Low-cholesterol Program. Foods To Avoid.

Soups. All creamed soups are high in fat content. The commercially prepared ones are particularly fat-heavy, and since the fat cannot be readily removed from them, they should not be used. It is always a good idea to read the label carefully on any packaged product from which soup is being made. The law pertaining to the labelling of foods requires a description of any fat contained in the product, so undesirable sources of fat can be avoided.

How Many Years Will Low-fat Living Add To Your Life?

How many years could you add to your life by reducing your weight to normal, and maintaining it there? This is a question that can be answered, and the answer is a dramatic one. No matter what your age may be, you can increase your life span by a definite number of years. What's more, those additional years can be healthy, happy years, full of things that make life worth living - really worth living. In the first six chapters of this book we have heard the part that diet plays in warding off heart disease and in promoting over-all good health. We have seen how your arteries work, and have discovered the nature of the health wrecker - fat. You have been given a program of what foods to eat and what foods to avoid to achieve health, by low-fat living. You have learned how to use dietary supplements and how to count the calories, so as to keep your weight at the proper level. All of these things have been given to you for one purpose - to show you how to live the low-fat way, because the low-fat way is the key to healthier, longer life. Now let's find out how many extra years of health and life you can count on, once you have followed the low-fat way of life.

The Use And Abuse Of Tobacco. Part 3

How can you stop smoking? Perhaps the best insight into "How to Stop Smoking" is Mark Twain's comment: "It's easy to stop smoking - I've done it hundreds of times"! "Doctor," a harassed advertising executive patient of mine said desperately, "I've tried so hard for five years now to give up this awful smoking habit, which I know is so harmful to me, but I just can't seem to be able to. If I stop or even try to, I become so nervous that living with me is utterly impossible. I can't even live with myself. I can't sleep, I can't concentrate, I can't do my work properly, I tremble and go around like Shakespeare's young lover, 'sighing like a furnace,' life doesn't seem worth living. I've tried everything I know or hear of - hypnosis, auto-suggestion, pipes, prayer, preparations on my tongue to make smoking taste bitter, "gimmicks" of all kinds - but I always come back to these - cigarettes. What can I do?" Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, was trained originally as a pharmacologist, and was an inveterate, heavy cigar smoker. Undoubtedly, this habit contributed to his death and great suffering from cancer of the mouth and throat. He recognized his addiction to cigar smoking and its toxic effects on his heart. Yet after stopping several times, he couldn't hold out any longer and found it impossible to work or concentrate without smoking. In a letter to a friend he describes this craving as follows: "I have started smoking again since I still missed it after 14 months' absence, and because I must treat that mind of mine decently, or the fellow will not work for me." (Italics mine.) And still later he wrote, "It was impossible for me to entirely stop smoking, because of my present burden of theoretical and practical worries." Clearly these victims of my "lady nicotine" have become "addicts" of tobacco, and are addicted to it like so many other unfortunates who cannot live without opium, sedatives, or marihuana. The moment they stop tobacco they develop "withdrawal" symptoms that can be truly distressful and even agonizing. Luckily most smokers are not addicts enslaved by tobacco. They can break or modify the habit, so that it becomes harmless although still yielding enjoyment.

The Use And Abuse Of Tobacco. Part 2

How smoking affects the blood vessels. For many years scientists and physicians have studied the effects of smoking on the peripheral blood vessels, i.e., those particularly in the hands and legs. These studies were carried out by all kinds of ingenious instruments that measured the rate of blood flow, the temperature of the tissues around the blood vessels, the degree of narrowing and opening or constriction and dilation of the blood vessels - in all sizes and locations - as influenced by smoking. As a result of these studies it is thoroughly established now that tobacco causes a marked interference with the circulation in the hands, the feet, and the legs. These findings, of course, though very important, are not new to the practising physician, who has seen numerous instances of disease of the blood vessels caused by excessive smoking, mainly through prolonged spasm and constriction of these peripheral blood vessels. Nicotine is the most noxious substance that can effect the blood vessels in man. This is aptly demonstrated in certain diseases such as Buerger's disease (a condition of obliteration of the blood vessels, usually in the legs) which not infrequently require amputation due to gangrene. Still another disease associated with the excessive use of tobacco is Raynaud's Syndrome, a condition characterized by spasm of the small blood vessels in the hands, feet, nose, cheek, and ears. Patients with this disease suffer from blanching of the skin and local pain after exposure to cold, anxiety, fatigue, physical pressure, or shock. This condition may lead to other diseases of the blood vessels. In the conditions of peripheral arteriosclerosis and atherosclerosis, especially of the legs, nicotine has been shown to aggravate and increase the constriction already present in the peripheral blood vessels of human subjects. Patients with this condition are far better off without tobacco.

The Use And Abuse Of Tobacco. Part 1

The agreeable effects of smoking. Smoking tobacco is known from time immemorial to produce the following agreeable and enjoyable reactions:

1. Smoking is part of the social life from the days of primitive man. It introduces a note of friendliness, relaxation, and sociability. It often creates a subtle bond between strangers, or may help "cut the ice" in a hostile atmosphere. It has its origins in ancient rites and religious ceremonies and so is most welcome to both primitive and civilized man on social occasions. To extract every possible enjoyment and benefit from tobacco, man has smoked it, swallowed it, chewed it, drunk concoctions of it, gargled it, sniffed it up his nose, licked it during ceremonies, smoked it through the nose instead of the mouth, used enemas of it, applied poultices of it, and healed wounds with it. Man has even used tobacco to commit suicide and murder. Now hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people the world over earn their "daily bread" thanks to tobacco.
2. Smoking "soothes" the nerves for many people, and will often help tide them over anxious periods of emotional crises.
3. Smoking often is used to relieve pain and shock, as seen after an accident, in war, or in disasters. It may act for many as a sedative and even permit the smoker to go to sleep after a smoke, which might have been impossible without one. Some of my patients who were addicted to smoking could not sleep through the night without getting up at least once during the night for a smoke. (More about this later.)
4. Smoking is known to cause a "cooler" sensation in the skin due to the temporary constriction or tightening up of the blood vessels in the skin of the body. This temporary "cooling" sensation is momentarily welcome in times of hot weather or when people are nervous, excited or generally "hot under the collar."
5. Smoking may, temporarily, give enjoyment by the action of nicotine, coal-tars, or other ingredients contained in tobacco, by the resultant rise in blood pressure, increase in heart action, release of adrenalin, and consequent increase in blood sugar. These latter physiological and pharmacological effects often cause a temporary feeling of lightness or light-headedness, mental clarity, and what appears to feel like increased physical and mental efficiency.
6. Smoking after meals has been considered one of the most enjoyable aspects of dining. For centuries, it has been regarded as an aid to digestion, and a fitting end to each meal. Even in 1599, Henry Buttes, in his "Dyets Dry Dinner Consisting of eight severall Corses" placed tobacco as the last course of the meal, because of its value in overcoming "sorrow, pain, and constipation."
7. 7. Smoking often establishes a habit, which, like other habits, gives a certain sense of security and expectancy to many people who look forward to their "smoke." It may give a rhythm-like pattern to daily living, just like the rhythm involved in smoking a cigarette, cigar, or pipe; a kind of "ebb and flow" in the breathing process itself.

The indifferent effects of smoking. Millions of people smoke tobacco merely as an incidental habit, which they adopt solely to be sociable in the business world. Like some of my patients who may be businessmen, salesmen, or in other walks of public life, they smoke to put their business associates, colleagues, clients or customers at ease. Some of my patients, following my caution, will merely light the cigarette necessary for social or business amenities, keep it burning, and simply hold it without smoking. Similarly, the woman who smokes at a bridge game, or who smokes after meals to keep their husbands or friends "company," can "take" smoking or "leave it." These smokers usually do not smoke to excess and frequently avoid the toxic effects of tobacco smoking. It is very easy for them to stop smoking and when they have done so, they rarely miss it. As a rule, these individuals have strong will-power and are not "compulsive," as habitual smokers are apt to be.

The effects of smoking on health. Tobacco is a poison. If you were to consume 2 or 3 cigarettes, the effect might easily prove fatal! This is because nicotine, one of the main ingredients of tobacco, is an old established toxin, or poison, affecting the brain, the heart, and other vital organs. The tobacco plant is directly related to the deadly nightshade family of plants. The average cigarette weighs one gram and contains only from 1 to 2 per cent of nicotine - 100 to 200 milligrams (thousandth of a gram). The lethal dose of nicotine required to kill a man usually is only from 60 to 120 mg! In smoking a cigarette the average amount of nicotine inhaled is generally about 2 milligrams. There are thousands of cases of suicides, accidental deaths, and murder recorded in the United States by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census, as a result of consuming nicotine preparations. Some investigators have found that only a few drops of nicotine base kills wild animals, such as the lion or wolf, within a few seconds. Some animals, like sheep, can tolerate large doses of tobacco. Fortunately, the body excretes or gets rid of nicotine rapidly, not allowing the average amount inhaled to accumulate, unless heavy or excessive smoking is indulged in. If the latter is permitted, then the clinical symptoms of nicotine poisoning often occur, even in the habitual, heavy smoker, who may have developed some tolerance to nicotine. Even when the cigarette is not continually inhaled, there is still at least about 1/2 to 2/3 of the nicotine absorbed into the system through the lining of the mouth, the tongue, and the saliva. Aside from the chief poison, nicotine, there are other well-known poisons present in tobacco: carbon monoxide (when tobacco is burned), arsenic, and coal tar substances are some. The latter contribute to the formation of cancer of the mouth, the esophagus (the gullet) and the respiratory tract, including the larynx, bronchial tubes, and the lungs. Let us consider some of the actions of these poisons that may occur in man from excessive tobacco smoking.

The effect of smoking on the heart. Like many other physicians, in my 25 years of practice I must have treated literally thousands of patients who at one time or other suffered from symptoms of some degree of tobacco poisoning. Some were dramatic, some resistant, some funny and some tragic. Usually the toxic effects on the heart will be noticed by the patient from "skipped" heart beats or palpitations of the heart, nervousness, or a rapid heart rate often producing dizziness, shortness of breath, especially on exertion, headaches from rises in blood pressure, or pains and distress over the front portion of the chest. As described in Chapter 3, I had the opportunity of studying the effects on the heart of various stimuli in a series of volunteers. I examined the effects of stomach distention on the heart through an apparatus I devised at the time, as published m the Journal of the A.M.A. One male patient of mine, in particular, was an instructor in our own medical school, and had a mild case of coronary artery disease. This showed itself by chest pain after exertion or excitement. A habitual smoker, he had improved so greatly under treatment, which included his abstaining from tobacco, that he was now itching to get back to the "weed". In order to demonstrate to him the effects of smoking on his own heart, I asked him to resume smoking for one test period, a habit which I had asked him to stop, because of his angina. After smoking and delightedly inhaling two and one-half cigarettes he developed severe anginal pain over the chest, which reflected itself in striking abnormalities in his electrocardiogram, which I was running continuously during the smoking experiment. Fortunately, I abolished the anginal pain immediately by placing a tablet of nitroglycerine under his tongue. This relaxes and dilates the coronary arteries promptly, thereby stopping the pain.


This experience has been reduplicated in countless patients, since it is well known that tobacco will produce pain and em-harassment of the heart when it is already damaged or weakened by some condition, particularly coronary atherosclerosis. Here additional constriction of the coronary arteries by tobacco smoking, in the already narrowed passageways of the coronary arteries, can lead to further damage to the heart. The term "tobacco angina" or "tobacco heart" was originally employed to describe these chest pains due to the toxic effects of tobacco on the heart. Like many physicians, I advise my patients with heart conditions to refrain from smoking, even in moderation, because of the injurious effects of tobacco on their hearts. The blood pressure is known to rise on an average of 38 points (the systolic, or higher one) in patients with normal but unstable, sensitive blood pressure. And in patients with high blood pressure, tobacco smoking in moderate to heavy amounts has a strong tendency to send the blood pressure even higher than the above mentioned 38 points.

Should You Stop Smoking?

Smoking is the burning question of the day. Everyone wants to know, for certain, the answer to this question: "What is the effect of smoking on my health?" "To smoke or not to smoke" is a frequent topic of conversation of the more than 100 million American smokers. Until recently, the public has been as confused as the medical profession was in the past. Now overwhelming evidence on the harmful effects of excessive use of tobacco can no longer be disregarded. In spite of all this evidence, however, the public is either uncertain or resistant. This is perfectly exemplified by my patient, Mr. R. He was suffering from "tobacco angina," an old term used to describe chest pains in coronary artery disease induced in his case by excessive cigarette smoking. "Dr. Morrison," he said, "I guess I should stop smoking, what with all the newspaper stories on the relationship of excessive cigarette smoking and cancer of the lungs. But I play golf with my family doctor, Dr. X, who is a chain smoker, and I notice my dividends from investments in tobacco stocks keep going up! Now, if cigarettes are harmful to health, why do so many doctors continue to smoke and why does the American public smoke more and more?"

Smoking has been with us for a long time. The smoking habit is known to be deeply ingrained from the very dawn of man's history. Archeologists tell us of their finding evidence of smoking pipes among the South American Indians in Venezuela, 6,000 years before Christ. The legendary origin of the birth of tobacco and the "tobacco habit" is even told charmingly in Greek mythology. Zeus was banqueting with his gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus. During the dancing after the banquet, Vulcan, the god of fire, forging and smelting, was urged to dance. He was ashamed to dance, however, because of his hunchback, and his fear of ridicule. In his nervousness and embarrassment he sought comfort by lighting his pipe with a burning coal and filled Olympus with a dense cloud of foul tobacco smoke. Zeus was enraged at Vulcan's extremely bad behaviour. He cast a thunderbolt at the pipe, which smashed it and spread bits of the pipe and the tobacco all over the world. Rain then fertilized the seed and the tobacco plant grew luxuriantly forever after!


One of my patients, Mrs. A, tells me she is completely at a loss as to which doctors and statisticians to believe. So many seem to be in complete disagreement on the harm from smoking. I tell her that differences in opinion make medical meetings and horse races possible, and that virtually the same controversy raged over 350 years ago. In 1604, King James I was anxious to improve the health and well-being of his loyal subjects. After careful medical advice from his court physicians he issued the following frightening but delightful proclamation on tobacco: "A Custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs (italics - mine), and in the black stinking fumes thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the hell pit that is bottomless." The king's apparent first-hand knowledge of hell-fire is a triumph of the imagination.

A little later, in 1689, the Medical School of Paris studied and reported the effects of tobacco smoking upon health and its influence on the span of life. They concluded and maintained for long after that tobacco definitely shortens life, and that it causes colic, diarrhea, "ulcerations of the lungs," asthma, coughs, "pains in the heart," undernourishment and impotence. Enough to frighten even the stoutest of Frenchmen!

Yet despite the death penalty for tobacco smoking, imposed by many kings and rulers in the 16th and 17th centuries, smoking flourished. The reason, apparently, was and is that it is an ingrained part of man's very social life. It is something that must be conquered by intelligence and will-power. Otherwise it becomes a bio-chemical as well as social "addiction."

What is the truth about smoking? Let us now examine the tobacco habit in the light of modern scientific knowledge, and group the advantages and disadvantages of smoking as, "good, bad, and indifferent."

How To Use Dietary Supplements. Part 1

Even a goat wouldn't eat what you eat. It is said that goats will eat anything. At various times their owners have reported that the animals had consumed such things as items of laundry from the clothesline, old shoes, paper (including banknotes), and in one case a horse's tail. With an appetite like that, you would think that Billy or Nanny would gladly accept an invitation to have dinner with us. But such, apparently, is not the case. Not long ago, partly as a joke and partly out of curiosity, a man I know offered the same food that had been prepared for his dinner to a neighbor's goat. He reported that the animal turned aside in disgust from the dishes offered it. Of course, man's dietary requirements differ somewhat from those of a goat. But in meeting those requirements, we have not shown any better sense in choosing our food. You are overfed but undernourished. Health authorities, nutritional experts, and practicing physicians are agreed that although Americans can afford to buy more and better food than any other peoples in the world, their diet is sadly deficient in certain important nutritional elements. We are a nation that is overfed but undernourished. The reason for this is that very often nutritional deficiency can and does occur without any outstanding clinical signs. Also, upper income groups are no more immune than those of a lower economic level. Dr. Norman Jolliffe, Director of the Bureau of Nutrition, New York City Health Department, and one of the country's outstanding authorities on nutrition, recently warned:

It is well established that deficiency disease, even without obvious clinical signs, may impair growth, mental development, resistance to many infections, ability to attain the maximum rate of wound healing, and decrease working ability.

In fact, inadequate nutrition, and incorrect nutrition, comprise a "hidden disease" in the United States - a disease costly in terms both of dollars and lives.

What is wrong with our diet and our eating habits? Many things are wrong with our diet and eating habits. Nowhere in the world is food treated so badly before it is eaten as in the United States. Here it is raised by the use of artificial chemicals. In an all-out effort aimed at quantity, rather than quality, we do everything humanly possible to destroy the original character that the Creator provided and intended for the yield of the earth. Moreover, by the time most of our food reaches the consumer, it is too highly processed, refined, and improperly preserved. To add to this inadequacy, we destroy what nutrient value remains by flame, fire, by watering it down with tap water, and by overloading it with salt, sugar, or seasoning. Then we sit down during hurried and harried business hours and bolt it down. And the result? Some 50 million or more Americans, adults and children, suffer from constipation, bad teeth, skin troubles, digestive disorders, fatigue, nervousness, and a multitude of other complaints. Most of them are caused directly by poor nutrition and sub-clinical vitamin deficiencies. To add to these digestive troubles, modern man has cut his oxygen intake by living indoors, often in artificially heated cells or rooms, and has lost contact with both sunshine and fresh air. This unnatural way of life is undoubtedly responsible for important metabolic changes that have occurred in civilized man. He has brought certain evils upon himself by losing those "catalysts" or "stokers of the body furnace." As a crowning insult to nature, we frequently sit scrunched in a chair most of our days, living in a constant state of tension and apprehension at our work. Man was originally very energetic, physically active and almost constantly engaged in some exercise or other. Today, thanks to our mechanical genius, we tend to depend upon a push-button instead of a muscle. All these factors make it necessary for us to seek "outside help" to make up for our nutritional and hygienic shortcomings.


How to supplement your diet with essential nutrients. One way science has found of helping us accomplish this is to supplement our diet with vitamins and other essential nutrients. Dr. Jolliffe, noted nutritionist whom we quoted earlier in this chapter, not long ago pointed out that the improved nutritional status of our population since 1940 is, in fact, largely due to enrichment of foods and vitamin supplements. States Dr. Jolliffe:

The agricultural scientist and the scientific farmer alike, know that it is not practical nor economic to raise hogs or chickens from purely agricultural products alone. They supplement the diet of their animals with a variety of vitamins, minerals, and other nutritionals. Although man does not like to think of himself as governed by similar nutritional rules as farm animals, we could learn and profit much by following what the scientific farmer practices.

For a number of years, the author has studied the effects of the following food and nutritional supplement programs, recommended to a large number of patients. They produced a striking and gratifying improvement in health levels and well-being. Also of greatest importance was the fact that they were found to be instrumental in lowering the cholesterol content of the blood and in reducing the amount of harmful blood fats. There was a corresponding decrease in the number of colds and infections that patients usually had. They also reported less constipation, nervousness, fatigue, and the like.

The five-step program. Here are the five steps that patients were asked to follow:

1. Include daily as a food supplement at breakfast two to four tablespoonfuls of Lecithin extracted from soya beans.
2. Add to your diet each day B Complex vitamins in the most potent form. Avoid the cheaper preparations which provide only small and ineffectual quantities of the vitamins, and have little or no effect on the body. Your doctor or druggist can advise you which brands provide potent quantities of the vitamins.
3. Also add to your daily diet at least 25,000 units of Vitamin A, and 150 mg. of vitamin C.
4. Take two tablespoonfuls of soya bean oil, corn oil orsafflower oil daily to provide the essential fatty acids necessary to proper nutrition. The oil may be used as a salad dressing, taken with tomato or fruit juice, or in any way you prefer.
5. Include in your diet two to four tablespoonfuls of whole wheat germ each day. This may be eaten as a breakfast cereal with fruit, or sprinkled in your salad.

Now a word about the nature of these health-giving nutrients, and the reason for their use.

How to use Lecithin. 

Now I'm going to tell you about one of the most important nutritional supplements developed in the last 50 years. Make a careful note of it and of how it is to be used, as described in these pages. The least it can do for you is to improve your health and give you added vitality. And it may even help save your life. The substance is Lecithin - a bland, water-soluble, granular powder made from de-fatted soya beans. Soya beans have been an important staple in the diets of people in China and the Far East for centuries. But it was only recently that the health-giving properties of one of the beans' constituents - Lecithin - have been studied. Lecithin is what biochemists call a phosphatide. That means it is an essential constituent of all living cells, both animal and vegetable. As such, it plays a vital role in various phases of body chemistry and function. After more than 10 years of intense experimentation, not only with Lecithin, but with a large number of other cholesterol-reducing preparations used in the treatment of heart disease, atherosclerosis, and allied conditions, we found Lecithin to give the most rewarding result. It was, in fact, not only useful in treatment of heart and blood vessel disease, but also in their prevention.

Lecithin has very recently been shown to have the power of removing atherosclerosis from the arteries of experimental animals. Dr. Meyer Friedman, Dr. Sanford Byers, Dr. Ray Rosenman and their research associates in San Francisco have demonstrated in a most convincing and dramatic manner how injections of Lecithin remove the cholesterol plaques that were deposited in arteries. These fatty plaques were produced in the arteries by feeding large amounts of cholesterol and fats to the animals. They were characteristic of the atherosclerosis found in humans. Dr. Friedman and his co-workers believe that in atherosclerosis, as the fats and cholesterol are removed from the artery walls and flood the bloodstream, the atherosclerotic plaques are dissolved and removed by the Lecithin. The excess cholesterol and fats are thought to be converted by the liver into the bile and then excreted from the body. Although there is no known method of using Lecithin by injection in humans, the very high concentrations in the blood of Lecithin that are desirable for treatment can be achieved by feeding Lecithin and incorporating it into the daily diet.