Word: vitamine
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Magic Bullet. Vitamins are unquestionably important to health. A lack of vitamin A, contained in green, leafy vegetables and whole milk, can cause night blindness. Shortages of the various B vitamins, contained in milk, meat and some grains, produce such deficiency diseases as pellagra and beriberi. A deficiency of vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, a substance found in citrus fruits and some fresh vegetables, can result in scurvy. Rickets, a disease caused by calcium deficiency that produces bone deformities, can result from a lack of vitamin...
From these facts, some vitamin enthusiasts have leaped to the conclusion that the substances can prevent or control many diseases. Irwin Stone, a California-based biochemist, regards vitamin C as a magic bullet that not only can help man avoid scurvy but can serve as a treatment for cancer, heart disease and schizophrenia. Nobel-prizewinning Chemist Linus Pauling has advocated large doses to prevent or cure the common cold. Dr. Wilfrid Shute, a Canadian cardiologist, believes that proper use of vitamin E can aid in treatment of damaged hearts. Others recommend vitamin E for hypertension and rheumatic fever; some claim...
...however, has done more to popularize the use of vitamins than Adelle Davis, whose books and television appearances have established her as one of the country's leading health-food advocates (see box, page 72). But some of Davis' claims, as well as those of her fellow vitamin advocates, are still unproved. Doctors can find no conclusive evidence that vitamin C in large doses prevents heart disease or effectively treats cancer. Vitamin C's function as a cold cure is also uncertain. Its safety-if taken in quantities hundreds of times greater than the recommended daily requirement...
...Other vitamins can actually be harmful. Vitamin A can be dangerous if taken in excess. Overdoses of vitamin D can produce demineralization of bone, resulting in multiple fractures after minimal trauma. Though lack of vitamins may cause health problems, the pills are not-and should not be-regarded as panaceas. "People," says Philip White, an American Medical Association nutrition expert, "have been led to believe that positive health benefits will occur: super vitality, great endurance, freedom from illness, resistance to infection. Supposedly these benefits result from supplementing an already adequate diet. They cannot...
...takes vitamin C for stress, recommends vitamins to avoid a wide variety of diseases and conditions, including heart disease, some cancers and diabetes. She writes that one patient was cured of tuberculosis while on her diet...