many years. Here are some important results of recent clinical studies:
Vitamin C cuts heart disease rate almost in half (documented in 11,000 Americans over ten years).
Vitamin E cuts heart disease rate by more than one third (documented in 36,000 Americans over six years).
Beta Carotene (pro vitamin A) cuts heart disease rate almost in half (documented in 36,000 Americans).
No prescription drug has ever been shown to help prevent heart disease as effectively as the vitamins A, C and E. These results and those of countless other studies are so clear that ANYBODY QUESTIONING THE VALUE OF VITAMINS IN THE PREVENTION OF HEART DISEASE MAY SAFELY BE CONSIDERED AS UNINFORMED.” [emphasis mine]
The 2003 combined Third/Fourth Quarter issue (Vol 18, Numbers 3 & 4) of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine contains a dozen, highly detailed and thoroughly referenced papers that describe the safety and therapeutic power of vitamins A, C, D, E, niacin, B-6, B-12 and folic acid. This special issue is over 100 pages long and solidly refutes the notion that vitamins are harmful and have no therapeutic effect.
To obtain a copy of this issue send US $20 to:
Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine
16 Florence Ave.
Toronto, Ontario CANADA
M2N 1E9
Please include a 60-cent stamp for return postage.
Email: centre@orthomed.org
Website: http://www.orthomed.org.
Maybe you should buy two: One for you and one for your doctor.
We have on our computer over a thousand references on the positive effect of specific nutrients on heart disease. If your doctor / cardiologist is unaware of these studies, then he or she is (by definition) ignorant. Feel free to email us and we will send you the appropriate references so you can give them to your doctor.
Answer 2
Your doctor / cardiologist says that vitamins will do you no good because he or she is prejudiced.
Ignorance is one thing. Prejudice is something else.
In medical school doctors are taught to attack diseases in three ways:
1) Medicate it with drugs manufactured by the pharmaceutical companies.
2) Cut it out by using surgical techniques.
3) Burn it out by using radiation and toxic chemicals.
You will notice that nutrition and prevention are absent from this list. Doctors are actually taught in medical school that there is no “proven” value in supplemental Vitamin C (or any other supplement) for heart patients. They are taught this despite the easy availability of knowledge to the contrary. This, I must say, goes beyond ignorance and must properly be called prejudice.
We are not mind-readers, so we can not tell you for sure why your doctor / cardiologist is prejudiced. What we can do, however, is supply you with some facts.
Medical schools receive large financial grants from the pharmaceutical industry.
Over the past 50 years the medical industry has spent enormous resources and utilized the combined intellect of thousands of medical researchers trying to solve the great problem of heart disease. Yet, despite this enormous undertaking, CVD remains the top killer in the USA.
$326,000,000,000 (yes, that’s billion!) is spent annually on treating heart disease (that’s $652,000 every minute) [American Heart Association]
30,000,000,000 is spent annually on Coronary Bypass Operations.
Survivors of Heart Attacks and Strokes frequently become disabled and eventually end up in Nursing Homes. $120,000,000,000 is spent annually on skilled nursing care.
We estimate the cost of treating all current heart patients in the USA with the Pauling Therapy at about $120 million annually (that’s less than 1/2 of 1% of 326 billion!)
If someone were to discover a simple and inexpensive preventative and cure for cardiovascular disease, it would threaten the livelihoods of every employee of a pharmaceutical company, every investor in a pharmaceutical company, every hospital employee, every cardiologist, every employee of a cardiologist, every heart surgeon, everyone who assists in heart surgery from the nurses to the anesthesiologist to the person who sweeps the operating room floor. A simple and inexpensive preventative and cure for heart disease would cause such disruption to this “industry” that it would not be able to survive in anything like its present form.
Hospitals, cardiologists and drug companies can not make a penny off of healthy people.
Hospital administrators, cardiologists, and the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies know that they can not make a penny off of healthy people. Let me be clear, I do not believe that there is some kind of grand conspiracy going on or that everyone who works in the heart disease industry is evil. Most people working in this industry are good people who are simply ignorant. There are some, however, who know better (or who should know better). But I do not consider even these people to be evil. If I had spent tons of money and 16 years of my life leaning how to do coronary artery bypass surgery, I too would want to reap a good return on the investment of my time, money, and effort. I might not be very eager to learn about something that would make my knowledge and skills obsolete.
Part of the problem may be the scientific method itself. Science writer Lynne McTaggart made the following observation in her book, The Field:
“To be a revolutionary in science today is to flirt with professional suicide. Much as the field purports to encourage experimental freedom, the entire structure of science, with its competitive grant system, coupled with the publishing and peer review system, largely depends upon individuals conforming to the accepted scientific world view. The system tends to encourage professionals to carry out experimentation whose purpose is primarily to confirm the existing view of things, or to further develop technology for industry, rather than to serve up true innovation.” [HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, NY, 2002, p 13 (hardcover)]
Answer 3
Your doctor / cardiologist says that vitamins will do you no good because he or she is stuck in the current Zeitgeist. Webster defines Zeitgeist as: “the spirit of the time; the general intellectual state or trend of culture and taste characteristic of an era.”
The medical zeitgeist of this era is to drug, cut and burn. And, unfortunately, the zeitgeist of an era changes very slowly.
“Modern medicine is not scientific, it is full of prejudice, illogic and susceptible to advertising. Doctors are not taught to reason. They are programmed to believe in whatever their medical schools teach them and the leading doctors tell them. And over the past 20 years the drug companies with their enormous wealth have taken medicine over and now control its research, what is taught, and the information released to the public.”
Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
(DoctorYourself.com Newsletter, Sept. 26, 2003, www.doctoryourself.com)
When Kepler discovered that the Earth revolves around the Sun, he was ridiculed by his peers, religious authorities, and the public in general because everyone “knew” that the Earth was the center of the Universe. It was only long after Kepler was dead that his view of the Solar System was accepted as true.
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said: “New thoughts and new truths go through three stages. First, they are ridiculed. Next, they are violently opposed. Then, finally, they are accepted as being self-evident.”
Max Planck, a mathematician and one of creators of quantum physics said, “An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiar with the idea from the beginning.”
It is my fervent hope that we do not have to wait until all those who cling to the old theories of preventing and curing CVD have died before the Pauling Therapy (or something like it) becomes part of the new zeitgeist.
Q. My doctor says that taking high doses of Vitamin C is dangerous and can cause severe “side effects!”
A. Your doctor has heard some myths about Vitamin C and has not read the studies. Refer him to the National Institute of Health study on the Safety of Vitamin C published in the April 21, 1999 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. This study concluded that megadoses of Vitamin C does NOT cause: Hypoglycemia, Rebound Scurvy, Infertility, or destruction of Vitamin B-12.
You can also refer her to the Physician’s Desk Reference for Nutritional Supplements which states that:
“Oral doses of up to 3 grams [3,000 mg] daily of vitamin C are unlikely to cause adverse reaction. The most common adverse reaction in those who take oral doses greater than 3 grams daily are gastrointestinal and include nausea, abdominal cramps, diarrhea and flatulent distention.” [page 495, 2001 edition].
It is the experience of our clients that the adverse reactions to taking doses higher than 3 grams per day (at least up to 6 grams) can be avoided by increasing the dosage gradually.
The following highly qualified and experienced medical doctors have used megadose vitamin therapy successfully for decades:
Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
Ewan Cameron, M.D.
Robert F. Cathcart, M.D.
Emannuel Cheraskin, M.D., D.M.D.
Frederick R. Klenner, M.D.
William Kaufman, M.D.
Thomas Levy, M.D.
William J. McCormick, M.D.
Hugh D. Riordan, M.D.
Wilfrid Shute, M.D.
Evan Shute, M.D.
Lendon Smith, M.D.
Walt Stoll, M.D.
Carl C. Pfeiffer, M.D., Ph.D.
Hans A. Nieper, M.D.
These doctors have the combined experience of hundreds of years. They all attest to the safety and effectiveness of Megadose Vitamin Therapy for a wide variety of disorders.
You might also ask your doctor about the “side effects” of prescription medicines. There are over 100,000 deaths each year from pharmaceutical drugs in the USA, EVEN WHEN TAKEN AS PRESCRIBED. [Lucian Leape, Error in Medicine. Journal of the American Medical Association, 1994, 272:23, p 1851. Also: Leape LL. Institute of Medicine Medical Error Figures are not Exaggerated. JAMA. 2000 Jul 5;284(1):95-7.]
Compare 100,000 deaths per year from patent drugs to the number of deaths from vitamins and amino acids: The American Association of Poison Control Centers’ Toxic Exposure Surveillance System reported its result for 2002 in the September 2003 issue (Vol 21, No 5) of the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. The number of deaths reported for vitamin or amino acid supplements was zero.
Considering the effectiveness of Vitamin Therapy, it would seem that:
“The number one side effect of vitamins is failure to take enough of them.”
Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D.
www.doctoryourself.com/vitaminc2
Q. Are there any doctors out there who know about The Pauling Therapy and would be willing to work with me on a nutritional cure?
A. We are happy to report that there are. We maintain a referral list of physicians who are knowledgeable and sympathetic to the nutritional approach to treating heart disease. To find out if there is a Pauling Therapy doctor near you, send us an email by clicking rayellis@saveyourheart.com, telling us the state you live in, and we will send you the list.
If that list doesn’t include a doctor near you, we recommend you check out these resources:
1) The American College for the Advancement in Medicine website at www.acamnet.org. Founded in 1973, the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) is a not-for-profit medical society dedicated to educating physicians and other health care professionals on the latest findings and emerging procedures in preventive/nutritional medicine.
You can search for local, enlightened doctors on the ACAM website by scrolling down to the bottom of their Home page and clicking on “Locate an ACAM Physician” and typing in your zip code. Be sure to select how many miles from your zip code you wish for it to search. (If you live in a small town and get no hits, put in the nearest larger towns/cities zip code until you get some hits.) If you find a doctor using this service, it would be really nice if you mentioned to ACAM that you were referred to them by this website.
2) The American Holistic Medical Association at www.holisticmedicine.org. Click on the “Find a Provider” button.
3) The American Holistic Health Association (www.ahha.org) also has 3 articles that give good advice on how to find, select and deal effectively with a healthcare professional:
Click Here for These Three Great Articles (and then scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the green links directly underneath “HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL FOR YOU” ).
You could also try to educate your own doctor about the root cause of heart disease and how it can be treated with proper nutrition by referring him to this website or by printing portions of this website and handing them to your doctor.
You could insist that your doctor read them and respond. If your doctor responds with something like, “We know the nutritional approach will not work,” you could cite the studies that show that the nutritional approach does work. Or you could ask your doctor to cite a study that shows that Vitamin A, B-2, C, E, lysine, proline, carnitine or Coenzyme Q-10, in the proper dosage, has NOT been helpful to patients with heart disease (We know of no such studies!). We are aware, however, that most people don’t want to go “head-to-head” with their doctor.
And, of course, you don’t need a doctor’s permission to put yourself on the Pauling Therapy. Many (if not most!) of our clients have put themselves on the Pauling Therapy despite their doctors opinions (or they just didn’t tell him). You might ask yourself the following question, “Has my doctor proposed a therapy that will fix the underlying CAUSE of my heart disease, or is she treating only my SYMPTOMS?”
Allow your doctor to treat the symptoms if, in your heart-of-hearts, you really feel you must, but don’t forget to address the underlying cause of the disease (improper nutrition) by, at least, giving the Pauling Therapy a try! Taking the Pauling Therapy every day is no more likely to interfere with the traditional treatment of heart disease than eating a nutritious diet would.
Q. I can’t find a local doctor who will work with me on a nutritional cure. What do I do now?
A. It would definitely help to remember that your doctor works for you (not the other way around!). This is still true even if you have insurance. It is also true that it is YOUR body (not the doctor’s). You, therefore, have the final say as to what is done (or not done) to your body.
Think of it this way: If your house needed some serious plumbing work done, would you call in a plumber, hand him your credit card, and then let him do whatever he wanted without consulting you first? Somehow, I don’t think so! Most likely, you would let the plumber size up the situation, then you would discuss with her the various solutions that could be applied to fix the problem. YOU would decide what to do (or not do), NOT the plumber.
In this example, it is perfectly clear who has the power to make the final decision. Why is it any less clear when dealing with a doctor? Is your body less yours than is your house? Is the doctor any less a subcontractor than is the plumber? If you feel like you have less power to make decisions about your health than does your doctor, it can only be because you have given away your power. You are, of course, free to give this power away (it is yours to give!). However, if you don’t like feeling subordinate to your doctor, here are some suggestions.
First, you need to establish yourself on an equal footing with your doctor. You can do this by educating yourself. Knowledge is power. All good doctors respect knowledge. If your doctor is behaving Paternalistic/Maternalistic towards you, it is because he thinks he has more knowledge than you do. So, read everything you can find. Your doctor respects science, so bring her books and papers written by physicians and published in peer-reviewed journals.
Second, you need to clearly communicate your wishes to your doctor. It’s possible your doctor will have no objection to giving the nutritional approach a “therapeutic trial.” Talk to your doctor about his basic approach to health and healing. Ask her how the proposed treatment protocol will address the underlying CAUSE of the problem. At the end of all this discussion, you need to hammer out a “deal” with your doctor that both of you can live with. Sometimes it is helpful to offer to sign a release form stipulating that you will not sue the doctor if you are harmed by the nutritional therapeutic trial.
If you and your doctor can not agree on a treatment protocol, and you don’t wish to find a new doctor, then you have only two options:
1) Sit down, shut up, put yourself in the hands of your doctor, and resign yourself to your fate, or
2) Put yourself on the Pauling Therapy! You don’t need a doctor’s permission to take vitamins and amino acids!
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. This especially includes your health care.”
Dr. Andrew Saul
www.doctoryourself.com
Q. Why doesn’t the Linus Pauling institute endorse the Pauling Therapy?
A. Short Answer
Because the Linus Pauling Institute (LPI) has a policy of not endorsing any product.
Long Answer
The LPI of today is not the same LPI that existed when Linus Pauling was at the helm. The original LPI was established by Dr. Pauling in 1973 and was based in California. Two years after his death in 1994, the new LPI was established at Dr. Pauling’s undergraduate alma mata – Oregon State University.
The original LPI was noted for innovative, cutting-edge research into the causes and cures of occlusive cardiovascular disease – research worthy of a two-time Nobel prize winner. Dr Pauling’s motivations in forming the LPI was to pursue research that was difficult or impossible to do in a university setting. It is ironic, therefore, that the institute he founded was subsumed back into the university system after his death.
Since that time the LPI has engaged in research that is – shall we say – less than innovative. Most notably, they have failed to conduct prospective, double-blind, clinical trials of the Pauling Therapy – trials that Dr. Pauling was organizing before his death. The next logical, scientific step toward the nutritional control of most heart disease was simple left to wither on the vine.
The closest the new LPI comes to recommending the Pauling Therapy is the following statement that can be found on its website:
“We currently do not know how much vitamin C is required to achieve saturation of cells and tissues in children, older adults, and diseased or stressed individuals. The Linus Pauling Institute’s recommendation of at least 200 mg/day for generally healthy adults takes into account the currently available epidemiologic, biochemical, and clinical evidence, while acknowledging the extremely low toxicity of vitamin C and the incomplete information regarding optimum intake. It should also be noted that the Linus Pauling Institute’s recommendation is strictly directed towards prevention of disease in healthy individuals, not treatment of disease. Thus, individuals suffering from certain diseases may require substantially larger amounts of vitamin C to achieve optimum body levels and derive therapeutic benefits, an area that was of great interest to Linus Pauling and needs to be further explored.”
The new LPI offers no explanation of why they have not “further explored” this area that “was of great interest to Linus Pauling,” especially since they state that, “Our mission is to determine the function and role of micronutrients, vitamins, and phytochemicals in promoting optimum health and preventing and treating disease; to determine the role of oxidative and nitrative stress and antioxidants in human health and disease; and to advance knowledge in areas that were of interest to Linus Pauling through research and educational activities.”
Having read several biographies of Dr. Pauling, we do not think he would be very happy with the state of affairs at his namesake Institute!
Q. My doctor says that if I eat a well balanced diet, I don’t need supplements. And that all supplements will do is give me “expensive urine.”
A. Your doctor is not in possession of the facts. According to an April 25, 2002 National Cancer Institute press release, “70 percent of all adults and children in the U.S. do not eat the recommended five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day for good health.” This, in spite of decades of well-funded, intense mass education efforts by the U.S. government and health related not-for-profit organizations to get people to eat more fruits and veggies.
Dr. William Foege, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been quoted as saying, “300,000 Americans die annually from poor nutrition choices.” [DeRose, D. J., The WellnessWise Electronic Journal, Vol 1, No. 8; September 3, 1995. http://www.lifetalk.net]. So, according to Dr. Foege, you can die from not having “expensive urine.”
But even if you did eat 5 to 9 servings of fruits and veggies per day, it would be no guarantee that you are getting all the nutrients you require. Let’s take vitamin E as an example. Although the U.S. Reference Daily Intake (RDI) for vitamin E is 30 IU, there is general consensus among nutrition experts that at least 100 IU of vitamin E (and probably 400 IU or more) per day is required to prevent most heart disease. It is literally impossible to obtain 100 IU of vitamin E per day, even from the most perfect diet.
To demonstrate this, Dr. Andrew Saul, challenged his nutrition students to create a few days of “balanced” meals, using the food composition tables in nutrition textbooks, to achieve 100 IU of vitamin E per day. They could use any combination of foods and any plausible number of portions of each food. After much trying, they could NOT do it! And this is for just one nutrient! [Andrew Saul, PhD., Antioxidants: What They Are And What They Do, Harvard Health Letter. Feb 1999; 24(5)]
It would seem the reason for this is a decline in the nutritional value of the food we eat over the past 50 years. A recent analysis of a range of staple foods in Canada including potatoes, tomatoes, bananas, apples, onion, broccoli, etc., was commissioned by The Globe and Mail and CTV news. The analysis found that:
“Over the past 50 years, the potato has lost 100% of its Vitamin A, 57% of its Vitamin C, 56% of its iron, 28% of its calcium, 50% of its riboflavin, and 18% of its thiamin. All seven of broccoli’s nutrients declined, notably calcium, which fell 63 per cent, and iron, which dropped 34 per cent.”
The story is similar for the 25 fruits and vegetables that were analyzed. Phil Warman, professor of agricultural sciences at Nova Scotia Agricultural College, blames the profit motive, “The emphasis is on appearance, storability and transportability, and there has been much less emphasis on the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables. Crops are bred to produce higher yields, to be resistant to disease and to produce more visually attractive fruits and vegetables, but little or no emphasis is placed on their vitamin or mineral content.”
Tim Lang, a professor at the Centre for Food Policy in London, England, agrees, “You would have to eat eight oranges today to get the same amount of vitamin A your grandparents got from a single orange.”
Cathy Bakker, a graduate student in vegetable physiology at the University of Guelph, has done research showing that the more fertilizer used, the lower the vitamin C content of broccoli.
To conduct the analysis, The Globe and Mail and CTV examined food tables that were prepared by government researchers in 1951, 1972 and 1999, and compared the nutrients available from 100 grams of the given food. The results were almost identical to similar research conducted in the United States and Britain. The U.K. research was published in the British Food Journal, a peer-reviewed, scientific publication, while the U.S. data have been published only in alternative-health journals. [Andre Picard, The Globe and Mail, July 6, 2002, with a report from Avis Favaro, CTV News.]
This report gives new meaning to the words “empty calories.” This is the reason why the same person can be both obese and malnourished. There are two solutions to this dilemma:
1) produce all your own fresh food using heirloom fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, grains, and legumes organically grown in nutrient rich soil under ideal conditions in your own greenhouse all year long, or
2) take nutritional supplements.
Frankly, the first solution appeals to me very much, but until I have the money to make it happen, I’ll be making my urine expensive by taking supplements.
And if all this isn’t enough to convince your doctor of the value of supplements, have him read his own medical journal. The Journal of the American Medical Association recommends that everyone take a daily multivitamin. In a two-part article entitled Vitamins for Chronic Disease Prevention in Adults, R. H. Fletcher and K. M. Fairfield said that, “(S)uboptimal intake of some vitamins, above levels causing classic vitamin deficiency, is a risk factor for chronic diseases and common in the general population, especially the elderly.” [2002; 287:3127-3129 & 2002; 287:3116-3126].
So, according to the American Medical Association, one of the risk factors for chronic disease is not having “expensive urine.”
“The continued use of supplements represents a true public health breakthrough on a par with clean drinking water and sanitary sewers, and can be expected to save as many lives.”
Dr. Andrew Saul
www.doctoryourself.com
Weird Fact: USDA Food Stamps can be used to buy doughnuts, but can not be used to buy vitamins.