Personalized Nutrition Requirements

Nutrition must always be considered from an individual’s requirements, including age, heredity, inborn metabolic errors, occupation, urban exposure, diet and digestive capability taught by the Chinese 5,000 years ago as a primary importance.

It was the Chinese who also stressed the importance of the energy flows in the organisms of all living cellular forms and the balance between the opposing forms, called by them, Yin-Yang; today, this is called Acid-Alkaline.

In the prevention of premature aging and senility, the role of vitamin A is that of protecting the structure of cells when three to four times the declared daily requirements is fed throughout life in rat studies.  Curiously, birds need five to ten times as much vitamin A as animals.

Vitamin E is an antioxidant which acts as a scavenger of the deadly free radicals.  But according to Dr. Roslyn Alfin-Slater of the UCLA School of Public Health, there is no solid evidence that mega-doses of vitamin E will extended human life, although it has extended the life span of laboratory rats, and Dr. Alfin-Slater herself takes the vitamin daily since learning that the UCLA rats not lived longer, but also were less susceptible to the toxic effects of air pollution.

An extensive evaluation of research related to aging and nutrition, by Dr. Alfin-Slater and associates, shows that vitamin E may be tied up to the biochemical and nutritional riddle.

A study by Russian researcher, Y. Ramantsev, proves that vitamin C combined with vitamin P (bioflavonoids) helps reduce hemorrhages and increases the survival rate of animals after irradiation.

Vitamin E vs. Diabetes.  Vitamin E may help control diabetes, claims Dr. Marvin Bierenbaum, research director in Montclair, New Jersey.

He found that 2,000 International Units (I.U.) of vitamin E taken daily for six weeks lowered blood levels enough to lower blood pressure and prevent blood clotting, two dangerous side effects of diabetes.  Furthermore, vitamin E is effective in reducing diabetes-related cataracts.

Chuckles: Age does not depend on years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old – and some never grow old.                                                                                                                           

Sodium Chloride and High Blood Pressure

The average person consumes dangerously large quantities of sodium chloride, the common table salt and medical experts warn that as many as 20 out of 100 of us eventually will develop potentially fatal high blood pressure as a result.

Sodium is the culprit, and the amounts we consume come not only from the 15 pounds of table salt the average person eats in the course of a year, but from the sodium-laden processed food that have become such a large part of our diet.

One of the reasons people are afflicted with hypertension is that most of them don’t know how little sodium they need or how dangerous too much of it can be.

Studies have shown that throughout most of human history, people survived quite well on what would today be considered a low-sodium or even sodium-free diet.

Sodium and potassium are essential for the regulation of the body’s internal water supply and after millions of years of a high-potassium (from fruits and vegetables) low-sodium diet, the body has developed a system for conserving sodium and getting rid of excess potassium.

Today’s high-salt diet throws this system out of control, causing a build-up of fluid in the tissues which often results in high blood pressure, leading to kidney damage, stroke and heart disease.

Another hazard of the high-salt diet is extreme premenstrual moodiness and physical discomfort for some women. Symptoms include bloating, headaches, spontaneous weeping and uncontrollable anger.

Following a low-salt regimen for 10 days before the onset of menstruation has been shown to lessen the severity of those symptoms or even eliminate them, according to studies made by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs.

The Committee further recommended that Americans cut their average salt intake from about 18 grams a day to 5 grams at maximum.  The body requires only 220 milligrams of sodium daily, and the 2,000 milligrams supplied by five grams of salt is more than sufficient without being dangerous for most people.

Tidbits.  Studies show that the contributing cause of cholesterol includes pork, sugar, hydrogenated fats (margarine), coffee, alcohol and lack of exercise.

Drug-Induced Malnutrition

Organic Consumer reports that Americans are considered to be the most drug-oriented people in the world: drugs to wake up; drugs to go to sleep; drugs to tranquilize the mind against tensions; drugs to lose weight; drugs for pimples, falling hair, and about every human complaint.

Most, if not all, drugs can create serious nutritional deficiencies difficult to document unless in severe cases, or where research has been done in the development and marketing of a drug, such as the “pill,” known to create vitamin B-6 deficiency.

Drug-induced malnutrition is a serious threat to many consumers, especially those who overuse alcohol.  Others at risk too include those hospitalized and persons using multiple drugs.

Dr. Daphne A. Roe of Cornell University spoke out concerning drug-induced malnutrition: “Many physicians do not know about the effect of drugs on nutrition and malnutrition, although it is generally recognized that anti-convulsion drugs used in the treatment of epilepsy can cause deficiencies of the B-vitamins, folic acid, vitamin D and K.  This can lead to bone disease.

Appetite-reducing drugs and high doses of digitalis are often forerunners of malnutrition as are of the cancer chemotherapeutic drugs.

Deficiencies of potassium, zinc and magnesium all critically important for life-support, are created through extended use of diuretics often prescribed in combination with drugs to reduce high blood pressure.

Antibiotics can create nutritional deficiencies through creating malabsorption in the colon.  Some hospitals provided yogurt during and following antibiotic use.

Daily doses of folic acid, a B vitamin, can save or prolong the lives of 400,000 heart and artery disease patients every year, declared cardiologist Dr. Kurt A. Oster.

Folic acid counteracts the damage to heart and arteries caused by an enzyme in homogenized milk, xanthine oxidase or XO.

“I believe,” says Dr. Oster, “that half of all atherosclerosis – fatty build-up in arteries – is caused by XO because of the widespread use of homogenized milk in the U.S.A.  About a million people are dying each year of heart and blood vessel diseases and about 500,000 have XO damage.  Folic acid neutralizes XO and restores a substance – plasmalogen – that repairs the damage and stops the fatty buildup.”

Overcoming Renovascular Hypertension

In an issue of HR magazine, there appears a health article by Dr. R.D. Gordon of the University of  Queensland medical unit in Australia that hypertension – a disabling and potentially dangerous condition – can be treated successfully without drugs if the cause can be pinpointed.

One kind of hypertension is that arising from insufficient blood reaching a kidney.  This is called renovascular hypertension.  It is a kind of hypertension where precise diagnosis could be difficult.  A diagnostic procedure where there is no need to suspend medication has been developed. 

A research project aims at establishing the link between the blood pressure and the sympathetic nervous system.  It involves the investigation of the behavior of circulating adrenaline as a modulator of the sympathetic nervous system activity.  The adrenaline, according to Dr. Gordon, is actually the so-called stress hormone which is believed to bring hypertension by causing the arteries to contract in response to stress.

Dr. Gordon’s theory is that adrenaline may work by modulating the release of non-adrenaline, another hormone which directly controls blood pressure.  This hormone comes from nerve endings in many areas of the body, many of which are adjacent to major arteries.  Dr. Gordon suspects that the action of this hormone might be affected by minute traces of adrenaline flowing loosely in the bloodstream.

In conducting this experiment, Dr. Gordon measured the minute quantities of adrenaline and non-adrenaline in the blood of a patient.  The patient is then required to perform isometric (a method of physical exercise in which one set of muscles is tensed, for a period of seconds, in opposition to another set of muscles or to an immovable object) like the raising of the legs stiffly for several times in a day. These isometric exercises, according to Dr. Gordon, was a stimulus for sympathetic nervous system activity.

Slimmer is Healthier.  Most people don’t realize all the health advantages of being slender.  Research shows that people who are from 20 percent or more above recommended weight are more likely to die from heart, circulatory and kidney diseases, cancer, diabetes, digestive disorder, and even accidents.

Thinner people, on the contrary, have a lower risk of trouble from strokes, liver cirrhosis, appendicitis, intestinal obstructions and hernia.

Tidbits. Geriatrics, the study of aging, teaches many conflicting theories, one of the most exciting revolving around the eventual possibility of inserting genes in the DNA, reprogramming their present commands to die within what is called the normal life span.