The Low-Fat Way to Health and Longer Life by Nicolelocky - HTML preview

atherosclerosis or *aging process' reversible?"

A German pathologist, who was well-known to many, arose

and hesitantly gave the following answer: During World War

II he and other pathologists were assigned to study the post-

mortem conditions of victims who, after incarceration for several

years, had died in European concentration camps.

It was found that even in older people there was an astonish-

ing disappearance, through absorption, of atherosclerotic fatty

deposits in the arteries of both the heart and the brain. These

amazing results were attributed to the complete absence of any

fat in the meager scraps of food given to the victims of perse-

cution in the camps. Obesity was completely unknown. Virtually

all victims who had died had exhausted all fat deposits in the

body and were underweight.

The medical congress was even more startled to hear the

German pathologist report the following: The absorption and

reversal of atherosclerosis in the World War II victims was the

same that he and other pathologists had often found among the

German population in World War I. At that time, the reason for

the reversal or absorption of atherosclerosis was ascribed to

lack of fat in the German diet resulting from the British block-

ade of Germany. No fat products necessary for war material

could get into Germany. Therefore, all fats possible had been

removed from food for the manufacture of war products.

It is thus perfectly conceivable that the so -called aging

process itself—atherosclerosis—may be reversed in many older

people by following the low-fat diet and nutritional program.

Possibly this accounts for the remarkable changes, noticed in

older as well as middle-aged people, who have carefully followed

our diet and nutritional way of eating and living.

No wonder that people, after the diet, so often report the

results in such remarks as, "I never felt better in my life", "I

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GROWING YOUNGER WITH THE YEARS

seem to feel younger and younger each day," or "Doctor, I feel

like doing things I haven't done since I was a youngster, I feel so

young!"

Typical also is the case of our patient, Mr. J., a 61-year old

manufacturer. After 40 years of back-breaking labor, he had

built up a nationally-known, successful business that made preci-

sion tools for engines in the airplane industry. His son and son-

in-law noticed that in the past year dad had "slowed up"

pathetically.

Mr. J. seemed suddenly to have become an old man. He felt

tired, listless; it was a great effort for him to stay awake during

important conferences with production engineers, salesmen, and

Army Air Force officials who came to study the "plant," its

methods of manufacture, tooling, and equipment. On several

occasions, to his intense embarrassment and utter humiliation,

he discovered that he had fallen asleep during important con-

ferences.

A visit to his physician, a noted university professor, and a

thorough check-up in the hospital yielded no signs of any dis-

ease. Mr. J. was informed he needed a long rest and vacation,

that he was tired out and should take it easy, that he should

"act his age."

There followed a visit to the travel agency by Mr. J. and his

wife. They selected a luxury cruise round the world for four

months. They enjoyed it, although Mr. J. noticed he tired easily

when walking around seeing the interesting sights in various

countries. He also seemed tired and sleepy most of the time.

When he did go to sleep, he slept restlessly and fitfully. On

awakening, he felt even more tired than he was when he went

to bed the night before. It seemed difficult for him to concen-

trate on anything for long. Even watching the movies aboard

ship seemed to tax his patience and he would leave in the middle

of a picture, finding himself too restless and "twitchy" to sit

for too long. Yet his appetite was the same as always. As a

matter of fact, he was a bit too "portly," but he carried his extra

GROWING YOUNGER WITH THE YEARS

191

weight well; in fact, it made him look dignified and impressive.

When Mr. J. returned from his long voyage, he felt not much

different than he did on leaving. True, he was rested and eager

to get back to the plant to see how the new models being pre-

pared for the Air Force were working out.

After a week back at work, he found himself feeling exactly

the same as before his voyage. Sleepy, tired, and now growing

nervous and irritable, much to the dismay of his family, for he

had always been a model of kindness and emotional stability.

In desperation, his wife persuaded him to try the new low-fat

diet with the vitamin- nutritional plan of eating and living. He

felt he had nothing to lose and agreed to give it all a "sporting

chance," but he really suspected the whole thing was a ridicu-

lous fad. After all, he ate three good square meals a day. What

was the point of losing weight and going to all this fuss about

funny "health" foods?

To his own amazement and disbelief, in one month he noticed

sudden changes in himself. Still later, he found himself one

day hurriedly running upstairs ahead of his son in his eagerness

to see a new machine installed. A few months later, on another

occasion, he noticed that his younger associates were growing

tired after a long conference. They asked for a coffee-break.

And yet he felt just as fresh as when he started. He really

couldn't understand it. He was sleeping well for the first time

in a long while and noticed that, although he had lost 25 pounds

in weight and had to pull in his belt three notches, his step had

become light and springy.

In another month, the whole world seemed somehow to be a

new one, he felt so good. He could hardly wait to get to work

in the mornings. He felt a real joy in all he did, was conscious

of a continuous surge of cheerfulness and optimism in every-

thing he did and said. In short, he felt young again!

Now he is a real convert to the low-fat nutritional method

and urges it on his children, his business associates, and every-

one who will listen. Clearly, Mr. J. was the typical case of

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overweight and chronic malnutrition amidst plenty. His body

had great need of severely lacking, vital nutritional necessities.

His characteristic symptoms of chronic fatigue and premature

aging were repeated hundreds of times in the cases where Doctor

Tom Spies and his associates had similar, extraordinarily suc-

cessful results.

Weight control also contributes to healthy old age.

The case of our manufacturer Mr. J. brings up and emphasizes

also the necessity for ideal weight in older people, as well as

in the younger ones.

Particularly if you are past 50 or 60 years of age and are

overweight, you can feel healthier and better by reducing your

weight to normal. Suppose that you weigh 170 lbs. and should

weigh 150 lbs., so that you are 20 lbs. overweight. If you are

the average active person, you take at least a thousand steps

each day. This means you "drag" around daily with you 20

lbs. x 1000 (steps) or 20,000 lbs. This is about 10 tons.

Your heart then must pump all the harder to carry this extra

10 tons around with you (on your back, so to speak) every day!

No wonder your heart tends to wear out sooner and shortens

your life.

Can youth be restored in the prematurely aged? Per-

haps the greatest challenge to experimental science has been

the question, "Can youth be restored in the prematurely aged?"

In both animals and humans whose premature aging is con-

tributed to by vitamin and nutritional deficiencies, nutritional

science has been able to answer "yes" in many cases.

There is an old saying used by both the medical profession

and the public, "You are as old as your arteries." This concept

led us to investigate whether it would be possible to produce

"old age" in the arteries, heart, and brain of experimental ani -

mals, and to attempt the crucial challenge of whether these

arteries could be restored to normal health and youth again

afterwards.

Accordingly, in 1945, my associates and I fed a high-fat diet

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193

and cholesterol to a series of 43 experimental animals. Within

30 to 90 days we were certain that the majority of the animals

had already developed from moderate to severe atherosclerosis

in the vital arteries around the heart as well as in other parts

of the body.

Then, over a 6-month period, we fed daily large quantities

of concentrated extracts from Vitamin-B complex to the ani-

mals in one group and no vitamins at all to the other group.

These special vitamin extract feedings were based on the recent,

original discoveries of the value of these nutritional substances

(called "lipotropic" or fat-preventing) made by Doctor Charles

Best and his associates at the University of Toronto. Dr. Best

was the co-discoverer, with Dr. Frederick Banting of Canada,

of insulin.

We soon noticed great changes in the untreated animals, who

had rapidly developed significant atherosclerosis. This con-

trasted sharply with another group of "controls" that had not

been fed the high-fat, high-chholesterol diet, and who were

free of atherosclerosis. At the end of a year, the atherosclerotic

animals were sluggish, inactive, and disinterested in what went

on around them. They showed a drying up and sparseness of

hair; poor tooth and nail growth; "rheumy" eyes, and poor

appetites. In short, they presented the picture of "old age," even

though, chronologically, they were still young animals.

But after six months of intensive feeding of very large quanti-

ties of Vitamin-B complex constituents to the atherosclerotic

group of animals, the changes that took place in them were

startling. After examination of the artery tissues in the animals,

we found (to quote from our scientific reports published in the

medical journals) that "there was re-absorption of athero-

sclerosis in the majority of those animals whose atherosclerosis

had been produced by the fat and cholesterol feedings." In other

words, the aged arteries, filled and damaged with the fatty

plaques or deposits that were destroying the blood vessels, had

become normal and healthy again!

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GROWING YOUNGER WITH THE YEARS

The changes that took place in the appearance and behaviour

of the treated animals were also a pleasure to behold. They were

frisky again, full of play and mischief, alert to every sound and

movement about them, and in great spirits. Their appearance

was also remarkable. Hair growth, color, and texture had be -

come youthful and luxuriant, their eyes sparkling, and their

appetites voracious.

Similar results were also found in the absorption of athero-

sclerosis in experimental animals at Columbia University by

Doctor Albert Steiner and his associates. Other investigators,

as well, demonstrated similar results in the experimental pro-

duction and reversibility of "old age."

These nutritional lessons have been very quickly learned by

the farmer. He saw to it promptly that large daily supplies of

vitamins and nutritional supplements were fed to his livestock

and his poultry. They have become healthier, and yield more

milk, butter, and eggs, and tastier beef, ham and pork. In addi -

tion, they resist illness far better, reproduce their young more

efficiently, grow faster, and are far superior in every possible

respect.

I recall a memorable case that brought this lesson home to

me in an unforgettable way. Over 20 years ago, I was attend -

ing a group of ward patients at a university hospital in Phila -

delphia. One of my charges, Roy W., was a pathetic case—a

young student who suffered from a chronic infection of the bone

that he had had since childhood. It was imperative that, to cure

the condition, he undergo surgery by our brilliant and gifted

professor of orthopedic surgery, Doctor John Royal Moore.

Unfortunately, this young man's nutritional state—his emaci-

ated condition from his chronic and life-threatening infection—

was so bad, that he was judged to be in no condition to undergo

the badly needed surgery. Even his liver and other organs had

become damaged by the chronic infection. But the most appall-

ing damage was his visible aging. This 19-year old looked like

a very old man and talked and felt like one. His hair was gray-

GROWING YOUNGER WITH THE YEARS

195

ing, his eyes dulled, his skin was wrinkled and his voice feeble.

No types of nutritious diet, routine vitamin pill daily intake, or

medicines were of any avail in overcoming his weakness. It

seemed impossible to improve his health to the necessary pre-

operative level.

In desperation, in the attempt to counter the boy's obvious

nutritional deficiencies and his premature aging, I decided upon

a nutritional approach—we would feed him massive amounts of

nutritional supplements. In addition to Herculean doses of all

known vitamins, I persuaded his broken-hearted mother to go

to the city abattoirs and get the freshest liver available. The liver

was then pressed by her own [hands and squeezed to get the fresh

juice. Huge amounts of this were combined with large daily

doses of flavored Brewer's yeast and whole wheat germ in addi-

tion to the large amounts of vitamins mentioned above.

An amazing transformation took place in this young boy within

two months. He became strong, bright, alert, and looked his age

again. His whole appearance became altered. His skin, eyes,

and—strangely enough—his graying hair, were rapidly

becoming normal in color again. The endless, back-breaking

hours that his mother had spent daily preparing and taking his

life-sustaining nutritional aids to his bedside at the hospital

had been rewarded.

Roy made a splendid recovery after his operation. He be-

came the picture of health, and later married and took a posi-

tion as librarian at a famous university. His history was truly

a triumph of the wonders of nutrition—nutrition as it affects

the young as well as the old,

The next step in our research was to see whether our experi-

mental results with animals in "restoring" old arteries to their

youthful state meant anything as far as humans were concerned.

First, my co-workers and I studied for three years the effects

of members of the Vitamin-B complex group (such as choline,

betaine, and inositol) on the atherosclerosis of 230 patients

suffering from coronary artery disease. When we published our

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encouraging results of treatment in the American Heart

Journal for May 1950, we were persuaded to use a

comprehensive treatment method in attacking the problem of

atherosclerosis.

Several more years of research on this question convinced us

of the value of an ideal combination of: (a) low-fat, high-protein

diet, (b) large amounts of Vitamin-B complex together with

lipotropic (fat-preventing) agents such as choloine, betaine, and

inositol (all members of the vitamin B complex) and (c)

nutritional supplements such as liver extract, lecithin, and

Brewer's yeast.

Since it was now apparent to all medical scientists that the

vast majority of the population was already afflicted with

atherosclerosis by the time age 50 or 60 was reached, it was

clear why this condition ranked first now as the cause of death

and illness in the United States.

What was not so clear, however, to most investigators and

physicians was that atherosclerosis, or the "aging process" as it

has so often been called, was responsible for the remarkable

prevalence of premature old age, or "getting older." And what

was equally important was the incredibly widespread symptoms

in those who were past 50 or 60 of fatigue, lack of energy and

vitality, nervousness and depression—not to mention a multi-

tude of digestive tract, circulatory, mental, and other disturb-

ances that stemmed from the combination of atherosclerosis and

chronic nutritional deficiencies.

To put these realities to the "acid" test, my co-workers and I

selected from our hospital research service 102 cases of gener-

alized atherosclerosis and divided them into two main groups.

Cases in one group of 40 patients included mostly individuals

who had proven atherosclerosis of the brain, heart, and other

organs. This group was given the combination of diet, massive

amounts of vitamins and nutritional supplements as just de-

scribed and as outlined in Chapter 5 ("Lecithin and Food

Supplements"). Another and identical "control" group of 40

patients, having the same atherosclerotic conditions, was

GROWING YOUNGER WITH THE YEARS

197

observed for comparison. This group received no dietary or

nutritional treatment. Both groups had equal representation of

men and women. Their ages also were comparable and ranged

from 38 to 80 years. The average age for both groups, how-

ever, was 60. This is an ideal age from an investigative point

of view, because clinically this age seems to be the one most

widely associated with the Symptoms of so-called "aging," as

previously described.

At the end of one year, we published the results in the Decem-

ber 1953 issue of Geriatrics,] the official journal of the American

Geriatric Association. (Gentries is the medical term describing

the field of medicine devoted to the health and care of the

elderly.) Our findings were as follows:

1. Twenty-five per cent of the group of 40 atherosclerosis cases

not treated by our diet and nutritional program had died

of complications from Atherosclerosis, mostly in the heart,

brain, and kidneys.

2. There were no deaths in the group of 40 cases of athero

sclerosis who adhered strictly to the intensive treatment of

the diet and massive vitamin-nutritional supplements.

3. What was equally striking in the treated group was the im

provement constantly noted in well-being, high spirits, in

creased ability to work, to concentrate, and the remarkable

vitality that most patients felt. Typical remarks, volun

teered by patients after a few months on the treatment pro

gram, were: "I feel like I have a new lease on life," "Never

felt better in my life," "Doctor, I feel like a million," "It

was like charging a rundown battery."

4. The proof that these remarkable improvements were not

psychological was also found in comprehensive biochemi

cal analyses that my colleagues and I carried out in all

these cases. The blood fats and cholesterol levels in the

treated series of patients decreased; from a previous, pre -

treatment, slightly abnormal level, they developed into

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ideal blood biochemical levels at the end of a year. The

protective phospho-lipids and lipo-proteins rose to very

high, ideal levels. Some cases even showed remarkable

improvement in their electrocardiograms (the electrical

tracings made by a special instrument to measure the health

and action of the heart).

5. As our published findings stated at the time, these clinical,

chemical, and instrumental findings "indicate arrest or re-

gression of the process of atherosclerosis in the arteries."

This was a careful, scientific way of stating that "the evi-

dence indicates that the aging process in the arteries can be

stopped or that the arteries may be actually improved and

restored to a healthier state." In still other words, it is

apparently not beyond the realm of possibility to create a

rejuvenating process or a return to a healthier, younger

state in the body by adhering to the dietary, nutritional

program recommended in this book.

One delightful example among these cases was Professor L.,

aged 70. A widower, he had taught at universities for a life-

time, was retired, inactive, depressed, and extremely unhappy.

He could not work for long without feeling exhausted; his

powers of concentration seemed to have gone, he was constantly

tired and dispirited. To top it all, he suffered continuously from

"indigestion," which he attributed to his own housekeeping,

cooking or eating out in restaurants.

Thorough examinations and X-ray studies revealed that there

was no physical or organic disease present, other than the usual

amount of atherosclerosis to be found in a man of his years. He

then agreed to follow faithfully our dietary-nutritional program

as previously described.

Within a month there was already a surprising change. But

after three months, his improvement was really remarkable.

Gone were all the digestive symptoms. Professor L. literally

bounced into the office, the picture of vitality and youthful vigor.

GROWING YOUNGER WITH THE YEARS

199

He complained he had so much energy he just had to release it,

or he felt he would explode! "Doctor," he said, "I simply must

go hack to teaching again, I feel so wonderful. Would you

please help me fill out these physical examination forms so I

can get 'medical clearance'?*' I did so with pleasure and wished

him good luck. A little later he secured a position in a

private school.

Imagine my surprise and delight when he came to my office

smilingly several months later. With him was a charming,

matronly widow. They had come in for their Wasserman tests,

as required by the law in the State of California for pre-marriage

certificates. They were leaving soon for their honeymoon!

Apparently it's not only never too late to feel young, but it's

also never too late to act and be young!

We all know that when you have such a sense of well-being

a