Seeds and Oils; Further Revelation in the Battle for Life; Synthetic vs. Natural Hormones
Contents in this issue:
- “Seeds and Oils,” by J.D. Walters, MD,
- “A Further Revelation in the Battle for Life,”
- “Synthetic Versus Natural Hormones.”
The following is a transcription of the October 1964 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Seeds and Oils
J.D. Walters, MD
This paper will discuss briefly the “how” and “why” of seeds and oils in our diet.
Fat is an essential food that provides fuel, acts as a physical protector of tissues and organs, and—in conjunction with other nutrients—participates in such body chemistries as are attributed to vitamin and hormone functions.
Sources of edible oils are of fruit, vegetable, and animal origin. Commonly used oils include:
- Grain (wheat-germ, rice, and corn)
- Seed (sunflower, cotton, apricot, rape, safflower, sesame, and linseed)
- Fruit (olive and avocado)
- Legume (soy)
- Nut (peanut, almond, and coconut)
- Fish (cod liver and halibut liver)
Fish livers store oils instead of glycogen, while animals store glycogen (carbohydrate factors).
Oils come under the classification of fats and are used for fuel, flavor, satiety, and as carriers of vitamins.
In a well-balanced diet, about 25 percent of fuel value should come from fats.
A fat is composed of a fatty acid with glycerin. The fatty acid contains large amounts of carbon and hydrogen with a small amount of oxygen and has a high fuel value. Fats are stored in fruits, seeds, nuts, animal tissues, and organs.
As with oil, fats are fluid at body temperatures. A saturated fat is one that cannot take up any more hydrogen—and is often a solid. An unsaturated fatty acid has a relatively low melting point and is frequently found in a fluid state—or as an oil. Oils are essential nutrients.
When oils have had hydrogen chemically forced through them, the process is known as hydrogenation and the resulting fat is a solid again. Margarine is an example of such a product.
Lipids are fat substances and are abundant in brain and nerve tissues, liver, and blood. Lecithin is a lipoid that is composed of phosphorus, fatty acids, and glycerin. Sterols are lipoids and are precursors of vitamin D, E, and K. They (the sterols) take part in the building of hormones for the adrenal and sex glands. Normally, these substances are present in the body.
Cholesterol, one of the lipoids, is usually converted to vitamin D or a hormone factor. When there is a failure of such conversion, the cholesterol level in the bloodstream is raise, and it is involved in the formation of atherosclerosis (with subsequent deposits of cholesterol in blood vessels). When this occurs, the individual is susceptible to cardiac, circulatory, and other metabolic disorders.
The chief unsaturated fatty acids are: linoleic, linolenic, and arachidonic. They are present in high concentration in vegetable and seed oils.
Animal fats have a high percentage of saturated fatty acids. Estrogens tend to reduce the high cholesterol level and, when combined with vegetable oils, bring about a more pronounced effect. The addition of the complexes of vitamins A and E to the diet of those individuals who are deficient in these vitamins, also lowers the cholesterol level.
Experiments have been made on humans and animals wherein butter has been shown to raise cholesterol levels while oils from corn, cotton, apricot, sunflower, sesame, rape, and soy will lower them.
Raw nuts, fresh nut meals and powdered seeds of fruits and vegetables likewise lower cholesterol and raise hormone (especially estrogen) levels.
Whole date and pit (ground to a granular form by a freeze method) has had a striking influence in reducing the cholesterol content in both the saliva and bloodstream.
The usual “cold process” is not necessarily a “cold process” procedure. Although no external heat is applied, the friction from the “squeeze” (screw-type) method brings temperatures to around 175°F. This is particularly true of the soya oil. The first fluid obtained is generally referred to as the “virgin oil.” Some processors consider even the oil from further extractions as “cold processed.”
In other methods of extraction, steam or solvents are employed.
Although hormones and cholesterol are not present in soya oil, it does contain the following essential unsaturated fatty acids:
- Linoleic: 52 percent
- Oleic: 24 percent
- Linolenic: 7.9 percent
- Palmitic: 8.25 percent
- Stearic: 5.35 percent
Whole foods such as nuts and seeds provide many benefits (aside from their oil content) when consumed over a long period. They should appear prominently in the diet. Excessive proteins and fats should be replaced to a variable extent by these total foods, whether freshly ground or in their usual form.
Foods such as unheated nuts and unfumigated seeds provide enzymes, unsaturated fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients required by our body.
—J.D. Walters, MD, Modern Nutrition, Vol. 17, No. 3, March 1964
A Further Revelation in the Battle for Life
Dosage of nutritional quantities required for effectiveness.
Dr. d’Herelle in his discovery of the bacteriophage has shown how health can be as easily transmitted by small doses as infection. His discovery of bacteriophage in normal foods, a living organism, that while harmless in itself, can destroy the most virulent of disease germs, has received far less than the recognition it deserves. (For a more complete discussion of bacteriophage see page 120 of Virus in the Cell, J. Gordon Cook, 1957, Dial Press.)
Since a bacteriophage must have living disease germs on which to live, or near relatives of such disease germs, they are only found in raw foods and water, or in concentrates of raw foods prepared by methods that retain the organic, biological values of such raw foods. Methods that destroy nothing that lives, retain enzyme activity intact. If such products are properly checked to avoid contamination by pathogenic germ life, as all raw foods should be, the presence of bacteriophage or components that favor the presence of bacteriophage cannot be objected to. The ability of a primitive people to discover the value of certain foods in their search for health is well known (Coconnauer, Price etc.). No reasonable law should interfere with such personal responsibility.
The British Navy was preventing scurvy for a 150 years with citrus fruit before medical science took notice of the fact, refusing to recognize truth until a theory was available to explain the effect. This attitude still prevails. Orthodox medical science refuses to admit that nutritional elements can clear up aberrations in heart sounds, facts which have been established for years and described in such books as Williams’s The Conquest of Beriberi (1962, Harvard University Press), while orthodox books on heart disease continue to omit any discussion of vitamin deficiencies as a possible factor in their etiology.
The Indians of the high Andes made periodic trips to the sea to obtain seaweed, feeding their pregnant women to prevent goiter. They had no explanation to offer, but they nevertheless knew how to retain their health.
Dr. Martha Jones in Hawaii showed some years ago that infant mortality could be reduced drastically by substituting unrefined cane syrup for refined sugar in baby food formulas. Dental caries was virtually eliminated by the same measure.
Today we do not yet know whether it is the potassium, the vitamin K, or some other factor in the cane syrup that is responsible. But the fact has been established that the refined product can be very destructive to health.
Dr. d’Herelle in his book The Bacteriophage and Its Behavior, page 503, states: “A diseased animal propagates his disease; an animal in a resistant condition propagates his immunity.”
He shows how the resistant animal may be resistant by reason of the presence in his body of bacteriophage, which can be transmitted to others just as readily as the infection causing the disease, but in this case, health is transmitted. We call attention to the photographs (page 160, above book) showing magnified bacteria being destroyed by bacteriophage, in this case colon bacillus, which can be a cause of serious bladder irritation, cystitis. D’Herelle showed that this bacteriophage that controls the colon bacillus was commonly found in drinking water, in rivers, soil, and even seawater near the coast. It is only since the development of the ultra-microscope that it has become possible to make a satisfactory investigation of the actual importance of the bacteriophage in human health. We possibly have overlooked this important phase of defense to infective disease in our progress with the antibiotic method of control. But the bacteriophage is a part of food and drink, while antibiotics are in the drug category. The bacteriophage also illustrates another point that minimal dosage can serve the purpose. It may be too small to measure, as d’Herelle has pointed out, but a single bacteriophage too small to be seen without the ultra-microscope may be sufficient.
A clear distinction must be made here between drugs and foods. In the case of drugs, they are “poisons” by definition, and we have drug laws to protect the public. In the case of natural foods, they are safe by historical use as foods (other than the potentially dangerous new synthetic chemicals) and, unless recommended in greater amount than customary, are proven safe on their record of use as foods.
The nutritional amounts useful in correcting physiological dietary unbalances must be determined by the doctor who uses them in his practice. There is no other way. The nutritional response may be measurable by phonocardiography, by audiometer tests, by alterations in blood chemistry, such as changes in cholesterol levels, protein-bound iodine, atherogenic index, sedimentation rate, blood pressure, pulse rate, restoration of missing heart sounds, elimination of murmurs, lengthening of rest period etc. Too often the doctor forgets to check for possible nutritional unbalances and proceeds to prescribe dangerous drugs for conditions that are in part or completely amenable to physiological methods, methods that cooperate with natural principles instead of negating such principles, such as the all-too-frequent use of toxic drugs where a simple nutritional condition exists.
Synthetic Versus Natural Hormones
Histamine is undoubtedly one of the metabolic poisons that must be eliminated physiologically or trouble soon builds up.
The method of physiological elimination is of great interest. The liver normally secretes a factor known as Yakriton, a Japanese name found in all medical dictionaries that acts as a natural antihistamine, once sold by the Harrower Company as Anabolin. It is particularly high in pig liver, and the hog is notoriously resistant to poisons, including snake venoms.
Now we find the highly interesting report that all-natural estrogens activate the enzyme histaminase, which destroys histamine, while all synthetic estrogens have the opposite effect—they all inhibit histaminase. Reported in Histamine, Wostenholme and O’Connor, Little, Brown and Co., 1956, page 272.
It would seem that here we have again the wonder drug that turns out to be only a wonder poison.
It seems that the FDA is asleep at the switch to allow these phony products, counterfeit hormones, to be permitted in interstate commerce. Certainly, they may have estrogen effects, but if they also have toxic side effects, they are impositions on the unwary victim—both the doctor who prescribes them as well as the patient are unfortunate targets of the ignorance and cupidity of the promotors.
All allergic disease is aggravated if not caused by excess histamine, this now is known to include also the newly discovered array of auto-immune disease, from lupus erythematosus to cigarette cough and arthritis. The victims are very profitable sources of income for the synthetic drug industry—they need a constant supply of pain-relieving drugs. Just an example of the way iatrogenic (doctor caused) disease multiplies itself.
