Growing Younger With The Years. Part 3

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? Perhaps 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 contributed 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 animals, 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 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 animals 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 contrasted 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 quantities 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 atherosclerosis 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!

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 become youthful and luxuriant, their eyes sparkling, and their appetites voracious. Similar results were also found in the absorption of atherosclerosis in experimental animals at Columbia University by Doctor Albert Steiner and his associates. Other investigators, as well, demonstrated similar results in the experimental production 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 addition, 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 attending a group of ward patients at a university hospital in Philadelphia. 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 emaciated 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 appalling damage was his visible aging. This 19-year old looked like a very old man and talked and felt like one. His hair was graying, 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 addition 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 became the picture of health, and later married and took a position 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 experimental 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 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.