Copyright © 1996, 1997, 2001
by Galen Daryl Knight and VitaleTherapeutics, Inc.
Nutritional Considerations in Human and Animal Disease
Are nutritional observations in animals and animal tissues relevant to
risks of human disease? A 1981 study of several human populations, primarily
in Africa and Asia, indicated that diets deficient
in zinc, magnesium, niacin, and possibly riboflavin (i.e., those derived
primarily from corn and wheat products) coincide with increased risks of
esophageal cancer, whereas those enriched in these nutrients (based upon
millet, cassava, yams, or peanuts) are associated with a lowered risk for
this cancer. Over-refining and over-processing of foods (see below) and
eating malpractices and disorders (such as caloric restriction, bulimia,
and anorexia) compound the already marginal nutritional problems associated
with corn and wheat diets.
Corn oil, cottonseed,
and peanut oil also are more likely to be contaminated with carcinogenic
aflatoxins. The suspicion that even sometimes gluttonous American diets
can have marginal vitamin deficiencies is reinforced by the estimated marginal
vitamin
deficiencies (50-95%) in healthy subjects who were hospitalized and
fed a computer-selected diet composed along guidelines set by the DFM system,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture Handbook 8, and manufacturers' nutrient
label analysis for specialty foods. Estimated deficiencies in vitamin A,
vitamin B6, vitamin D, folic acid, pantothenic
acid, calcium, magnesium, and zinc were corrected with "commercial
supplements" so that conclusions concerning the vitamin C metabolism being
studied would be valid. Do you still think you are eating a balanced diet?
Does anyone else go to these extremes to get good nutrition? Results from
this commendably controlled study of vitamin C nutrition and problems with
the conclusions drawn will be discussed
elsewhere.
Also, in a study of 113 liver biopsies from different human patients,
a monooxygenase proposed as the receptor
for the vitaletheine modulators was found to be diminished
in several disease categories, including viral hepatitis (21%), cholangitis
(16%), diabetes and non-specific fatty changes (5.1%), alcoholic liver
disease (23%), cirrhosis (46%), tumor (39%), and inflammatory reactions
(36%). Monooxygenase was significantly different from normal only in those
patients with cirrhosis (46%) in this small study, but it is interesting
that individuals with tumors represented the next largest decrease (39%),
followed closely by those individuals with inflammatory (immune) reactions
(36%). Although changes of 10% or more often yield important clues for
unraveling causes of disease, more research is needed to ensure that these
changes in human monooxygenase activity actually contribute to the disease
and are not merely a symptom of the disease.
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