Abstracts on Relation of Vitamin Deficiencies to Heart Disorders
Summary: Much of the original vitamin research during the 1930s was conducted by independent researchers and published by top journals and prestigious publishing houses of the day. These abstracts from the scientific literature of that time prove conclusively that even as far back as then researchers were clearly noting the link between nutrition and heart disease. As the ruination of the food supply was becoming a reality of American life thanks to processed foods, health authorities would have to have gone out of their way not to be aware of what was unfolding between the nutritional supply and the health of the country. Reprint 6, 1939.
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Calcium Therapy in Diseases of the Cardiovascular System
By Edward Podolsky, MD
Summary: A fascinating review of the world literature on calcium therapies as of 1939, ranging from treatment of blood pressure to that of heart dysfunction. Unfortunately, more has been forgotten than learned since this research was first published. From the Illinois Medical Journal. Reprint 68, 1939.
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Cardiac Failure in Vitamin E Deficient Cattle
By T. W. Gullikson and C. E. Calverley
Summary: Report on a study showing that a significant number of cows fed a diet devoid of vitamin E died suddenly between the ages of 18 months and 5 years, apparently from sudden cardiac arrest. An electrocardiogram was used to investigate the specific cardiac damage caused by vitamin E starvation. From Science, 1946.
Comments on the Relation of Abnormal Heart Sounds to Malnutrition
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Lee traces the cause of heart irregularities such as extra beats and fibrillations to a loss of conductivity in the heart's tissue, which usually reflects a deficiency of factors in the B vitamin complex. Lee also describes how other conditions, such as hypoadrenia, lead to heart irregularities and discusses the relation of these conditions to deficiencies of various vitamins, such as vitamin F, G, and E2. 1953.
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Coronary Thrombosis: #1 Killer
By W. J. McCormick, MD
Summary: A Canadian medical doctor explains why he believes nutritional deficiencies, primarily of vitamins B and C, combined with cigarettes, pesticides, and alcohol, lead to coronary thrombosis. From the Insurance Index. Reprint 5B, 1953.
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Coronary Thrombosis: A New Concept of Mechanism & Etiology
By W. J. McCormick
Summary: A Canadian medical doctor discusses a new concept of the causes and mechanism of coronary thrombosis based upon studies of heart disease and nutritional deficiency, particularly of vitamin C. From the journal Clinical Medicine. Reprint 5F, 1957.
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The Direct Effect of Malnutrition on Tissue Degeneration
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this succinct address to the Seattle Chapter of the American Academy of Applied Nutrition, Dr. Lee touches on some of the major findings of early nutrition science that are still, incredibly, ignored to this day. Topics include the importance of calcium, phosphorus, and raw protein to tooth health; the total destruction of nutrients in bread caused by bleaching; the connection between vitamin E deficiency and heart disease; the dependency of connective-tissue integrity on adequate vitamin C levels; and the various lesions of B vitamin deficiencies. “What lesson can we learn from these few scattered facts…?” Dr. Lee asks in conclusion. “Simply that we must take the trouble in our homes to prepare our foods from the basic materials as far as possible, even to the extent of growing our vegetables and fruits on properly composted soil, if we can. The dividends will be quite possibly 20 years added to our life span, to say nothing of the life added to our years.”
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The Etiology of Acute Coronary Thrombosis
By Hunter McGuire Doles
Summary: A medical journal report on the newly discovered role of vitamin K in the etiology of coronary thrombosis. Important vitamin research that still has not penetrated medical thinking. From the Tri-State Medical Journal. Reprint 129, 1959.
The Fight Over Vitamin E
By Eric Hutton
Summary: The story of the Shute brothers, Canadian medical doctors who gained international fame for treating heart disease with vitamin E. In spite of countless patients testifying to the success of the therapy, the medical professions in the United States and Canada tried every measure to silence and discredit the Shutes, much of it playing out in the popular press. The author of the article explains how the Shutes believed vitamin E helps alleve heart disorders: "The Shutes' theory about vitamin E is this: It is not specifically a heart medication; that is, vitamin E has no affinity for the heart as insulin has for the pancreas or iodine for the thyroid gland. The chief effect of vitamin E is to reduce the amount of oxygen which the cells and tissues of the body and its organs require for efficient, healthy functioning. Heart diseases happens to be the most dramatic example of the result of oxygen deprivation, and vitamin E's effect, simply stated, is to condition the tissues involved so that they are able to function normally, or at any rate to survive, on the greatly reduced amount of oxygen available to them when a coronary clot cuts down the oxygen-bearing blood supply reaching them." From Maclean's Magazine. Special Reprint 4-54, 1954.
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Foreword to “Rebuilding Health” by Ebba Waerland
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Ebba Waerland was an internationally famous advocate of natural health from Sweden. The Waerland dietary system—based on whole natural foods—was very popular in Europe. In response to her request, Royal Lee wrote this foreword to the American edition of her book. From Rebuilding Health: The Waerland Method of Natural Therapy. 1961.
The Heart in Chronic Malnutrition
By J. Higginson, A. D. Gillanders, and J. F. Murray
Summary: A comprehensive review reprinted from the British Heart Journal documenting heart lesions caused by malnutrition among Bantu adults in South Africa. In all 12 fatal cases studied, "the hearts were dilated and hypertrophied," the authors noted, a "distinctive pathological pattern" they attributed squarely to malnutrition. Specifically, the high-carbohydrate Bantu diet, along with B vitamin deficiencies, are implicated. Reprint 74, 1952.
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How to Prevent Heart Attacks
By Benjamin P. Sandler, MD
Summary: An absolutely gripping book, published in its entirety by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. Dr. Sandler, a retired naval surgeon and researcher, challenges conventional science's most basic beliefs about cardiovascular disease. If hardening and blockage of the arteries (i.e., arteriosclerosis) is the reason for heart attacks, he asks, why do many heart attack victims show no evidence of arteriosclerosis upon autopsy? And why do the vast majority of people with significant arteriosclerosis die of non-heart-related reasons? The truth is arteriosclerosis is a "secondary phenomenon, purely incidental, and is not the prime factor initiating [a heart] attack," Sandler says, who points to dysfunctional blood-sugar regulation as the true cause of heart failure. Based on years of documented clinical work, Sandler reports consistent findings that a high-carbohydrate, vitamin-poor diet—the kind of diet Americans have been eating ever since the wide-scale adoption processed foods at the turn of the twentieth century—significantly weakens the heart and leads to heart attack. He especially warns against the budding advice of the time to reduce animal fat consumption. "To implicate animal foods as the ultimate cause of heart attacks because of their fat content is highly dubious and dangerous and unless absolutely confirmed as the cause...they should not be eliminated from the diet nor even slightly reduced." Fifty years later, with animal fat still not shown to be linked with heart disease and heart attack rates showing no decline in spite of Americans having reduced their consumption of animal fats significantly, Dr. Sandler's words ring as true as ever. 1958.
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Maintenance Nutrition in the Pigeon and Its Relation to Heart Block
By Cyrill William Carter
Summary: An important excerpt about one of the critical B complex vitamins that got lost in the rush to synthesize nutrients. Vitamin B4 is a vitamer of the B complex that promotes proper nerve impulse transmission, yet it is not recognized as an essential nutrient by modern science. In the report, Carter notes that in pigeons suffering heart block that had been fed a diet devoid of natural vitamin B complex, supplementation with vitamins B1 and B2 failed to resolve the problem. When supplementation was switched to a yeast extract, which naturally contained the then-unknown B4 vitamer in addition to vitamers B1 and B2, the heart block was resolved. Oxford University scientists worked for over a decade to resolve the relationship between vitamin B4 and vitamin B1. Original source unknown. Reprint 3, 1934.
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Natural Vitamin E for Heart Diseases
Authors unknown
Summary: A riveting article documenting the success of vitamin E therapy in the treatment of heart disease, published by Popular Science Digest. The key to this success, the authors emphasize, is the use of natural vitamin E over synthetic, the former having been shown to be "highly effective in the treatment of coronary disease, the incidence of which appears to be linked with a deficiency of vitamin E in the diet dating from the beginning of the century, when millers discarded vitamin E in the processing of grain." While the authors mistakenly confuse isolated natural alpha-tocopherol with the natural vitamin E complex (which includes alpha-tocopherol but other factors in addition), they sum the case for natural vitamin therapy over pharmaceutical drugs brilliantly: "Alpha tocopherol (vitamin E) therapy has the distinctive feature of improving the function of damaged hearts by attacking the underlying pathological changes. Heretofore, the drugs at the disposal of the cardiologist such as digitalis, quinidine, the mercurial diuretics, and nitro-glycerine have helped to re-establish more normal function, but have left the basic pathology unaltered." In other words, vitamins treat the cause, not the symptoms, as drugs do. The overwhelming clinical success reported in treating heart disease with vitamin E, the article concludes, "is a case for the closest and completely unbiased examination, by those competent to do so, of the claims of those who have developed and sponsored vitamin E therapy." Words that still ring true today. Reprint 40A, 1953.
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New Theory of Diet and Coronary Thrombosis
By Ernest Klein, MD
Summary: A physician describes his experiences in both treating and preventing coronary thrombosis through nutrition as well as the hostility he encountered within the medical profession (he and his daughter were both fired from a hospital) for using nutritional therapy with his patients. From Prevention magazine. Reprint 96, 1954.
Nutrition and Vitamins in Relation to the Heart
By Richard L. Chipman, MD
Summary: Dr. Chipman succinctly sums the natural vs. synthetic argument regarding vitamins before describing the effects of natural vitamins on heart health. Regarding natural vs. synthetic, he says, there are two schools of thought—those who believe vitamin factors "can be made and should be dispensed in a chemically pure form" and those who believe that vitamins "exist as very complex groups of associated principles of synergistic nature, and that if the complex is taken apart, it is no longer capable of producing its normal nutritional and metabolic effect." Chipman, a member of the latter camp, examines the role of vitamins A, B (including B4), C, D and E2 in heart health. He also discusses the application of heart tissue extract in the form of protomorphogens in strengthening the heart muscle. From The Journal of Medical-Physical Research: A Journal of Progressive Medicine and Physical Therapies. Special Reprint, 1954.
Sudden Death
Author unknown
Summary: In this newspaper report, Dr. Lee explains that the reason so many Americans are dying of heart disease is basic malnutrition. Pointing his finger directly at refined-carbohydrate foods, he says, "Most fuel-supplying foods like cereal and flour and sugar products on the market today have been depleted of vitamin B, vitamin C, and minerals vital to the rebuilding of the body tissue and muscle." He adds that overcooking foods is also critical in destroying the vitamin power of foods. From the Evening Sentinel, Michigan. 1949.
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Vitamin E for Heart Disease
By J. D. Ratcliff
Summary: Article excerpt. A good historical overview of the facts known about vitamin E. Covers the original researchers and the medical work of the Shute brothers of Canada. Discussion includes the wholesale destruction of naturally occurring vitamins in the modern diet. From Coronet magazine. Reprint 40, 1948.
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