Vitamin C, Heart Disease, Cancer, Collagen, Linus Pauling
Posted by admin on Sep 5, 2009
http://www.encognitive.com
By Michael Wooldridge, MAWooldridge@lbl.gov
One of the great scientific mavericks of this century spoke at LBL August 10, 1993 at a special seminar hosted by the Life Sciences Division’s Lipoprotein and Atherosclerosis Group. Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel laureate and the world’s foremost vitamin C proponent, entertained an overflow crowd in the Bldg. 66 auditorium with a talk on Vitamin C and Heart Disease.
The lively 92-year-old first gave a candid history of how he came to take up the vitamin C cause. He was introduced to the subject by biochemist Irwin Stone in 1966. Five years later, he would pen “Vitamin C and the Common Cold,” and then boldly go on to champion vitamin C as a fighter of more serious diseases such as cancer.
According to Pauling, the vitamin’s versatility in illness prevention arises from its role in the manufacture of collagen, the protein that gives shape to connective tissues and strength to skin and blood vessels.
One of the great misfortunes of human evolution, Pauling explained, was when our human ancestors lost their ability to manufacture vitamin C. Pauling thinks the trait was probably discarded at a time when our ancestors had a diet of vitamin-rich plants and didn’t need to produce the vitamin themselves. This left today’s primates (including humans) as one of the few groups of animals that must get the vitamin through the diet.
Ever since proto-humans moved out of fruit-and-vegetable-rich habitats, Pauling said, they have suffered great deficiencies of vitamin C. Pauling has forthrightly recommended that people make up for this deficiency with daily doses of vitamin C much greater than the 60 mg generally recommended.
He said our vitamin C consumption should be on par with what other animals produce by themselves, typically 10-12 grams a day. Pauling practices what he preaches, having gradually upped his daily doses of vitamin C from 3 grams in the 1960s to a hefty 18 grams today.
Pauling went on to discuss vitamin C’s connection with lipoprotein-a, a substance whose levels in the blood have been linked to cardiovascular disease. Lipoprotein-a is also a major component of the plaques found in the blood vessels of atherosclerosis patients.
Pauling has published studies asserting that lipoprotein-a is a surrogate for vitamin C, serving to strengthen blood vessel walls in the absence of adequate amounts of the vitamin in the diet. In the lecture, Pauling noted that animals which, unlike humans, manufacture their vitamin C and have much higher levels of the vitamin in their bodies, have very little lipoprotein-a in their blood.
Pauling is convinced that doses of vitamin C can help prevent the onset of cardiovascular disease, inhibiting the formation of disease-promoting lesions on blood vessel walls and perhaps decreasing the production of lipoprotein-a in the blood. Vitamin C’s link to healthy blood vessels, Pauling said, is further supported by studies of scurvy, the disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. Fifty percent of patients who die of scurvy, he said, do so because of ruptured blood vessels.
Pauling won his first Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 for using quantum mechanics to elucidate the nature of chemical bonds. He garnered a Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 for his efforts to stem nuclear weapons proliferation.
The scientist founded the Linus Pauling Institute in Palo Alto, where research on vitamin C and other nutrients continues today.
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/pauling-and-vitamin-c.html
Duration : 0:2:53
Heart Disease, Cancer, Diabetes, Cure, Treatment, Medicine
Posted by admin on Sep 5, 2009
http://www.encognitive.com
Natural Medicine Leads to Real Cures
In contrast, the philosophy of natural medicine holds that a weakened immune system (and/or along with other weakened bodily systems) is the reason foreign invaders can thrive, producing symptoms and diseases.
Most of us are taught that we need to go to medical doctors when we get sick. What we aren’t taught is that the real doctor is already within us as the innate wisdom of the body. This is the difference between conventional allopathic systems and natural holistic medicine systems. The philosophy of natural medicine is that, given the right conditions, the body will heal itself. Whereas the allopathic model tries to control defective body systems through drug intervention, or kill foreign invaders with antibiotics, natural medicine rarely includes toxic agents. Instead, herbs, homeopathic remedies and other non-invasive therapies are used. These techniques harmoniously help facilitate the repair and strengthening of bodily systems (especially the immune system, which can then properly fight foreign invaders), or help to destroy offending pathogens without toxic side effects. The goal of natural medicine is to figure out why systems have weakened and then repair them, which results in healing.
Allopathic Medicine—Symptom/Disease Management
The allopathic medical philosophy taught at most medical schools, and practiced by the majority of medical doctors, relies on the concept of identifying diseases or symptoms, and then prescribing drugs to manage or combat those conditions. It is a system that considers the disease or symptom to be the actual problem, as opposed to addressing the underlying causes that produced the disease or symptom in the first place. A wide variety of tests, procedures and equipment specially designed to identify diseases and symptoms have been developed, which on one level is great, because these tests could be used to help figure out underlying causes. Yet, on another level they are very limiting, since they are rarely used for such purposes. Typically, once a diagnosis is determined, the tests are plunked into the patient’s file as conclusive evidence of his or her condition.
Duration : 0:5:32
Linus Pauling: Nature of the Universe
Posted by admin on Sep 12, 2009
http://www.encognitive.com
The Genius of Dr. Linus Pauling
The world’s only 2 time unshared Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Linus Pauling, stated “You can trace every sickness, every disease and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.” Dr. Linus Pauling practiced this personally and lived to the age of 93 (Feb 28, 1901 – Aug 19, 1994). He was awarded a Nobel in Chemistry for his work on the nature of chemical bonds, and the Nobel Peace Prize for his work against nuclear testing. Linus Pauling was considered to be the father of molecular biology, implementing the science of Quantum Mechanics with that of biology. Genius quite often operates outside the popular ingrained beliefs of society, and is often not recognized as being genius until many years, decades, or even centuries later. “It takes one to know one.” Linus Pauling talked of nutrients (especially vitamin C, niacin and lysine) being used in high dosages as being the prevention and cure for many mental and physical disorders/diseases (heart disease, schizophrenia), but much of the scientific & medical community in those days were not able to step outside their chemical pharmaceutical beliefs. Even now, over 40 years later, this information is still largely rejected. It is however slowly gaining acceptance. The abundance of health foods stores, and the massive growth in sales of organic foods displays this quite clearly. People are finally becoming aware that there is a reason degenerative disease rates are continuously rising, and that it’s largely due to malnutrition.
Ortho-Molecular
“Ortho” means “correct” or “right” and a “molecule” is “the smallest particle of a substance that retains all the properties of the substance and is composed of one or more atoms”. So “orthomolecular” means “correct molecule”, and the correct molecules that are being referred to are nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, antioxidants, enzymes, essential fatty acids, etc.
Orthomolecular Medicine
Orthomolecular medicine is the practice of preventing and treating disease by providing the body with optimal amounts of substances which are natural to the body, quite often in megadoses exceeding the “normal” recommended daily dosage. The purpose is to restore the optimum environment of the body by correcting imbalances and/or deficiencies.
Organic Materials
It’s important to stress that this is not referring to the use of the artificial inorganic chemically produced vitamins that are so popular in stores nowadays. This refers to natural organic supplements “normally found in the body”. Organic matter is something that has been derived from living things, and contains carbon, or is carbon-bond.
Orthomolecular Psychiatry
Orthomolecular psychiatry is simply the use of “the right molecules in the right amounts” to help prevent and treat mental and emotional disorders such as ADHD, alcoholism, Alzheimer’s Disease, anxiety, autism, bipolar disorder, depression, drug addiction, hyperactivity, retardation, schizophrenia, and senility. This provides the optimal molecular environment for the mind.
Bodily Needs
Nutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential fatty acids, enzymes, co-enzymes, antioxidants, phytochemicals, etc. are absolutely required in order for the body to function properly. Minerals are largely obtained from the foods we eat, and the mineral content of our foods depends upon the mineral content of the soil that it’s grown in. So if our soils are depleted of minerals from the use of chemicals, so are our foods, and so are our bodies in turn. If our processed machine-made food is inorganic, that doesn’t supply the body with what it needs either. If the body doesn’t receive all of the proper raw materials that it needs, health problems and degenerative diseases are sure to follow. Many of the “foods” we buy in the grocery store today are severely lacking in nutrients and/or they contain harmful contaminants.
A natural organic body requires natural organic things.
“Let food be your medicine, let medicine be your food.” – Hippocrates
http://www.thetruthaboutfoodandhealth.com/articles/orthomolecular-psychiatry-medicine-linus-pauling.html
Duration : 0:7:35
Healthbeat – Vitamin D & Heart Disease
Posted by admin on Sep 12, 2009
On the Healthbeat, Low levels of a certain vitamin could leave you with a big problem. Christine Jones sat down with Doctor Barry Ramo to find out about Vitamin D’s link to heart disease.
Duration : 0:1:46
Why High-Dose Supplements Won’t Help Your Heart
Posted by admin on Sep 12, 2009
Laurence S. Sperling, MD, founder and director of Preventive Cardiology at the Emory Clinic in Atlanta, explains that, despite their popularity, supplements have not been proven to prevent heart disease. He does, however, recommend a multivitamin.
Duration : 0:0:46
Vitamin D: Essential for Prevention of Diseases
Posted by admin on Aug 20, 2009
http://www.encognitive.com
Vitamin D: importance in the prevention of cancers, type 1 diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis.
The purpose of this review is to put into perspective the many health benefits of vitamin D and the role of vitamin D deficiency in increasing the risk of many common and serious diseases, including some common cancers, type 1 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis. Numerous epidemiologic studies suggest that exposure to sunlight, which enhances the production of vitamin D3 in the skin, is important in preventing many chronic diseases. Because very few foods naturally contain vitamin D, sunlight supplies most of our vitamin D requirement.
25-Hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] is the metabolite that should be measured in the blood to determine vitamin D status. Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in infants who are solely breastfed and who do not receive vitamin D supplementation and in adults of all ages who have increased skin pigmentation or who always wear sun protection or limit their outdoor activities. Vitamin D deficiency is often misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia.
A new dietary source of vitamin D is orange juice fortified with vitamin D. Studies in both human and animal models add strength to the hypothesis that the unrecognized epidemic of vitamin D deficiency worldwide is a contributing factor of many chronic debilitating diseases. Greater awareness of the insidious consequences of vitamin D deficiency is needed. Annual measurement of serum 25(OH)D is a reasonable approach to monitoring for vitamin D deficiency. The recommended adequate intakes for vitamin D are inadequate, and, in the absence of exposure to sunlight, a minimum of 1000 IU vitamin D/d is required to maintain a healthy concentration of 25(OH)D in the blood.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/79/3/362
Duration : 0:7:58