Guideposts to Mental Health

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Lee addresses some possible nutritional causes of mental distress. People who eat too many acidifying foods, such as whole grains, may become overly acidic, marked by symptoms of irritability, introversion, and the feeling of not getting enough air. People who eat too many alkalizing foods, such as green vegetables, on the other hand, may feel aches in their joints or a nervous stomach. Dr. Lee also quotes Dr. Benjamin Sandler‘s description of people who suffer from drastic swings in blood sugar: “Dizziness, faintness, nervousness, tremors, sweating, pallor, flushing, palpitation, tachycardia (rapid heart), abdominal pain, and psychoneurotic manifestations may occur,” Sandler says. To combat such sugar swings, Lee recommends—in words that speak to any nutrition practitioner today—to “avoid refined sugars as found in doughnuts, pies, cakes, ice cream, candy and other forms of sweets.” From Let’s Live magazine, 1958.

Normal Blood Sugar Level

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee at his prescient best. Anticipating ideas such as the glycemic index and insulin resistance by about four decades, Dr. Lee laments the negative effects of high-glycemic foods such as refined sugar, which “disturb the body mechanisms,” he says. From Let’s Live magazine, 1958.

Low Blood Sugar and Hyperinsulinism

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: Dr. George Goodheart, the founder of Applied Kinesiology, describes the biochemical, musculoskeletal, and hormonal response of patients suffering from hyperinsulinism and offers a very simple but still overlooked step to help remedy the problem: “What does not seem to be understood or practiced is that sugar and all carbohydrates cause this dysfunction and that sugar and high carbohydrates must be restricted.” This is one of the earliest chiropractic papers on what was soon to become a huge area of holistic healing. From the Digest of Chiropractic Economics, circa 1965. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

Sidelights on Glucose

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Before there was high-fructose corn syrup, there was just plain corn syrup—the original synthetic sweetener, created by chemically decomposing cornstarch into glucose molecules. Dr. Harvey Wiley, the first head of the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), rightfully claimed that use of the word “corn” in describing this imitation food was fraudulent, since it implies naturalness in what is clearly a product of human engineering. In this 1958 article from Let’s Live magazine, Dr. Royal Lee cites a seminal experiment by Drs. Lukens and Dohan at the University of Pennsylvania in which corn syrup (i.e., glucose) was shown to cause diabetes in test animals, whereas refined cane sugar was not. Dr. Lee adds that animal-feeding studies and clinical trials had shown that corn syrup “contributes to cancer, diabetes, hypertension, lassitude, brain fatigue, overweight, irritability, and mental depression; it impairs the assimilation of calcium; and it destroys vital amino acids if they are cooked in its presence.” Finally, Dr. Lee excoriates the FDA for failing to force manufacturers to distinguish between synthetic corn syrup and natural sweeteners on food labels, a deceit that bespeaks the agency’s transformation from consumer watchdog, under Dr. Wiley’s leadership, to the guardian of food manufacturing interests that it is today. From Let’s Live magazine, 1958.