A Newborn baby lay in convulsions, which many drugs and sedatives had failed to relieve. She was given a single injection of a harmless substance. The convulsions stopped at once. Doctors discovered the child needed injections and tablets daily for the next eight years to prevent further trouble. A child with cyctic fibrosis was taking a powerful antibiotic to prevent infections. Neuritis of the nerves of the eye developed as a side effect of the drug. she was given some pills and the neuritis disappeared. The life - saving antibiotic could be administered without harm so long as the other medication was maintained.
A 62-year-old woman came to an Alabama hospital with alarming symptoms. She had no appetite, suffered from nausea and vomiting, mental depression, pallor, muscle pains and heart pains. She had tingling sensations in hands and feet and a scaly dermatitis. She suffered from anemia, exhaustion, swollen ankles, extremely high cholesterol levels and a liver disorder. She had been on a highly nourishing diet to restore her health after a lifetime of heavy drinking. What was wrong? An injection of one harmless substance cured all her symptoms within a few days.This story was told in the American Journal Clinical Nutrition.
Seven young women taking oral contraceptives came to a Florida physician suffering from a desperately serious form of anemia. So long as they took The Pill, the anemia grew worse. The physician gave them a harmless substance in a pill. They improved almost at once and could continue taking The Pill in good health so long as they continued to take the doctor's pill as well. What was it? A wonder drug? This story appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
A five-month-old baby was vomiting persistenly and had an extensive skin rash which was spreading in spite of many medications his physician gave him. His breathing was abnormal; he appeared to have acidosis. Put on a new diet, he went into shock. The physician gave him a bit of one harmless substance. The vomiting stopped immediately and within a few days the baby was completely well. The Lancet printed this account.
An acute alcoholic suffering from delirium tremens had not worked for three years, had been alcoholic for six years. He was taken to a New York hospital with an accumulation of fluid in his lungs. In the operating room a tube was inserted into his stomach. Into the tube was poured a liquid food. Within 48 hours the man was walking around, needing no further treatment than the prescribed feeding at regular intervals. After three months he had gained 30 pounds, was working steadily. Magic? Magic doesn't get into medical journals and that's where this story was reported.
A brain-injured child had had seizures every day for three years. His doctors had given him tranquilizers in an efforts to control the seizures, with no success. Ha was given some tablets and eleven day later had his first day completely free from seizures. A second child who had suffered from many seizures every day for two years was completely free from them within three days and was a healthy, happy child four years later. The doctor who treated him believes there many be as many as 20 million American children suffering from varying degrees of mental illness who could be helped with this same therapy. A psychiatrist reported this story in Schizophrenia, Volume 3, Number 2.
An 80-year-old widow, living alone since her husband's, was depressed, hopeless, suicidal. She suffered from insomnia, was underweight, had an enlarged heart and a peculiar rash on those parts of her face and hands that are exposed to sunlight. She came to a British hospital, as given injections for three weeks, went home, completely well and cheerful.
A patient who had suffered for 20 years from inability to work, loss of interest in surroundings, loss of appetite, food allergies, dizziness, fainting spells, headaches, shortness of breath and nervousness was treated with certain diet, plus some tablets. Within five days his acute symptoms disappeared, and three months later he was free from all symptoms and leading a well-adjusted life. This story was reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
A 10-year-old girl, once bright and alert, began to complain of abdominal pains and headaches. Her school grades deteriorated, she became cranky and difficult, refused to play the piano which she had always enjoyed. She heard "voices", felt afraid of many harmless things. People's faces seemed peculiar to her. Buildings appeared to be falling on her. Her physician gave her some tablets and within a month she was once again a bright, happy little girl.
These stories are not fiction. The tablets and injections given, in many instances, are members of the B complex of vitamins, completely harmless and beneficent. The diets accompanied some of the treatments are diets high in protein and the B vitamins. No wonder drugs are involved; no magic spells. All the stories appeared originally in highly reputable medical and scientific journals, which is where we found them when we were doing research for this articles.
There are many more stories of this kind-just as dramatic, just as convincing. In most of these cases, the B vitamins were given in what is called "megadoses" that is, amounts much larger than one would ordinarily get at meal times or in food supplements. In some cases, it appears that the vitamin or vitamins involved work like drugs. In others, it is apparent that the individual had need for far more of this particular vitamin then the rest of us need.
In every cases, the vitamin treatment is harmless, with none of the unpleasant side effects which accompany many drugs. Itis possible for you to use this information to help yourself or members of your family? With caution, yes, so far as the B vitamins are concerned, for they are water soluble, which means that, they are easily and quickly excreted and pose little threat of harm.
It is also our hope that this article, in some small way, can convince more doctors to use vitamins, especially the versatile B Complex, to alleviate much needless suffering.
Better still, with full knowledge of the B Complex, you can probably prevent such wide spread disorders that we discuss from ever appearing. That is the purpose of this article to help you to become acquainted with the B vitamins, what their role is in maintaining good health, what foods they are most abundant in, and how you can use them to secure abundant health for yourself and your family.
When we speak niacin, riboflavin and thiamine-three of the harmless substances referred to above-we are discussing three of the 11 B vitamins. Unfortunately, most of us known very little about this B complex, team of vitamins that work together like mountain climbers, each helping the other out when the need arises. This, then, is one of the few articles on all of the B vitamins, their sources, their need in human nutrition, and some of the important research work being done with them. Although it is possible that more B vitamins will eventually be discovered, U.S. scientists now recognize only eleven. They are:
- B-1-Thiamine
- B-2-Riboflavin
- B-3-Niacin
- B-6-Pyridoxine
- Pantothenic Acid
- Biotin
- Folic Acid
- B-12-Cobalamine
- Choline
- Inositol
- PABA (Para-amino-benzoic acid)
As you see, some of the B vitamins have numbers and some do not. Also, they skip from B3 to B6, then to B12, etc. Biotin was once called vitamin H. Some articles list B15 which, we are told, is being used most effectively abroad to prevent some serious conditions. One early classic book, Vitamins in Medicine, by Dr. Franklin Bicknell and Frederick Prescott, also listed vitamin B12a, B12b, B12c, B13 and B14.
The complexity of vitamin research is well demonstrated by the fact that other substances keep turning up in the B Complex of vitamins which one researcher or another in this country (U.S.) and abroad chooses to call a new vitamin. One such is vitamin B4 which prevents a disease of poultry, B5 which is essential for health in some animals, B8 also called adenylic acid, B14 which seems to be related to vitamin B12. Whether or not any or perhaps all of these may turn out eventually to be bona fide B vitamins remain to be seen. We know, however, that all these exist in the same foods.
Perhaps we should also add that some biochemists do not regard choline, inositol and PABA as vitamins, although they are part of the B Complex.
Vitamins -any vitamin- do not suddenly appear in a laboratory labeled vitamin B1 or B2. The biochemist does not pick up a cup of brewer's yeast must be vitamin B1 and the little pieces vitamin B2.
Until about 50 years ago, no one knew there were such thing as vitamins, although scientists and physicians knew, in general, that there were some substances in certain foods which could prevent certain deficiency diseases. If the substances were destroyed by heat or soaking or some other process, the disease would not be prevented, no matter how much of the depleted food was eaten. This was what the early scientists had to go on, and they made plenty of mistakes.
Dr. Casimir Funk, who died at 83 in Albany, N.Y. in November 1967, discovered vitamins in 1911. He had theorized that chemical substances, which he called vitamins (from the Latin word "vita" for life and "amine" for chemical compounds containing nitrogen) were capable of preventing deficiency diseases such as scurvy, pellagra and rickets, and indeed were essential to the sustenance of healthy life, according to the Dec. 1, 1967 issue of Time. The assumption that all vitamins contained nitrogen later proved to be wrong, and the "e" was dropped from "vitamin".
Moving from the Pasteur Institute in Paris to the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in London in 1910, Dr. Funk pursued the causes of beriberi, the vitamin B deficiency disease that attacks the nerves, heart and digestive system. Beriberi was particularly prevalent in those days among Eastern people whose diet consisted mainly of polished rice.
Funk put test pigeons on a rice diet, the Time article continued. "First he fed them polished rice; then natural rice, with all its bran coating they thrived; when they did not they suffered from polyneuritis. Obviously, the bran-fed pigeons were getting a nutrient that the other were not. Funk concentrated the nutrient, now known as vitamin B1".
After becoming a U.S. citizen in 1920, Dr. Funk went back to Europe, where he continued his research in Poland nd France. He returned to the U.S. at the start of World War II. "Funk continued his cancer research. All the while, he maintained more than a proprietary interest in nutrition, served as a research consultant to the U.S. Vitamin and Pharmaceutical Corporation, and helped to develop artificial vitamins", Time said.
Until 1926 scientists generally believed that vitamin B was a single entity. Then several scientists showed that there were at least two kinds, one of which could be destroyed easily by heat, another which was not destroyed by heat. Soon after, scientists in laboratories in many parts of the world began to isolate different parts of these substances, and, of course, called them by whatever name they happened to think of. Vitamin B2 was called riboflavin, except that in Europe that called it lactoflavin (because it is abundant in milk), and in the U.S. it was called vitamin G for a long time.
What is now pyridoxine has been labeled Factor Y, Factor I, Factor H, adermin and Factor B6. The term "vitamin B complex" at present refers to all vitamins split off from the original vitamin B nd identified chemically or by their biological effects. Bicknell and Prescott define a B vitamin s "an organic substance which acts catalytically in all living cells and which is essential for the nutrition of higher animals". A catalyst is a substance which causes biochemical changes to take place. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Handbook, Food, defines vitamins as "one group of substance that in relatively small amounts are essential for life and growth".
By "catalytically", Bicknell and Prescott mean that B vitamins are involved in many of the incredibly complex workings of the body. And we do mean complex. In the official National Academy of a science's book, Recommended Dietary Allowances, the B vitamin biotin is listed as taking part in about 15 or 20 processes involving many different enzymes. Scientists, you see, are not content with just observing that lack of biotin causes certain body symptoms. They must know, too, exactly what biotin does in the body that prevents these symptoms from occurring. Needless to say, scientists have only begun to untangle the mysteries. It may be hundreds of years before all the complexities are understood, or perhaps they never will be.
What we do know, basically and thoroughly, about the B vitamins is that they are indeed a "complex" which means that they are closely related to one another, that they work together and they occur, generally speaking, in the same groups of food.
Thiamine, s we have learned, is the vitamin which prevents beriberi. It is also essential for proper nerve function. Its deficiency brings neuritis, paralysis, atrophy of muscles, edema or swelling. Symptoms disappear magically when thiamine is given.
Riboflavin can bring about a variety of symptoms hen it is absent or deficient: mouth inflammation, sores at the corners of the lips, visual fatigue, a "sandy" feeling of the eyes, in ability to endure bright lights. Seborrhea, scaly skin disease, is also a symptom of riboflavin deficiency.
Niacin is responsible for the health of skin, nerves and digestive tract-a big order for a substance needed only in milligrams. Pellagra is the deficiency disease when niacin is lacking. It produces three conditions: diarrhea, dermatitis, and dementia- and death if it is not treated. Niacin is also known as nicotinic acid. Nicotinamide, the physiologically active from of niacin, is also called niacinamide.
Pyridoxine was recently listed by the National Academy of Sciences as being essential to human life and an official recommended dietary allowance was made. Lack of pyridoxine can also cause seborrhea, convulsions in babies, mouth disorders similar to those caused by lack of other B vitamins and nerve symptoms.
Biotin has no number officially. Nor does our NAS set a daily recommended dose, although biotin is assumed to be essential to man. Symptoms of lack of biotin are: lassitude, lack of appetite, depression, muscle pain, scaling dermatitis, nausea, anemia, high blood levels of cholesterol and changes in heart rhythm.
Choline is officially regarded as a vitamin, although no official recommendation for daily intake has been made. In animals, it protects against abnormalities in pregnancy and lactation. Lack of it brings anemia, cardiovascular disease and muscle weakness to various animals.
Pantothenic acid, discovered by Dr. Roger J. Williams of the University of Texas, is also involved in many enzyme activities within the body. Lack of this vitamin produces apathy, depression, instability of heart action, abdominal pains, increased susceptibility to infection, impaired function of the important adrenal glands which bulwark us against stress, and certain nerve disorders involving "pins and needles" feelings and muscle weakness. (Do these sound like symptoms of anybody you know?)
Folic acid is closely related in function to vitamin B12. Lack of it produces a kind of anemia (macrocytic) which can be fatal. Symptoms also include inflammation of the tongue, diarrhea, lack of ability to absorb food. It is listed in Recommended Dietary Allowances as folacin.
Vitamin B12 is the substance that occurs along with the rest of the B vitamins. Says Food, "It is required for the growth and proper nutrition of animals, but its role in human nutrition is not known". Hence it is not officially a vitamin. Adelle Davis in her book, "Let's Get Well, says that, in the absence of enough choline and inositol, lecithin cannot be formed in the body. Lecithin is that important emulsifying substance which keeps cholesterol from forming unwanted deposits on the insides of the blood vessels. So, although inositol is not officially listed as a B vitamin, it appears that one day it may be.
Para-amino-benzoic acid is sometimes considered a B vitamin, although is is not recognized officially as such. Miss Davis tells us it was available some time ago only on prescription. She tells marvelous stories about its ability to restore color to white hair and says that anyone wanting healthy hair should take large amounts of folic acid, PABA and pantothenic acid daily, as well as use every day wheat germ, liver, brewer yeast and yogurt.
Food states that the sometimes-mentioned vitamins B13, B14, and B15 have not been classified as vitamins and have not been provided to be essential to human health. As you can see, these are substances which occur along with the B vitamins, which one scientist or another has isolated and is studying. If someone can come up with proof that one or another of these is actually essential to human life and can prevent the appearance of certain deficiency symptoms, then this substance will probably (after many years of official inquiry) be designated as a vitamin. And that's the way these things are handled.
As we have said, it is unbelievably complex, as everything in nature is. The one certain lesson we can learn from studying the B complex is the lesson our food technologists have never learned and apparently incapable of learning. Nature likes things whole. Nothing worthwhile is achieved in natured with fragments. Lifting all of the B complex of vitamins from our wholegrain cereals-when they are milled and processed- then returning only bits of three of the B vitamins synthetically is probably the worst possible thing we would do, for the imbalances thus created are unimaginably complex. Many of the trace minerals are also lost in this refining process.
It may take centuries to discover the amount of harm we have done to human health by thus fragmenting one of man's basic foods-bread. Yet this is done by our giant smiling industry when they produce white flour, white rice, and all the highly processed breakfast cereals.
All the B vitamins occur together in the same foods, although one food may contain a bit more of one, a bit less of another. These foods are:
- Liver and all organ meats
- Eggs
- Milk, cheese
- Meat, fish, poultry
- Green, leafy vegetables
- Whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes
- Foods yeast
