And It’s Not the Next One They’ll Come Up With. It’s Back To Nature
First, Elmer McCollum couldn’t get a job.
He had a doctorate from Yale, but couldn’t find work in his field. It was only after a long time searching all over the Midwest (he was from Kansas) that he even got hired.
The University of Wisconsin took him on as an instructor. But he had to switch his field of study because that was the only way he could get a position.
Then, the school wanted him to look at the diets of grain-fed cows to find out why they were dying or giving birth to malformed calves.
After all, grain contained everything that chemists, physiologists, and medical men considered essential… even thought it was obviously not enough to sustain the cattle’s lives.
But McCollum felt the cows weren’t getting enough nutrition from grain. He had to go against convention and the people who wouldn’t listen to him to find his answer. He stopped doing cattle research and set up his own lab to study nutrition in smaller animals.
It took him more than two years, but in 1913 he discovered what he called “fat-soluble A.” You and I call it vitamin A.
But that’s not the reason I’m telling you this story. The reason I want you to know about this is because this is still happening today.
Scientists and conventional doctors still don’t recognize what’s important for nutrition.
They still think grains will give you everything you need to stay healthy. And what’s worse is that those who recommend vitamin A for your health are recommending the wrong kind. It won’t work, but they’re still not listening.
You see, drug companies can’t make any money off of vitamin A because it’s natural and they can’t patent it. So they tell you it’s dangerous. Yet most of their evidence for this is from misleading studies sponsored by the drug companies themselves.
At the same time, they’ve made synthetic forms of vitamin A and patented them as drugs. They’re hoping you’ll trust their drug version instead of natural vitamin A.
Meanwhile, most doctors believe vitamin A is dangerous, so they tell you to take beta carotene instead. But that doesn’t work because your body just converts it to vitamin A unless you already have enough stored up, then you won’t convert any.
 |
And in a few years they’ll come up with some new way to get vitamin A and that won’t work either. Because nutrients rarely act as single isolated structures. Most occur as groups of related compounds and that’s how they exert their effects.
That’s why it’s so important to eat foods in as close to their natural state as possible. When you eat whole foods, your body gets the nutrients in their most complete and natural form.
Your body has evolved to encounter vitamins and other nutrients in these natural combinations.
And your ancient ancestors understood this through thousands of years of trial and error in
nature, not in a lab. And I believe it’s always best to mimic nature as closely as possible.
Your Body’s Beneficial Boss
Vitamin A is actually a group of compounds called retinoids. Retinoids direct how every part of your body becomes… well, every part of your body. They regulates how many cells are created, how they grow, how long they live and directs what they develop into.
Your body also depends on its sources of retinoids to keep running. Your muscles, immune system, lungs and kidneys all use it, and your liver stores it to use in an emergency.
Vitamin A compounds are so important that a deficiency is considered an immune system disease. Retinoids also fight inflammation because of their antioxidant effect.
And here’s something almost no one knows: Cutting edge research shows that having enough retinoids gives you more energy.1
I’ve written to you many times about CoQ10 and how it’s the fuel your cells use for energy. But retinoids are what activates the process of making energy.
Retinoids kind of hang around the energy producing centers of your cells called mitochondria, and watch what’s happening. These vitamin A compounds sense all the work the cell is doing to make energy. Then they signal the machinery to work faster or slower depending on how much energy you need to produce.2
But there’s even more you need to know. Because having enough energy in your cells is one of the most important defenses we have against the modern disease of cancer. And that means retinoids are your first line of cancer defense…
Stamp Out Cancer Before It Starts
One of the vitamin A family’s main functions is to form and maintain your epithelial tissue, which includes the largest human organ, your skin.
It’s your body’s first contact with infections and cancer-causing invaders. Your epithelial cell barrier includes the membranes lining your eyes, mouth, and many other organs.
I’ve uncovered a few studies that show retinoids can prevent cancers that originate in epithelial tissue. Here’s what I found:
When you have plenty of retinoids:
- Your chances of getting lung cancer are reduced by 50%3
- A woman’s risk for breast cancer drops by 17%4
- Your risk for gastric cancer is cut by almost 50%5
When you are deficient in retinoids:
- A man’s risk of prostate cancer more than doubles6
- You have an increased risk for head and neck cancers7
- Oral, skin and breast cancer cells have all been shown to be retinoid-deficient8
Each cell in your body uses retinoids for protection. They have been shown to suppress the formation of cancer in various epithelial tissues by stopping tumor formation.9
Clinical cancer prevention trials show that retinoids are effective against many different kinds of cancers.
Studies also show that anti-cancer treatments in Traditional Chinese Medicine benefit from vitamin A compounds. They use an herb called Bai Zhu to help fight cancer, and give people back their energy after cancer treatment. Researchers have found that the herb’s main nutrients are retinoids.
In fact, the current theory is that cancer cells multiply by specifically overcoming your retinoids’ protection.
Normal cells have lots of retinoids, but cancer cells disturb the way you break them down into other vitamin A compounds. Cancer can then spread, the thinking goes, because it can now cross the epithelial cell barrier that doesn’t have strong retinoid protection.
Get Yours From Nature
Your body can pull off a neat trick when it comes to retinoids. You can covert the plant nutrients called carotenoids into vitamin A. But your body doesn’t do it very efficiently.
Also, if you have enough retinoids stored in your liver, your body won’t convert any at all.
That means to get the most benefit, you want to try and eat vitamin A-rich foods in their most raw, whole and fresh state.
 |
I recommend you get your vitamin A in its most natural, preformed state called retinol. You can only get it from animal products and animal fats. That means liver, fish, eggs, cheese and raw milk.
For carotenoids, you don’t have to stick to brightly colored fruits and vegetables like carrots. There are quite a few dark leafy greens that give you plenty of carotenoids. Kale, turnip greens, chard and spinach are the best sources.
When you cook, you can also add spices like paprika, red pepper, cayenne, and chili powder. A tablespoon of paprika contains 3,691 IU of vitamin A equivalents. Other red pepper powders have similar amounts. Cayenne powder has 2,081 IU per tablespoon.
Mainstream medicine says you only need 2,000 to 3,000 IU of vitamin A every day. The problem is, you can’t just take some lab created “vitamin A” and think you’re getting what you need. It won’t include all the retinoids. Also, remember that their “recommended daily allowance” is only the bare minimum. It’s the amount meant to keep you from a deficiency, not what you need for optimal health.
I recommend you get at least 20,000 IU of mixed retinoids every day. If you can’t get enough from food and you want to supplement, remember that preformed vitamin A is called retinol. Retinyl palmitate is not natural vitamin A. It is synthetically made from combining an ester of retinol with the main compound from palm oil. Beta-carotene is fine, but you need six times as much of it to make a single unit of retinol.
_______________________________________________________
1 Semba RD. “Vitamin A and human immunodeficiency virus infection.” Proc Nutr Soc. 1995: 56: 459-469
2 Hoyos B, Acin-Perez R, Fischrnan DA, Manfredi G, Hammerling U. “Hiding in plain sight: Uncovering a new function of vitamin A in redox signaling.” Biochim Biophys Acta. 2011 Jun 25. [Epub ahead of print]
3 Fontham ET. “Protective dietary factors and lung cancer.” Intl Epidemiol. 1990;19 Suppl 1:S32-42
4 Fulan H. et. al. “Retinol, vitamins A, C, and E and breast cancer risk: a meta-analysis and meta-regression.” Cancer Causes Control. 2011 Jul 15
5 Larsson SC, Bergkvist L, Naslund I, Rutegérd I, Wolk A. “Vitamin A, retinol, and carotenoids and the risk of gastric cancer…” Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Feb;85(2):497-503
6 Marsha E. et al. “Serum vitamin A and Subsequent Development of Prostate Cancer…” Cancer Res 1990; 50:2311-2315. Published online April 1, 1990
7 De Vries N, Snow GB. “Relationships of vitamins A and E and beta-carotene serum levels to head and neck cancer patients…” Eur Arch Oto.1990;247(6):368-70
8 Guo X, Nanus DM, Ruiz A, Rando RR, Bok D, Gudas LI. “Reduced levels of retinyl esters and vitamin A in human renal cancers.” Cancer Res. 2001 Mar 15;61(6):2774-81
9 Lotan R. Evaluation of the results of clinical trials with retinoids in relation to their basic mechanism of action. In: Wattenberg L, ed. Cancer Chemoprevention. Boca Raton, Fla: CRC Press; 1992:71¬75