DEPRESSION, MENTAL ILLNESS CURED WITH NUTRITION

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, October 7, 2005

Mental Health Treatment That Works
(OMNS) Doctors report that mental health problems including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD, anti-social and learning disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorders often have a common cause: insufficient nutrients in the brain. Nutritionally-oriented physicians assert that the cure for these problems is to give the body the extra nutrients it needs, especially when under abnormal stress.

Orthomolecular medical researchers say the future of psychiatry is in nutrition because nutrition has such a long, safe and effective history of correcting many mental problems. Nutrients such as the B-vitamins are most successful when taken regularly, taken in relatively high doses, and taken in conjunction with vitamin C, the essential fatty acids (EFA’s), and the minerals magnesium and selenium.

A summary of what has worked for many people follows below. The safety of vitamins and minerals is extraordinary, and the expense of trying them is much less than the cost of hazardous pharmaceutical drugs. These nutrients can be purchased in a discount or heath store.

Taking 1,000 mg of vitamin B-3 three times a day often cures mild to moderate depression. Dramatic results are often achieved within one week of beginning this nutritional program, especially in alcoholics. (1)

Sometimes a simple deficiency of vitamin D causes depression. 3,000 I.U./day from all sources can alleviate the problem. (2)

3,000 mg/day or more of niacin (vitamin B-3), along with the same quantity of vitamin C, taken in divided doses throughout the day can successfully treat both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. (3)

Vitamins B-3, B-6, C and the minerals magnesium and zinc frequently produce a good response in ADHD and autistic children. (4)

Vitamins B-6, folate, and B-12 taken together lower elevated homocysteine levels in the elderly while improving mental function. (5)

As pointed out by chemistry professor and vitamin discoverer Roger J. Williams, PhD (6), each individual has different nutritional needs and responds differently to nutrients. Are you tired of being depressed, suffering from anxiety, paying huge prescription drug bills for unsafe prescriptions that don’t solve the problem or produce undesirable side effects? Are you tired of the piece-meal trial and error approach to finding a solution to your mental or emotional problems? If so, adults should consider the following nutritional protocol, which will bathe your brain and nerves in natural nutrients and may well produce dramatic results. The cost of trying the program below is less than the cost of a typical doctor’s office visit. It is safe and convenient. All of these nutrients can be purchased at large discount stores. Continue reading >>

Vitamin Supplementation Prevents Anorexia

(OMNS February 9, 2008) Anorexia is primarily due to vitamin deficiency. Approximately one in twenty teenage girls in America is struggling with an eating disorder. Parents can help eliminate the risk of anorexia by providing their children with vitamin supplements.

Anorexia is an acknowledged clinical marker of beriberi, the disease specifically caused by a deficiency of vitamin B1 (thiamine). [1] Anorexia is also commonly observed as an early symptom of pellagra (niacin deficiency) [2] and is a known complication of scurvy, vitamin C deficiency. [3] Prevention is especially important, because beriberi/anorexia often does not respond well even to treatment with high doses of thiamine for months, and sometimes does not respond at all. [1] But as a rule, high potency vitamin supplements are an effective cure for the loss of muscle mass caused by beriberi and the skin lesions caused by pellagra.

The vitamin B1 in almost every multivitamin and B-complex vitamin pill is either thiamine mononitrate or thiamine hydrochloride. The body’s ability to absorb these two forms of thiamine is limited [4] by the maximum amount that can be handled by the body’s two specialized thiamine transport proteins. [5]. This means many doses per day of oral thiamine are necessary for effective treatment. Another class of thiamine molecules, called allithiamines, are much better absorbed. [6] Since allithiamines are not included in standard multivitamin preparations, we recommend their reformulation to include this specific form of B1.

The conventional medical approach to eating disorders such as anorexia typically includes psychological/behavioral treatment, medication, and food-groups dietetics. It is surprisingly rare for physicians to link eating disorders with vitamin deficiency, and few doctors recommend vitamin supplements for prevention. Continue the full article

Prenatal vitamins shown to reduce children's risk of cancer

M.T. Whitney Key concepts: folic acid, vitamins and prenatal vitamins

(NaturalNews) Taking folic acid and multivitamins while pregnant can nearly halve the chance of a child getting a common cancer before the age of 18, new evidence from a Toronto children's hospital shows.

The study, from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, was spurred when officials at the hospital noticed a drop in neuroblastomas five years ago, after the Canadian government started requiring flour manufacturers to add folic acid to their product in 1998.

What you need to know
• Folic acid and multivitamins were shown to lower the chance of leukemia in children by 39 percent.

• The same one-two punch can lower the risk of a child developing a brain tumor by 27 percent.

• The risk of a child getting a neuroblastoma, which attacks the nervous system, was lowered by 49 percent.

• For spina bifida, a spinal condition, the risk is lowered by 80 percent with folic acid supplements.

• Most folic acid supplements, easily found for just pennies a day, will give you between 600 and 1,000 milligrams for the day, more than the government-recommended 400 milligrams.

• Only 40 percent of Canadian mothers take the right amount of folic acid supplements during pregnancy, Dr. Gideon Koren, the study's principal investigator, told The Toronto Star.

• The study was published in the journal Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (February, 2007).

• "To our amazement and surprise, all available studies today from different parts of the world ... showed a similar trend (to the one in Ontario)," Koren told the Toronto Star.

Sadly, most doctors and hospitals still don't teach nutrition to patients, and expectant mothers are rarely told about the multitude of health benefits derived from nutrients like folic acid or vitamin D. The current message on folic acid supplementation focuses solely on spina bifida and fails to mention the vitamin's anti-cancer effects.


Bottom line
• Mothers who take folic acid and prenatal vitamins may reduce risk of cancer in their children.

How Vitamin C Stops Cancer

ScienceDaily (Sep. 12, 2007) — Nearly 30 years after Nobel laureate Linus Pauling famously and controversially suggested that vitamin C supplements can prevent cancer, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists have shown that in mice at least, vitamin C - and potentially other antioxidants - can indeed inhibit the growth of some tumors ¯ just not in the manner suggested by years of investigation.

The conventional wisdom of how antioxidants such as vitamin C help prevent cancer growth is that they grab up volatile oxygen free radical molecules and prevent the damage they are known to do to our delicate DNA. The Hopkins study, led by Chi Dang, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and oncology and Johns Hopkins Family Professor in Oncology Research, unexpectedly found that the antioxidants' actual role may be to destabilize a tumor's ability to grow under oxygen-starved conditions. Their work is detailed this week in Cancer Cell.

"The potential anticancer benefits of antioxidants have been the driving force for many clinical and preclinical studies," says Dang. "By uncovering the mechanism behind antioxidants, we are now better suited to maximize their therapeutic use."

"Once again, this work demonstrates the irreplaceable value of letting researchers follow their scientific noses wherever it leads them," Dang adds.

The authors do caution that while vitamin C is still essential for good health, this study is preliminary and people should not rush out and buy bulk supplies of antioxidants as a means of cancer prevention.
The Johns Hopkins investigators discovered the surprise antioxidant mechanism while looking at mice implanted with either human lymphoma (a blood cancer) or human liver cancer cells. Both of these cancers produce high levels of free radicals that can be suppressed by feeding the mice supplements of antioxidants, either vitamin C or N-acetylcysteine (NAC).

However, when the Hopkins team examined cancer cells from cancer-implanted mice not fed the antioxidants, they noticed the absence of any significant DNA damage. "Clearly, if DNA damage was not in play as a cause of the cancer, then whatever the antioxidants were doing to help was also not related to DNA damage," says Ping Gao, Ph.D, lead author of the paper.

That conclusion led Gao and Dang to suspect that some other mechanism was involved, such as a protein known to be dependent on free radicals called HIF-1 (hypoxia-induced factor), which was discovered over a decade ago by Hopkins researcher and co-author Gregg Semenza, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Program in Vascular Cell Engineering. Indeed, they found that while this protein was abundant in untreated cancer cells taken from the mice, it disappeared in vitamin C-treated cells taken from similar animals.

"When a cell lacks oxygen, HIF-1 helps it compensate," explains Dang. "HIF-1 helps an oxygen-starved cell convert sugar to energy without using oxygen and also initiates the construction of new blood vessels to bring in a fresh oxygen supply."

Some rapidly growing tumors consume enough energy to easily suck out the available oxygen in their vicinity, making HIF-1 absolutely critical for their continued survival. But HIF-1 can only operate if it has a supply of free radicals. Antioxidants remove these free radicals and stop HIF-1, and the tumor, in its tracks.

The authors confirmed the importance of this "hypoxia protein" by creating cancer cells with a genetic variant of HIF-1 that did not require free radicals to be stable. In these cells, antioxidants no longer had any cancer-fighting power.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Authors on the paper are Dean Felsher of Stanford; and Gao, Huafeng Zhang, Ramani Dinavahi, Feng Li, Yan Xiang, Venu Raman, Zaver Bhujwalla, Linzhao Cheng, Jonathan Pevsner, Linda Lee, Gregg Semenza and Dang of Johns Hopkins.

Adapted from materials provided by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

CURING ALCOHOLISM NATURALLY

Dr. Carolyn Dean, MD, ND and
Elissa Meininger
November 17, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

One of the most satisfying things about the natural healing arts is that when you are thoroughly committed to its principles, you discover a contentment you can never find in modern medicine. Natural healing is about making people whole. It’s about arranging all the elements of your life to be as supportive as possible in all ways so that when you pass from this life, you do so at peace with yourself and the world around you. It’s not about fighting off the evils of disease or postponing the grim reaper no matter what the cost. And it certainly isn’t about diagnosing some disease and declaring yourself a victim of that disease, a label you must carry through life like a scarlet letter branded on your forehead.

The worst part of having a drinking problem is giving the behavior a name with the implication that once you have been branded an alcoholic, the next unspoken thought is “always an alcoholic”. Softening this branding by claiming those who have stopped drinking are “recovering” alcoholics, is just sliding into another form of discrimination, believing that we are nothing more the diseases we suffer and are life-long victims.

The plain fact of the matter is that all of us have issues that involve emotional, spiritual and physical components. We all need to establish the parameters of how we shall live out our lives. Those of us who want to maximize our lives learn to wrestle with, in a positive manner, those issues which make life less than perfect. To claim that we are all victims of disease or victims of situations that scar us for life is about feeling sorry for ourselves and not embracing life to the fullest.

A good example of how not to fall into this trap is something my NewsWithViews.com writing partner, Elissa, experienced. She was so poisoned by mercury from her dental amalgams, she was in pain for months on end, trying to detox it from her system. Pain killers were out of the question, and when her spirits were particularly low, she’d muster what little sense of humor she had, call her naturopath and say, “Skip the rest of the herbs, send the hemlock”. In return, knowing that she was at the end of her rope emotionally, he, being a true blue naturopath of the best kind, would ask her, “What is the gift?” This was a signal for her to embrace her suffering so she could fully examine the lessons pain and suffering could teach her about the value of life, the learning of patience, and other deeply spiritual issues, so that when the suffering was over, she would be a much wiser person, more ready to really live life to the fullest.

How many of us have known people who have suffered a great deal and have become incredibly wonderful people? How many of us have taken the trouble to surround ourselves with a positive support system and how many of us have arranged to have good things come our way because we have become positive thinkers and doers? These are all important issues that when we are caught in the throws of suffering, might be worth thinking about.

When I suggested to Elissa that we provide information from my colleagues in Orthomolecular Medicine about how they successfully treat alcoholism through nutrition, Elissa quickly pointed out that having been trained in Transactional Analysis back in the 1970’s, she was well aware that TA practitioners were not into naming diseases, either, and, in fact, didn’t consider alcoholism a disease at all.

Created by Eric Berne, MD, Transactional Analysis is a system of analyzing people’s patterns of behavior. It became the first of several therapeutic models that is particularly adaptable to self-help by lay people. Central to its core philosophy is that the client has the capacity to change and that the teacher-therapist is largely there to assist the client in taking charge of his/her own healing. In allopathic psychiatry and similar therapies, the therapist’s role is to diagnose a “disease” and be the authority figure who helps the “patient” become more well adjusted, though rarely healed.

When it was introduced in the 1960’s, TA revolutionized our understanding of what really goes on during our most basic social interactions. Best selling books such as “Games People Play”, “I’m OK, You’re OK”, “Success Through Transactional Analysis”, and “Born to Win” were on everyone’s coffee tables and the concepts of TA was quickly adopted into common usage. Everyone was analyzing “games”, discussing “life-scripts”, giving and receiving positive “strokes” and making jokes about who was more “OK” than somebody else.

Back then Elissa would have been delighted to add to her TA knowledge information about nutritional approaches that support the health of people who’d been trashed out by too much alcohol. She pointed out that to a TA counselor, the goal is to teach the client about the principles and practical methods of clarifying true emotions, develop useful information about how to run you own life, clean up old baggage from the past without going on what she calls an archeological expedition to rehash how much you hate your mother or other old anger that has yet to be resolved. Establishing a good diet to improve and maintain better health would certainly be a major part of such a health-promoting plan of action. In addition, it can improve a person’s state of mind, as malnourishment can lead to depression and other emotional imbalances, not to mention muddled thinking.

Sorting out the various elements of how a person came to have problems with alcohol is something TA counselors have had a great deal of success with because so many of the issues involved, are basically reviewing all the elements of a person’s life that may need to be updated. In fact, most people, once they understand TA, go over a checklist every now and again to keep on target to make sure they are maximizing their lives based on constantly updated information.

Since discussions about Transactional Analysis, and how to use it to deal with alcohol issues can get complicated in a short column like ours, Elissa suggests that readers interested in learning more about it, might like to read two books by TA’s premier alcohol treatment expert, Claude Steiner. Even though written in the 1970’s they are

1, Games Alcoholics Play: The Analysis of Life Scripts – (Random House, 1974)
2, Healing Alcoholism – originally published by Grove Press in 1971 – Now available as a free download

A book that I recommend about the nutritional approach to alcoholism is Food and Behavior by Barbara Reed Stitt. Barbara was one of the first parole officers in the country who put her charges on a good diet and saved most of them from further jail time. Knowing that diet can change criminal behavior should give you some indication of the power of good nutrition. It should also prepare you for the following Treatment Protocol for Alcoholism from Dr. Abram Hoffer, who, along with Linus Pauling is the father of orthomolecular medicine.

We include the full press release of July 1, 2005 from the Orthomolecular News Service.

Magnesium May Lower Risk for Some Strokes in Male Smokers

(HealthDay News) -- Increased consumption of magnesium-rich foods such as whole grains may reduce male smokers' risk of cerebral infarction, which occurs when blood flow to the brain is blocked, a new Swedish study suggests.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm analyzed the diets and other health/lifestyle habits and characteristics of 26,556 Finnish men, aged 50 to 69, who smoked but had never had a stroke. During an average of 13.6 years of follow-up, 2,702 of the men had cerebral infarctions, 383 had intracerebral hemorrhages (bleeding into the brain tissue), 196 had subarachnoid hemorrhages (bleeding between the brain and the tissues that cover it), and 84 had unspecified types of strokes.

After they adjusted for age and cardiovascular risk factors (such as diabetes and cholesterol levels), the researchers concluded that men who consumed the most magnesium (an average of 589 milligrams per day) had a 15 percent lower risk for cerebral infarction than those who consumed the least amount of magnesium (an average of 373 milligrams per day). The association was stronger in men younger than 60.

There was no association between magnesium consumption and risk for intracerebral or subarachnoid hemorrhage, said the researchers, who added that calcium, potassium and sodium intake weren't associated with risk for any type of stroke.

The findings were published in the March 10 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"An inverse association between magnesium intake and cerebral infarction is biologically plausible," the study authors wrote. Magnesium lowers blood pressure and may also affect cholesterol concentrations and the body's use of insulin to turn glucose into energy, both of which would affect the risk for cerebral infarction, but not hemorrhage.

"Whether magnesium supplementation lowers the risk of cerebral infarction needs to be assessed in large, long-term randomized trials," the study authors added.

Recent studies have suggested that changes in diet may help reduce stroke risk, according to background information in the study. High blood pressure is a risk factor for stroke, which means that dietary changes that lower blood pressure may reduce stroke risk.

More information
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke outlines ways to prevent stroke.

ORTHOMOLECULAR MEDICINE NEWS SERVICE

"It is a matter of common knowledge that any processing that foods undergo serves to make them more harmful than unprocessed foods." (McDonald's Corporation legal statement, shown in the documentary "Supersize Me")

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER (Vol. 5, No. 2 for January 5, 2005)

"Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A." Written and copyright 2004 by Andrew W. Saul of http://www.doctoryourself.com/ , which welcomes 1.5 million visitors
annually. Commercial use of the website or the contents of this Newsletter is strictly prohibited.

ORTHOMOLECULAR MEDICINE NEWS SERVICE

My long-time readers have likely taken notice that the DOCTOR YOURSELF Newsletter is now a monthly. Yes, after five years of twice- monthly publication, I am giving a nod to the reality of some 30,000 hits a day at the http://www.doctoryourself.com/ website. There is only so much
time in a day.

The good news: I will continue to assail your ears about every four weeks or so with my edifying editorials and health hints. And, there is still NO CHARGE for the Newsletter. (To subscribe to the Doctor Yourself Newsletter:

newsletter-subscribe@doctoryourself.com )
Here's the really good news: With my copious new free time, I am beginning another project: the ORTHOMOLECULAR MEDICINE NEWS SERVICE. Like the Associated Press or Reuters, OMNS is a wire-service style news feed directed to members of the press, radio and TV news
media.

We have authoritative scientific clout and plan to use it. The OMNS editorial board consists of:

Abram Hoffer, M.D.
Hugh D. Riordan, M.D.
Harold Foster, Ph.D.
Bradford Weeks, M.D.

I see the creation of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service as an increasingly necessary step to counter the pharmaceutically-biased factoids and vitamin misinformation that the media seem ever so ready to accept uncritically. The recent allegedly-negative E and C studies bear this out. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/safety.html/ )

Now with many hundreds of media email addresses, both newspaper and TV, we will shortly go ahead with a mass e-mail press release and inaugural announcement.

YES, YOU TOO MAY SUBSCRIBE TO THE ORTHOMOLECULAR NEWS SERVICE, free of charge. To do so, you will need to promptly send a blank email to omns-subscribe@doctoryourself.com . (Requests to other addresses, such as my regular email address, will not be processed.)

ASCORBATE: THE SCIENCE OF VITAMIN C
"It's not what we don't know that harms us, but what we do know that ain't so." (Eubie Blake, 1883-1983)

What is it about a little left-handed molecule of six carbons, six oxygens, and eight hydrogens that ticks off so many in the medical community? Maybe it's cases like this one: Ray, a health professional I know, had an 11-month old son who was very sick for over a week. No one, and I mean no one, in their family had had any sleep in a long time.

They were up night after night with this child, who had a high fever, glazed watery eyes, tons of thick watery mucus and labored breathing. The child would not sleep, and did little else but cry. The baby was under the care of a pediatrician, who, in the infant's eleven months on earth, had already prescribed twelve rounds of some very serious antibiotics. That they clearly were not working was all too apparent to Ray, who out of desperation decided to try something he previously had been taught to not try: bowel tolerance quantities of oral ascorbate.

Ray and his wife gave their baby some vitamin C about every 15 minutes. As a result, the baby
was noticeably improved in a matter of hours, and slept through the night. With frequent doses continuing, the child was completely well in 48 hours. Ray calculated that the baby had received just over 2,000 mg vitamin C per kilogram body weight per day. This is even more than what Dr. Frederick Robert Klenner customarily ordered for sick patients. Remarkably, at 20,000 milligrams of vitamin C/day, that 20-pound baby never had diarrhea. With such a little body, you have to marvel at where all of it was going. Of course, it is the opinion of those who promulgate the US RDA and related nutritional mythology that almost all of that baby's vitamin C went uselessly into the toilet. Ray and his wife would tell you differently. They would say
that their sick child soaked it up like a sponge, and then promptly got better.

For the layman unable to obtain intravenous vitamin C, one of the most important parts of Hickey and Roberts' new book, Ascorbate: The Science of Vitamin C, is its attention to oral administration, divided dosing, absorption, and vitamin C retention time in the bloodstream. With simple graphs and uncomplicated language, the authors illustrate 1) how high oral
doses of vitamin C yield higher blood levels of the vitamin, and 2) how dividing the oral doses maintains those higher levels. Although initially seeming almost too obvious to mention, these are not self-evident concepts. Government-based intake standards such as the RDA hinge on
ignoring them.

Hickey and Roberts zero in on this serious public health error. Their critical analysis of research studies purporting to justify a mere 100 or 200 mg/day ascorbate dose is worthy of Linus Pauling himself. Dr. Roberts says: "Stressed and even mildly ill people can tolerate 1,000 times more vitamin C, implying a change in biochemistry that was ignored in creating the
RDA. The RDA concept does not differentiate between short and long- term effects of deprivation.

The possibility that sub-clinical scurvy causes chronic disease has enormous implications for health. In setting the RDA, unsubstantiated risks of taking too much vitamin C have been accorded great importance, whereas the risks of not taking enough have been ignored. Real scientists understand that 'no scientific proof' is a fancy way of saying 'we don’t like this idea.' Furthermore, there is no clear mechanism for the RDA to be modified when new scientific evidence emerges."

Ascorbate: The Science of Vitamin C is a compellingly written, fast-paced inspection of belief-based bias that permeates the scientific method. It is not a tirade; Hickey and Roberts simply tell it the way it is. They are well qualified to do so. Steve Hickey has a PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Manchester, and spent about ten years in research at the
Manchester Medical School and associated hospitals. Interestingly, he had initially trained as a biologist specializing in pharmacology, later switching to biomechanics and medical physics. In addition to degrees in physiology and computer science, Hilary Roberts' University of Manchester PhD was on the effects of early life malnutrition. She spent ten years in research
and teaching at the university.

When asked how he and his coauthor came to write the book, Dr. Hickey said: "Since Linus Pauling's death, there seemed to be a great deal of misinformation. The NIH had performed some questionable experiments and were making the apparently ridiculous statement that blood plasma and tissues became saturated with low doses of vitamin C. There was no mainstream research on high doses and the establishment was making wild extrapolations from their low dose data. We could not see how a clinical trial with 200 mg of vitamin C, for example, could be used to suggest that higher doses were not effective. The work of physicians like Robert Cathcart, Archie Kalokerinos and Abram Hoffer intrigued us. The reported effects, especially of intravenous vitamin C, were astounding. It was difficult to find any reason to explain the lack of scientific follow-up. We had friends and relatives that were sick or dying from diseases that
high dose vitamin C was claimed to cure. Eventually we felt we had no choice but to write the book."

Dr. Roberts adds: "Most RDA standards are based on data which was not measured in actual experiments on real people. Even the small amount of data from the 19–30 year old subjects, who were measured, is based on neutrophils, a white blood cell type that is known to have unusual vitamin C biochemistry, along with an exceptional ability to pump the vitamin into
itself. Neutrophils have ascorbate levels from 25-60 times that of the surrounding plasma. This cell type is not a reliable model for the whole body."

Additional topics discussed in Ascorbate: The Science of Vitamin C include infectious disease, oxidation and illness, the safety of vitamin C, and a presentation of the authors' dynamic flow model of continual vitamin C-mediated tissue reduction. The book contains substantial sections
devoted to cardiovascular disease, with the welcome inclusion of an efficient discussion of the roles of vitamin E and lysine. Two excellent chapters on cancer take the starch right out of the Mayo Clinic "refutations" of the Pauling/Cameron vitamin C studies. The authors state that Dr.
Charles "Moertel's switch to oral does would clearly have biased the results" even though Pauling "stated clearly that intravenous doses are more effective than oral doses and explained the reasons for the difference."

Ascorbate: The Science of Vitamin C contains 575 references, and especially good ones. Though not alphabetized, all are keyed to the text with numbered footnotes. For a book this important, the index could be and should be more detailed. A glossary is included for the general reader.
All will enjoy the well-selected epigrams that form the chapter lead-in quotes.

The authors expert command of their topic has enabled them to successfully encompass an enormous, and enormously important, subject. To make a 216-page book this comprehensive, and also so exceptionally comprehensible as well, is no small achievement.

I wish I'd had a book of this caliber back in the 1970's when my kids were infants. I raised my children all the way into college without a single dose of any antiviral, antihistamine, or antibiotic. What they did get were megadoses of vitamin C. We, like so many other parents, learned the
principles of vitamin C therapy (quantity, frequency, and duration) at our kids' bedsides at three in the morning. Now, the pioneering work of megascorbate orthomolecular physicians has been concisely summarized and very skillfully explained in Ascorbate: The Science of Vitamin C. It is a thorough, up to date and very readable analysis of what, to some, may still appear to be a controversial topic.

Those who use it know that taking enough C results in three C's: patient comfort, low cost, and parental control. Without necessitating the use of invasive technology, nor the trauma of hospitalization, parents can regain confidence and mastery over illness to a degree that they might never have thought possible. For this reason, vitamin C therapy will, at least in
some quarters, continue be decried and denounced as irresponsible. It takes some real ego strength for a parent to stand firm and say, "This is what I am going to do: I am going to follow the Klenner/Pauling/Cathcart vitamin C protocol." Hickey and Roberts' review of vitamin C research is a solid buttress that makes such a stance possible. No bias or belief system
can withstand their first-rate presentation of the safety and effectiveness of megadoses of ascorbate.

Hickey S and Roberts H. Ascorbate: The science of vitamin C. 2004. ISBN 1-4116-0724-4. Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com. www.lulu.com/ascorbate NEW REVIEW of DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works "Take Charge of Your Own Health"

Review by Beatrice Trum Hunter, in the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients

Several recently published books deal with subjects that emphasize the importance of an individual taking charge of health practices and decisions. . . The illnesses and health problems discussed in Doctor Yourself: Natural Healing that Works are presented in alphabetical order,
and include acid reflux, allergies, hemorrhoids, sleep disorders, and vaccinations, among many others. According to Andrew Saul, many diseases can be treated with safe, inexpensive, and drugless approaches. He writes conversationally, interspersing protocols with personal
experiences and case stories. Take psoriasis, an intractable condition. Try a complete change of diet, with fresh foods, vegetable juices, lecithin, and vitamins including extra vitamin D, instead of the palliative ointments and lotions. For additional information on the scientific studies supporting the protocols. Dr. Saul refers readers to DoctorYourself.com website with
more than 4000 references.

Doctor Yourself: Natural Healing that Works, by Andrew, Saul, PhD.

(oversized quality paperback, 241 pages, bibliography, index, 2003) [from the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, #253-254, May 2004, p 132. http://www.townsendletter.com/ / Telephone (360)385-6021.] Editor's Note: This particular review was a special treat for me. Beatrice Trum Hunter's NATURAL FOODS COOKBOOK (New York: Pyramid, 1961) was one of the very first health books I read. (It is reviewed at http://www.hoboes.com/html/Diner/revue/naturalfoods.shtml) I was therefore most honored to have made her list of recommended books. Incidentally, the Townsend Letter also very favorably reviewed Doctor Yourself in the Aug-Sept 2004 issue. The review is posted at
http://www.doctoryourself.com/townsend.html . Additional reviews of my book are posted at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html/

TO ORDER AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY of DOCTOR YOURSELF:
Natural Healing that Works, please go to http://www.doctoryourself.com/order.html/

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FIRM FLUORIDE FACTS
Please especially note the sources of these statements.
"THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT FLUORIDE IS AN ESSENTIAL
NUTRIENT FOR HUMANS." (Physicians' Desk Reference)
http://www.pdrhealth.com/drug_info/nmdrugprofiles/nutsupdrugs/flu_0109.shtml

FLUORIDE IS NOT APPROVED BY THE U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION http://www.cm-life.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/06/41b3e6ab68a3c

("CITY REMOVES FLUORIDE FROM WATER. The City of Mount Pleasant (Michigan) followed the will of its resident-voters and began removing fluoride from its water supply. . . (City) ordinance states anything added to the city water must be approved by the Food and Drug
Administration, and fluoride is not.")

FLUORIDE DOES NOT WORK
California is 28% fluoridated; Hawaii is 9% fluoridated. These states are tied for the lowest rate of tooth loss in the USA. On the other hand, Kentucky is 100% fluoridated and has the highest toothless population of older adults.

(http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-me-health2jan02,1,2990789.story?coll=la-health-medicine)

CORRECTION: My review of Pottenger's Cats, in the December, 2004 Newsletter (posted at http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v5n1.txt ) omitted rightful mention of the Selene River Press (http://www.seleneriverpress.com/), publisher and distributor of health books.
They kindly provided me with the review copy of Pottenger's Cats.

VITAMIN E WITCH HUNT
by Michael Fumento
http://www.fumento.com/nutr/vitamine.html
Less than two months ago I debunked a report in the Lancet medical journal claiming antioxidants slightly increase your chance of dying, rather than reducing it as most researchers believe. Now I'm writing about a report that says the same thing about a specific antioxidant, vitamin E. Why are these pills being persecuted? Among the similarities of the earlier report and this one, authored by researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, is that the mainstream media accepted both without question. Both times the researchers smugly declared their work to be the final word on the subject, though both reports were, as the vitamin E one
admitted, 'a qualitative departure from previous findings.'

Since a good scientist knows no single report ever proves anything, we know these weren't good scientists. In fact, they have less in common with Johns Hopkins than Matthew Hopkins - England's infamous 'Witch-finder General.'
Consider the vitamin E paper, published in The Annals of Internal Medicine (full citation at http://www.doctoryourself.com/safety.html ). It analyzed 19 clinical trials between 1993 and 2004, involving 136,000 people in all. These were combined into what's called a 'meta-analysis,'
which showed no overall increase in deaths. But at high levels, defined as above 400 international units (IUs) per day, the researchers insisted 'vitamin E supplements may increase (deaths) and should be avoided.'
A glaring problem with the report is that there have been far more than 19 vitamin E trials since 1993, and one way the pack was whittled down was by excluding all studies reporting fewer than 10 deaths. The witch-hunters weren't about to interrogate witnesses who might keep the accused from a visit to the gallows.
Also, if 'more is worse,' why did the two studies that used the highest dose, 2,000 IUs per day, indicate fewer deaths among vitamin E users? Another problem with declaring this report to be the final word on vitamin E is that while clinical trials are important, epidemiological studies cannot be ignored. Yet ignored they were.

Thus there was no reference to the 1996 one from the National Institute of Aging that followed 11,000 elderly persons for seven years and found that the death rate for vitamin E users was a third that of non-users. Adding another antioxidant, vitamin C, cut fatalities even more.

A 1993 Harvard study of 40,000 male health professionals found those who took at least 100 IUs daily for two years had a third fewer cases of heart disease than those receiving no vitamin E supplements.
A Harvard study of 87,000 nurses that year found an even greater reduction in heart disease when comparing women who took the highest amount of vitamin E vs. those taking the lowest amount. Does this have you running in terror at the sight of a vitamin E capsule?

But what's with the supplement witch-hunt? Why the reports of vitamin E flying on broomsticks, and beta carotene casting hexes? "Unfortunately, there are some doctors who are biased against dietary supplements," says John Hathcock, vice president of Scientific & International Affairs at the D.C.-based Council for Responsible Nutrition. To an extent, this is understandable. For one, some supplements are worthless while a few have proved harmful. But you just can't lump 'eye of newt' in together with vitamin E or other antioxidants.
Mainstream medicine is also biased toward that which has formal FDA approval. You know, like Vioxx. And never mind the many supplements such as iron and iodine that have tacit FDA support but no formal approval.

Some doctors also fret that people will try to substitute supplements for good eating habits. 'We don't think that people need to take vitamin E supplements, that they get enough from the diet,' said the lead vitamin E prosecutor, associate professor Edgar Miller.
Yet the average American gets only about 10 IU daily. With some studies showing 2,000 IUs to be beneficial, dietary intake leaves us a bit shy of the mark. Anyway, those taking vitamins and other supplements also have the best diets.
The final explanation for vitamin-pill persecution is that medical journals are becoming increasingly sensationalist. Publishing articles contrary to popular wisdom is a cheap and easy way to get headlines. But there's no excuse for throwing a noose around the neck of good
science and healthful products.
[Reprinted with the kind permission of the author. Michael Fumento http://www.fumento.com/) is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, syndicated columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and author of BioEvolution: How Biotechnology is Changing our World.]

The GERSON THERAPY MOVIE IS NOW ONLINE!
If you've been wanting to watch THE GERSON MIRACLE ever since I reviewed it the July 20 Doctor Yourself Newsletter (http://www.doctoryourself.com/gersontherapy2.html or http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v4n16.txt), you are in luck. The entire movie, or any specific chapter you like, can now be viewed FREE OF CHARGE at www.gersonmiracle.org/movie.html . Grab some unsalted popcorn and pull up a chair.

BOOK REVIEW:
FAST FOOD NATION: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, by Eric
Schlosser.

Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2001. ISBN: 0395977894
Why, why, why are so many, many, many people so sick, sick, sick? The main reason is staring right back at them from their dinner. It's the junk food, people. An ever-increasing proportion of our food is fast food. "In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2000, they spent more than $110 billion," writes Eric Schlosser in his book Fast Food Nation. "They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music - combined. . . On any given day in the United States, about one-quarter of the adult population visits a fast food restaurant." (p 3)

What does this mean to our health? Everything. Fast food is a high- additive, high-fat, high-meat, high-sugar, and high-salt diet. And what's just as bad, it's a low-fiber, low vitamin, low mineral diet to boot. Fast food is exactly the wrong way to eat.

And we are teaching our kids just how to do it . . .wrong. Chapter 2 discusses how the fast-food industry sells to kids, especially in schools. This is the last thing we need; a typical teenage boy already drinks 20 oz of soda a day. Indoctrination starts early: page 30 of Fast Food Nation shows a superb photo of Ronald McDonald speaking to a large room full of enraptured elementary schoolchildren. How can this be?
Because the cafeterias in so many of our school districts are for sale for the right price. The actual franchise income that any school district may get pales when compared to what fast food industry takes in. After all, says Schlosser, "A medium Coke that sells for $1.29 contains roughly 9 cents' worth of syrup."

Adults are to blame. We, not our kids, are the ones who allowed fast food in our schools. We are the ones who let Harlem Memorial Hospital contain its very own McDonald's. It is our money that enables McDonald's to open FIVE new restaurants every DAY. It is our U.S. Federal Communications Commission and our U.S. Federal Trade Commission that permit every American child to watch 10,000 television food ads every year. Are these ads for carrots? Not according to Yale professor Kelly Brownell, PhD., who says that 95% of TV food commercials promote candy, soft drinks and fast food.

Fast Food Nation is much more than a history of soda pop and the flipped burger. In Chapter 3, Schlosser takes us "Behind the Counter" to examine labor issues in the fast food biz. "No other industry in the United States has a workforce so dominated by adolescents," he writes. And teenagers work hard and they work cheap. Too cheap. "Increasing the federal minimum wage by a dollar (an hour) would add about two cents to the cost of a fast food hamburger." Fast Food Nations also explores "Why the Fries Taste Good" in Chapter 5, as well as the very real dangers for those who work at meat packing factories.

Your making a point to read the exceptionally well-written Fast Food Nation would be the perfect New Year's resolution. Here is some video encouragement to help you on your way as you change your lifestyle and fight to eat right:

DIET WARS
"Nobody ever got rich marketing self-control." That is my favorite quote from "Diet Wars," a recent PBS' Frontline presentation. If you missed this truly excellent program, you can still watch it online, for free, at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/diet/view/

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given.

HIGH DOSES OF INTRAVENOUS VITAMIN C FIGHT CANCER

Kathleen Doheny, The New York Times, Tues, Sept.13, 2005
"High doses of vitamin C administered intravenously can fight cancer -- at least in the laboratory, researchers report.

"(The study) examined the body's absorption of the nutrient and found that while oral intake does reach a saturation point, when you give doses intravenously they go through the roof in the blood and then they are cleared, said lead researcher Dr. Mark Levine (chief of the molecular and clinical nutrition section and senior staff physician, National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases). According to Levine, a 10 gram dose (10,000 milligrams) of vitamin C given intravenously produces bloodstream concentrations more than 25-fold higher than concentrations achieved from the same oral dose.

"Some antibiotics are poorly absorbed when given orally but fight infections effectively when given intravenously, and Levine and his team thought that might be the case with vitamin C and cancer. Working with cell lines in the laboratory, they used high doses of vitamin C that could only be achieved by IV administration.

At the highest concentration of ascorbic acid, if given intravenously, they don't touch normal cells and they kill lots of cancer cells. We don't know why, Levine said."

(Editor’s note: Yes, this is certainly good news, although it is not really "news" to most Doctor Yourself Newsletter readers. It is rather an official confirmation, one that has, finally, gotten the attention of the media. Even FOX news picked it up. As Gomer Pyle said, "Goll-y!")

WHY THE DELAY?
Commentary by Bill Sardi
"With a growing body of evidence mounting, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers recently conceded that intravenous vitamin C may be an effective treatment for cancer. Last year the same researchers reported a similar study but the news media failed to publish it.
"The latest study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms the work of Nobel-Prize winner Linus Pauling who conducted cancer research in the 1970s with vitamin C. Dr. Pauling's studies were discredited at the time by poorly conducted research studies at the Mayo Clinic.

"NIH researchers made no mention of their earlier study in 2004 which showed that oral-dose vitamin C can achieve three times greater blood concentration than previously thought possible, a fact which negates the current Recommended Dietary Allowance for vitamin C. NIH researchers refuse to issue a retraction of their earlier flawed research which mistakenly claimed humans cannot benefit from high-dose oral vitamin C supplements."

More at http://www.knowledgeofhealth.com/
Also see: http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/09/13/cancer_intravenous_vitamin_c_effective_treatment.htm
Full citation:
Qi Chen, Michael Graham Espey , Murali C. Krishna, James B. Mitchell, Christopher P. Corpe, Garry R. Buettner, Emily Shacter, and Mark Levine. Pharmacologic ascorbic acid concentrations selectively kill cancer cells: Action as a pro-drug to deliver hydrogen peroxide to tissues. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0506390102
"Extracellular but not intracellular ascorbate mediated cell death, which occurred by apoptosis and pyknosis/necrosis . . . (T)hese data indicate that ascorbate at concentrations achieved only by i.v. administration may be a pro-drug for formation of H2O2, and that blood can be a delivery system of the pro-drug to tissues. These findings give plausibility to i.v. ascorbic acid in cancer treatment..."
This News release was provided by DOCTOR YOURSELF News (Vol. 5 , No. 13 for October, 2005)

HIGH DOSES OF INTRAVENOUS VITAMIN C FIGHT CANCER

Kathleen Doheny, The New York Times, Tues, Sept.13, 2005
"High doses of vitamin C administered intravenously can fight cancer -- at least in the laboratory, researchers report.

"(The study) examined the body's absorption of the nutrient and found that while oral intake does reach a saturation point, when you give doses intravenously they go through the roof in the blood and then they are cleared, said lead researcher Dr. Mark Levine (chief of the molecular and clinical nutrition section and senior staff physician, National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases). According to Levine, a 10 gram dose (10,000 milligrams) of vitamin C given intravenously produces bloodstream concentrations more than 25-fold higher than concentrations achieved from the same oral dose.

"Some antibiotics are poorly absorbed when given orally but fight infections effectively when given intravenously, and Levine and his team thought that might be the case with vitamin C and cancer. Working with cell lines in the laboratory, they used high doses of vitamin C that could only be achieved by IV administration.

At the highest concentration of ascorbic acid, if given intravenously, they don't touch normal cells and they kill lots of cancer cells. We don't know why, Levine said."

(Editor’s note: Yes, this is certainly good news, although it is not really "news" to most Doctor Yourself Newsletter readers. It is rather an official confirmation, one that has, finally, gotten the attention of the media. Even FOX news picked it up. As Gomer Pyle said, "Goll-y!")

WHY THE DELAY?
Commentary by Bill Sardi
"With a growing body of evidence mounting, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers recently conceded that intravenous vitamin C may be an effective treatment for cancer. Last year the same researchers reported a similar study but the news media failed to publish it.
"The latest study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms the work of Nobel-Prize winner Linus Pauling who conducted cancer research in the 1970s with vitamin C. Dr. Pauling's studies were discredited at the time by poorly conducted research studies at the Mayo Clinic.

"NIH researchers made no mention of their earlier study in 2004 which showed that oral-dose vitamin C can achieve three times greater blood concentration than previously thought possible, a fact which negates the current Recommended Dietary Allowance for vitamin C. NIH researchers refuse to issue a retraction of their earlier flawed research which mistakenly claimed humans cannot benefit from high-dose oral vitamin C supplements."

More at http://www.knowledgeofhealth.com/
Also see: http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/09/13/cancer_intravenous_vitamin_c_effective_treatment.htm
Full citation:
Qi Chen, Michael Graham Espey , Murali C. Krishna, James B. Mitchell, Christopher P. Corpe, Garry R. Buettner, Emily Shacter, and Mark Levine. Pharmacologic ascorbic acid concentrations selectively kill cancer cells: Action as a pro-drug to deliver hydrogen peroxide to tissues. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0506390102

"Extracellular but not intracellular ascorbate mediated cell death, which occurred by apoptosis and pyknosis/necrosis . . . (T)hese data indicate that ascorbate at concentrations achieved only by i.v. administration may be a pro-drug for formation of H2O2, and that blood can be a delivery system of the pro-drug to tissues. These findings give plausibility to i.v. ascorbic acid in cancer treatment..."

This News release was provided by DOCTOR YOURSELF News (Vol. 5 , No. 13 for October, 2005)