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Cooter's Comments: Sunshine Deficiency Diseases
Supplement to The Art of Getting Well

(Sunshine and Health); Deadly Alkaloids in Pesticides;
Sodium Fluoride: The Obedience Drug; Bone Spurs and Vinegar

Copyright 1994

Permission to Publish granted by Stephen Cooter, Ph.D.

All rights reserved by the author

All rights reserved by the The Roger Wyburn-Mason and Jack M.Blount Foundation for Eradication of Rheumatoid Disease AKA The Arthritis Trust of America
7111 Sweetgum Road, Suite A, Fairview, TN 37062-9384

Arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, Poliomyelitis: The Sunshine Deficiency Diseases (Sunshine and Health)

Authors of contributions\quotations are alphabetically arranged; major author, if any, is underlined.

Dr. Joseph Bernsohn, Joanna Budwig, M.D., James Carter, Dr.P.H., Edgar Cayce, Dr. Paul Goldberg, Dr. Hugo Henzi, Dr. Klenner, William Lands, Ph.D., Dr. Leo, Dr. Hans Nieper, Gus J. Prosch, Jr., M.D., Dr. R.U. Schwyzer, Stephanides, Szent-Gyorgyi, John Vane/Responsible editor/writer

Stephan Cooter, Ph.D.

Maybe we don’t need it. There are even those who have proposed we could use the sun as a garbage dump for our nuclear waste, and chances are, we’d find out pretty damn quick how long we could survive without sunshine.

Of course, life would cease to exist. Plants require sunlight for photosynthesis to transform carbon dioxide into oxygen, to transform water and inorganic minerals into organic minerals, vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats for our use, in short to concentrate all the energy of the sun for sustaining life on Earth.

Joanna Budwig, a German MD, has used one small part of the sun in flaxseed oil, one tablespoon per meal with the same amount of cottage cheese or other protein to totally change the blood chemistry of a cancer patient back to normal (Well Mind Association)⁶. Dr. Budwig’s theory is that normal growth and repair of cells is impaired in cancer because one unsaturated fat is missing necessary for normal growth. Based on discoveries made between 1842 and 1888, three German scientists had been able to demonstrate that fat free diets killed laboratory animals. In 1937, Szent-Gyorgyi won a Nobel prize for demonstrating that linoleic acid in combination with sulfur containing proteins produced healthy and necessary oxygenation processes in the body. Also Budwig feels that the skin’s exposure to sunlight in addition to sunlight in vegetable oil is responsible for more of our energy as human beings than even the Krebs energy cycle, responsible for at least 30% of everything that we are, everything that is health and healthy.

Sunlight and vitamin D do affect the pineal and pituitary, which in turn affect the thyroid, which regulates all the body’s processes, its use of fatty acids, proteins, and carbohydrates. Without sunshine, growth, building, and repair would be impossible.

Bears hibernate only when available sunlight diminishes in the winter. They come out of hibernation when injected with real vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin. For animals, vitamin D is produced by transformation of cholesterol on the skin and fur into vitamin D which is then taken in with grooming. For humans, vitamin D is absorbed from cholesterol in and on the skin provided sunbathing is not followed by washing it off for at least a half hour.

Even vitamin D², the synthetic version of vitamin D comes from sunlight, or rather irradiation with ultraviolet light of vegetable oils (Townsend Letter for Doctors⁸). SAD or Seasonal Adjustment Depression is geared to available light; twenty minutes’ exposure to intense incandescent light in the morning has changed depression into normal behavior in a short period of time for people subject to the syndrome.

Dr. Paul Goldberg, Cambridge researcher, found that neurological disease doesn’t exist at the equator (International Journal of Environmental Studies²). There sunshine produces 2 to 4 thousand IUs of vitamin D per day in contrast to the 400 IUs of the official Recommended Dietary Allowance. Nor is the risk of MS high at high altitudes. High altitude above 1000 feet intensifies ultra violet exposure and reduces MS risk. Multiple Sclerosis begins to develop as human populations move away from the most intense sunlight. Although the data has never been collected by Monthly Morbidity and Mortality Report³³ bulletins, the International Polio Network News does collect support-group addresses for polio groups, a neurological disease tied to MS according to The Merck Manual¹. Fascinating differences appear when you compare geographical locations of support groups. In Israel, only one polio support group exists. In the Northwest, there are dozens, totaling over 1,700 people. In Arizona, only one support group exists; in Canada, there are dozens. Does nerve disease thrive on overcast, dark, damp weather, and reverse itself with sunlight?

Fascinatingly, Scotland has islands where an answer lay waiting to this question, an answer overlooked by orthodox medicine, and unknown to most people subject to MS. On Shetland and Orkney islands, multiple sclerosis rates are among the highest in the world, much higher than the 1 in 1000 people who are subject to the disease in northern latitudes or smog polluted cities elsewhere. On the Faeroe Islands with exactly the same sunlight, dampness, overcast, and gloom, less than normal incidence of MS exists. What accounts for the difference? On Faeroe Islands, seafood is abundant; on the other, it is virtually non-existent in the diet. In Norwegian fishing communities where even margarine has a high fish oil content, MS rates are also low, but in Norwegian agricultural communities MS is high. The highest rates of all are in communities with high oat consumption or high phytate consumption in addition to northern latitudes. Phytates bind with calcium and are antagonistic to vitamin D. In Northern Scotland where the MS rates are the highest in the world, both oats, low seafood diets, and lack of sunshine combine to produce the perfect environment for MS.

Unfortunately, no dietary studies were tried using cod liver oil and avoidance of phytates for those subject to MS to test Dr. Goldberg’s theory that dietary changes might help new creation of myelin by the addition of calcium-magnesium, and fish or fish oil sources of vitamin D, with their omega 3’s or linoleic acids, to see to what extent damaged myelin might be rebuilt and repaired. William Lands, PhD, in 1972 pointed out at a Vienna conference that John Vane’s explanation of aspirin’s curative effects, which block excessive prostaglandins that lead to excessive inflammation and pain, were also possible with fish oil. Of course, aspirin accomplishes this feat by stealing calcium from tissues and bone to place more in circulation. Fish oil, on the other hand, helps calcium from the diet actually do its job building myelin, nerve tissue, bone density, and assisting white blood cells to do their job digesting damaged tissue, digesting undigested food in circulation, and digesting damaged imported microbes.

No pharmaceutical industry seemed to be interested that fish oil was nature’s aspirin, or that cancer, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriasis, allergies, autoimmune disorders, high blood pressure, and MS were all associated with runaway production of prostaglandins, not to mention malfunctioning calcium metabolism. American orthodox medicine has remained uninterested in dietary prevention or the possibility of reversal, remission, or curing of these diseases with fish because there is no monetary incentive for the merchandising of new or expensive "drugs."

However, in 1967, good British doctors tried to find out if one component of myelin rebuilding, linoleic acid, also an omega three acid found not only in fish, but safflower, corn, sunflower, cotton, and soybean oils, would help patients in reducing symptoms from the middle phase of MS. About half of 75 patients were given sunflower seed oil, which is rich in linoleic acid, and from which, other fatty acids can be synthesized in the body. The other half of the patients were given olive oil as the control group. Two tablespoons of olive oil contain only .2 grams of linoleic acid compared with 8.6 grams of linoleic acid in sunflower oil, or 43 times as much. During the two year study, the olive oil group suffered twice as many MS problems as the sunflower group. The sunflower oil group experienced a 50% reduction in severity of leg weakness and loss of vision compared to their controls, and their MS relapses were shorter in duration, according to Drs. Joseph Bernsohn and Leo Stephanides in , January 22, 1967⁴.

Dr. Frederick R. Klenner reported promising clinical success in The Journal of Applied Nutrition, in 1973 with mineral, trace minerals, amino acids and vitamin B, the beriberi deficiency vitamin. Dr. Klenner felt that what he had developed as a supplement treatment simply provided more usable energy for the whole body helping to rebuild and repair damaged tissue.

The likely cause for this success was discovered by Drs. Hugo Henzi and R. U. Schwyzer of Switzerland, Medical Hypothesis²⁵, when they found high methanol and formaldehyde levels in both the blood and myelin sheaths of their MS patients. They then used what had traditionally been used only as a placebo, B12 and folic acid, to help metabolize the breakdown of methanol into nontoxic forms, which they found "promising" for their patients when they stuck to a low sugar, low fruit-sugar diet, and took supplementary folic acid and B12 shots. Their feeling was that folic acid and B12 in some unknown way created an alternate metabolic pathway for the breakdown of sugar into methanol and prevented the formation of formaldehyde.

Apparently escaping the attention of these doctors who found vitamin B1 helpful, other B vitamins, and Dr. Hans Nieper, in Hanover, Germany, his success with calcium-magnesium-potassium-phosphates, was a fascinating common link with the metabolism of toxins in the Krebs energy cycle. Sunflower seed oil had produced a whopping 50% improvement in MS symptoms. The doctors were interested in sunflower oil only for its linoleic acid component even though sunflower oil is also rich in minerals, especially molybdenum. As I discussed in "Molybdenum: Recycling Fatigue into Energy," Townsend Letter for Doctors Walter H. Schmitt, Jr., D.C., Digest of Chiropractic Economics¹², molybdenum is one key player in metabolizing sugars from alcohol thru their aldehyde phase and into their acetic acid phase and further into acetyl coenzyme A, a basic player in the Krebs energy cycle. Also playing roles in helping convert potentially dangerous aldehydes into non-toxic forms are: selenium, manganese, magnesium, iron, and the B vitamins.

B1 is a known vitamin deficiency that occurs from excessive alcohol or sugar consumption and was first noticed as a rice polish deficiency in prisoners of war, where white rice (and white flour) can lead to the MS-like symptoms of weakness, tremors, stumbling, slurred speech, and paralysis. Beriberi symptoms are characterized by nerve and hypothalamus damage, weakness, lack of coordination, poor memory, and sleep disturbances, caused by any refined carbohydrate, like sugar or white rice, or excessive alcohol intake, where B1 is necessary to metabolize both.

Each researcher had found or supplied only one ingredient helpful in rebuilding myelin or had used one ingredient in the Krebs energy cycle. Why not use them all and see what happens.

In other words, the addition of a little fish oil chemical sunshine, omega 3 fatty acids plus vitamin A, sunflower seed oil, a full set of minerals that help rebuild myelin, a full set of minerals and B vitamins that remove toxic byproducts like aldehydes, might make for better than a 50% improvement in MS suffering and other nerve conditions.

Molybdenum itself is still about as well known as it is pronounced, actually pronounced "Mo-lib-de-num", and most people who know how to spell it can’t pronounce it. It may be for most people the single most important missing ingredient in improving health.

What Dr. Henzi had stumbled on was that B12 provided an alternate pathway for metabolizing aldehydes into harmless forms. B12, selenium, magnesium, manganese, B3, iron, and MOLYBDENUM, are all necessary for metabolizing irritating aldehydes from food, sugar, NutraSweet, personal care products, smog, alcohol, Candida albicans byproducts, into acetic acid which can be excreted, or acetyl coenzyme A, a necessary part of the Krebs energy cycle, or the ATP molecule and Coenzyme Q10, responsible for the other great source of energy for the human body, the proper functioning of the immune system, the ability to handle virus and other unfriendly microbes, for maintaining youth, vigor and health.

Raw sunflower seeds also contain vitamin D, which is mainly lost in processing, and an ingredient not suspected of affecting the Krebs energy cycle, but a vitamin that acts like a hormone which must affect everything, in the same way that other hormones are said to regulate all bodily functions. Without sunlight, plants die. Without sunlight, we die, our nerves, our energy, everything.

As I was experimenting with sunflower seed oil as a part of salad dressing, I looked down to notice the twitching in my post polio syndrome damaged "good" right leg. The twitchings happen day and night, sometimes attributed to spinal or brain nerve damage, sometimes to auto-cannibalism where tissues eat themselves to find nourishment, and sometimes to calcium-magnesium deficiency if it applies to anyone else besides a person subject to nerve disease. I had been diagnosed as subject to new nerve degeneration, and this was proved to me by EMG tests as well as gross muscular strength tests. Chronic pain had left my leg after taking molybdenum supplements, 100 mcg dissolved on the tongue, three times a day. However, nothing had ever affected the twitchings in my leg, which both keep me entertained as my leg jerked in public and keep me and my wife awake at night with its Mexican jumping bean effects.

I had thought it was calcium or magnesium deficiency that was responsible for the twitching, as the Merck Manual suggested for both facial and other muscular ticks. But I had taken those minerals as supplements for years without their apparently reaching my muscles. I had wanted to try injections of magnesium, but never got around to it so that I could bypass the oral assimilation route and go directly to the muscle groups most affected.

Here I was at the kitchen table pouring oil on my salad. Why not try rubbing oil into my leg where the twitches were, like an injection, directly on the location, even closer, since I could rub the whole surface area of the leg and touch the exposed surface area of the muscles.

I did it slowly. Within minutes, I could feel heat generated in that leg, then the twitching subsided, about 30%, after an hour or so. That was a first for me. Perhaps, the sunflower seed oil, cold pressed, also contained calcium and magnesium in sufficient quantities to make a difference. Gus J. Prosch, Jr., M.D., in Essential Fatty Acids are Essential¹⁴, provided me with a piece of the puzzle when he reported that linolenic acid "regulates calcium movement."

Then, finally, I got a call from a bookstore. I had ordered the Ebers Papyros months before and it was in.

As I read the oldest medical book in the history of the world, I found one fascinating thing. Most of the medicines of ancient Egypt were oils mixed with herbs and rubbed or massaged into the skin, the muscles, the nerves. Certainly fatty acids are part of the nutrient precursors for nerves. If linoleic acid is missing, Dr. Budwig found, tumors begin. In fact, all disease states are associated with low linoleic acid levels. If it is supplied, normal cellular growth will digest tumors and many other disease states have been transformed into health. Edgar Cayce said oils were communication chemicals. James Carter in Racketeering in Medicine⁹ said the same thing. They tell excessive prostaglandin production to shut down when they are fish oil or sunflower oil omega 3s. They are carriers or transport mediums for fat soluble vitamins A, D, K, and E; maybe they also transport water soluble vitamins. How else could oils show any water-soluble vitamin B vitamin content on their labels? The vitamins and minerals are in the oil. I added cod liver oil and got better results.

I also stank like a fish.

Then, I added a liquefied calcium-magnesium medium to the oil, then a full set of minerals in liquefied form from an herbal tincture, each time getting a little better results, less twitching, and more strength from my leg.

I also tried it on my paralyzed left leg to see what would happen. There, I got heat, and better circulation, something useful on a leg with paper thin muscles. So pain and comfort levels were much improved.

I’m convinced that out of Egypt or accident, the notion of using oils as a medium for massaging-in supplements is something we must rediscover. Aloe vera is known to regenerate skin and other tissue. So is N-acetyl glucosamine. In applying both to the skin, next to damaged tissue, would nerves regenerate, muscles, injured organs, joints, brains? Would DMSO help this process?

Rubbing sunflower oil on my nasal passages took away nasal congestion. Rubbing it on my scalp took away a headache. Rubbing and eating the imprisoned energy of the sun into the body might help replace what people at the equator have from the sun itself.

The Trees of Death

Deadly Alkali salts in Pesticides

Authors of contributions\quotations are alphabetically arranged; major author, if any, is underlined.

Robert Graves, George Oshawa, Jonathan Wright, M.D./Responsible editor/writer Stephan Cooter, Ph.D.

The synthetically created salts used in pesticides, the organophosphates, have a devastating effect on one of a bug’s essential neurotransmitters. To a bug, a pesticide is a kind of nerve gas. Pesticides paralyze and kill by shutting down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. But pesticides may be doing much of the same thing to the much larger humans who ingest remnants of the pesticides on food when small amounts slowly accumulate to such an extent that they interfere with a much bigger bodily need for exactly the same neurotransmitter.

The National Research Council, funded by the food industry to conduct its research, has tried to convince us, though, that pesticides are no more harmful than the natural pesticides that plants themselves have developed to discourage bugs from nibbling on them. In "In CholinesteraseInhibitors in Food,¹³" the NRC found the same kind of anticholinergic chemicals that synthetic pesticides have. The Nightshade family, tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, green peppers, and eggplant, all contain similar alkaloid chemicals that interfere with choline-acetylcholine enzymes.

Tomatoes contain the anticholinesterase, tomatine. But most of it is found in the leaves of the plant, not the fruit. George Ohsawa, Macrobiotics⁴⁰, felt though that the tomato’s fruit was the original and literal deadly "forbidden fruit" or the forbidden apple, and knew that it was referred to as the "death apple," the pome da mort. Even though Robert Graves has pointed out that pome da mort, was a mishearing or misreading of pomme d’amour, the apple of love rather than the apple of death, maybe Ohsawa was on to something and it was Graves who got it wrong.

Perhaps it was the other way around, and death-apple came to be known as love-apple in the same way the ancients hid many things in sound riddles and ironies.

To Ohsawa, the tomato was responsible for the decline and fall of the Spanish Empire. Both took place after the tomato became an habitual part of the general population’s diet by 1560.

Originating from Peru, the tomato may have had as much to do with the disappearance of the Aztecs as the Spanish Conquistadors.

Most nutritional counselors say that tomatoes are one of the most nutritionally rich foods that a person can eat in terms of vitamins and minerals. But an occasional tomato may be entirely different than a diet that uses tomato sauce, tomatoes, ketchup, salsa, and tomato paste as daily fare. A little tomatine may be stimulating; a lot may be deadly. Prior to the 18th century in the United States, no one on the North American continent would touch a tomato because it was generally believed to be poisonous.

The green parts on potatoes are known to be poisonous in the same way tomatoes may be, containing an almost identical chemical, called solanine, an alkaloid, or poisonous salt. Too many green potatoes, green sprouts, or green eyes can literally kill in the same way an overdose of alkaloid nicotine can. A little may be stimulating; a lot is paralyzing. Although Dr. Jonathan Wright didn’t know the mechanism, he did know as others have discovered that the entire Nightshade family triggers arthritis in many people. When an occasional eating of the Nightshade family changes into a regular staple in the diet, we may be setting ourselves up for all kinds of trouble.

The mechanism is now known to be solanine-tomatine interference with the body’s production of acetylcholine in the same way it does with insects. Solanine-tomatine is a Nightshade’s pesticide. It discourages insects; it also shuts down the signal to lubricate our joints.

Acetylcholine in the human body requires two enzymes to work properly, choline transferase and acetylcholinesterase. The alkaloid solanine-tomatine interferes with these enzymes. The result is that acetylcholine production declines, and acetylcholine is the communication chemical that turns on the joints’ lubrication needs. Tobacco, eggplants, green peppers, and white clover all do the same thing to many. White clover gives cattle the bloat. But many bugs and higher organisms have learned to tolerate anticholinesterase and are apparently unaffected by the chemicals, or eat them in such small or occasional quantities that no problems develop. But increasing quantities and long-term accumulation may eventually trigger problems in sensitive individuals.

For sensitive people, the habitual combination of the Nightshade family in the diet with small remnants of pesticides may result in allergic reactions mimicking many diseases and emotional disorders. It’s not only arthritis that can result, but even Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s like symptoms.

An entire class of neuroleptic drugs called anticholinergics work in the same ways that pesticides and the Nightshade family work. Atropine, an anesthetic used before surgery, was extracted from the Nightshade family. Antihistamines, Parkinsonianism treatments, ulcer treatments, and neuroleptic drugs are usually anticholinergic: they shut down signals that create excessive secretions in the mouth, in the stomach, in the joints, in the brain, and in the nervous system. Anticholinergics shut down the production of acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a stimulating neurotransmitter that turns the brain on, the saliva on, the bronchial secretions on, intestinal secretions on, the muscles on, and the lubricating chemicals for joints.

For restless movements and tremors in Parkinson’s disease, anticholinergic drugs are helpful for that one symptom. They shut down the signal that causes the tremor. But at the same time unwanted signals are shut down, the brain’s ability to concentrate and think clearly is shut down as well. A doctor and nursing home may get a manageable patient with dry mouth, constipation and blurred vision, but—at the same time—the patient treated in this way may get greater confusion and delirium because the brain chemical that facilitates concentration is impaired. The Merck Manual¹ (1992) under the heading "Parkinsonianism" points out that "The most common cause of secondary parkinsonianism is neuroleptic drugs and reserpine." The terrible irony of this is that a patient goes in with a mild case of Parkinson’s disease or high blood pressure, and may come out of the doctor’s care with a greater case of the same thing. The drug used to treat it actually causes it.

A worse irony is going in for treatment of a peptic ulcer only to receive an anticholinergic drug that might shut down excessive intestinal secretions but also give you dry mouth, dry bronchial tubes, blurry vision, and Parkinson’s.

My mother went in for an ulcer; she came out unable to walk except with a cane or walker, depressed, confused, and sleepy all the time.

You go into a doctor’s office for blood in your stool, and you come out and may have to deliver yourself to a rest-home for the blind and incompetent.

Atropine is one drug commonly used in anesthesia. Atropine was derived from the Nightshade family. It is a poisonous alkaloid, useful in anesthesia to temporarily paralyze nearly all bodily functions, but dangerous everywhere else. Since atropine dilates pupils, it also impairs vision. It’s useful for an eye doctor, terrible when you try to drive your car home from the office.

The anticholinergic tree of death should be approached with caution. There’s no telling what kind of serpent might be sleeping in its limbs.

Sodium Fluoride: the Obedience Drug Authors of contributions\quotations are alphabetically arranged; major author, if any, is underlined.

Eustice Mulleins, Dr. Richard Murray, Ian E. Stephen/Responsible editor/writer Stephan Cooter, Ph.D.

Calcium fluoride and fluorine are nature’s mineral salts as found in some natural waters, in tea, and other foods. But sodium fluoride comes from aluminum ore, and it is a byproduct of the modern aluminum industry. Unfortunately, sodium fluoride interferes with one of our most important neurotransmitters, acetylcholine.

Acetylcholine signals the sodium pump in our bodies and turns the electrical current on; choline turns it off.

On, our brains think and our muscles contract; off, we can rest and relax.

Both choline and acetylcholine are derived from a cholesterol-choline-fatty acid compound. If the body produces enough cholesterol-choline compound on its own or you take enough in the diet, you have plenty of choline for relaxing muscles, plenty of inositol for muscle sugar, plenty of fatty acids for fuel to power the muscles, plenty of acetylcholine for concentration. Acetylcholine is one of the neurotransmitters necessary for the brain to think properly and make muscles work. Without it, we become weak intellectually and physically.

The cholinergic system cooperates with salt to make the body-electric work. Acetylcholine controls the show: it regulates concentration and filters out distracting noises and other stimuli. Without it, we can’t think clearly: we’d be flooded with a million different sources of stimulation. We wouldn’t be able to sleep either, and we would be wakened by the noise of every creak and bump in the night.

At least one of civilization’s manufactured salts wrecks the process. Sodium fluoride is a byproduct of aluminum ore extraction. Ironically, the EPA monitors industry dumping its sodium fluoride garbage into rivers because it can kill fish, but the EPA approves of it as a salt added to our drinking water. In our drinking water, fluoride messes up the thinking process by interfering with acetylcholine synthesis. Dr. Richard Murray has pointed out that only 1 part per million of sodium fluoride in the water we drink or canned food we take in that came from a fluoridated source can inhibit acetylcholine synthesis 61%. When it comes to a related brain sugar that assists acetycholine, the neurotransmitter, glutamine, 1 ppm of sodium fluoride inhibits glutamine synthesis 100%.

In "Neurophysiology and Aluminum³⁷," Dr. Murray demonstrated how we are setting up Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in many of us who think we are trying to strengthen tooth enamel.

Added supplemental choline and food consumed with drinking water may help bind up the negative effects of fluoride salts and prevent this from happening. Avoidance of fluoridated water is a good idea for other reasons, not the least of which is to avoid brittle bones and hip fractures in old age. In Utah, where fluoridation went into the water supply, bone fractures went up with the fluoride concentration in the water.

But that’s not the worst of it. During wartime, both the Germans and Russians added sodium fluoride to the water of prisoners of war. Were they interested in preventing tooth decay? According to the documentation of the Australian Ian E. Stephen (1987), both Germans and Russians used fluoridation because they had discovered that it made their prisoners "stupid and docile" (Well Mind Association²²). Eustace Mullins in Murder by Injection³⁶, claimed that the originators of fluoridation in the United States were informed about the Soviet uses of fluoride salts to induce sheeplike, obedient, unthinking behavior, not only in prisoners, but in the general population at large.

This "human" experiment was not original. Apparently, the obedience drug-like effect was borrowed from animal studies that showed that breeders of intractable bulls had routinely used sodium fluoride to successfully tranquilize bulls for easier handling. Since the 1940s, the prison camps in the Gulag Archipelago in the Soviet Union were experimental laboratories for discovering just how much sodium fluoride was necessary for producing an easily managed, obedient human population³⁶.

Using Dr. Murray’s figures, it only takes a concentration of 1 part per million of fluoride to significantly impair acetylcholine synthesis in the body. In Salem, Oregon, the water supply has .4 parts per million, considerably under the 1-4 parts per million considered effective to prevent tooth decay through sugar-sucking adolescence. But at 1-4 parts per million, declining Scholastic Apptitude Test (SAT) scores, the stupidity of senators who can’t balance check books or national budgets, and the tyranny of dullness that controls our political and regulatory agencies’ thinking takes on an insidious dimension³⁶.

Acetylcholine is the brain chemical that allows clear thinking and concentration. It allows us to sort out the important and distinguish from the trivial. We are left to wonder how much of our leadership is drinking tap water. If we care about ourselves, we better turn off the tap.

It was in the 1940s that sodium fluoride first began to be added to the U.S. water supply. If we can believe Mullins, U.S. bureaucrats not only knew about the Soviet use of fluoride, but envied what it did for controlling a population’s behavior.

The Oil and Vinegar Solution

Authors of contributions\quotations are alphabetically arranged; major author, if any, is underlined.

L. Ron Hubbard, D.C. Jarvis, M.D., Carl Pfeiffer, Roger Wyburn-Mason, M.D., Ph.D./Responsible editor/writer Stephan Cooter, Ph.D.

I was excitedly reading thru your book on How to Spot and Handle Suppression in Medicine: Identical Medical and Religious Patterns of Suppression in The Late Twentieth Century⁶16, and like all good things, when I turn my mind to something else, the real thing I’d like to know the answer to pops into my mind, a windfall. The passage that stimulated the inspiration was on fats storing drugs as L. Ron Hubbard had discovered. It started a chain reaction in me. I had been trying to understand what role cholesterol was playing in the body, and I had a dream about Counselor Troy [a character in Star Trek: The Next Generation], who appeared as a nun in red habits, on a secret mission to do good, but who was accused of being evil. I rescued her, and as I was running, she threw rocks at me, then nearly tickled me to death, as I watched Hawk-Eye and Colonel Potter, [characters in TV's M*A*S*H*] laughing the leaves off the trees in the middle of a war.

I woke up knowing what cholesterol did.

HDL cholesterol transforms into LDL cholesterol the perfect chemical medium for transporting aromatic hydrocarbons and other free radicals into the fat. I’d wager that LDL cholesterol was, like one of its forms, bile salts, digesting free radicals or sponging them up, transporting them to the fat, where they too are stored like cocaine and other toxins, pesticides, etc. I’d just read that Dr. Wyburn-Mason had found that bile salts, a cholesterol derivative, killed his RD amoeba without Herxheimer problems⁴⁸. Then, the "AHa!". I’ll pass it along now, a donation to the Arthritis Fund.

First, put an egg in a small glass of apple cider vinegar, the kind of vinegar that arthritics have been reported to develop a taste for. Let the egg stand over night, and the next morning you’ll be convinced. The eggshell will dissolve and go into solution.

For Carl Pfeiffer⁴⁴, it was a handy hint for people to get an inexpensive source of calcium and related minerals that make up eggshells for putting on their salads. He also said that it sweetened vinegar and was delicious on salad, not too sweet, not too sour. Vinegar is acidic, acetic acid in particular; calcium is alkaline. When together, they balance out, producing a pH and flavor pleasant to the taste buds, together with a good source of copper acetate, that discourages Wyburn-Mason's Rheumatoid Disease (RD) amoeba.

In a similar way, the vinegar solution may be responsible for arthritics who’ve found relief soaking their hands with swollen joints in a bowl of vinegar. The vinegar may be doing the same thing for the calcium deposits in the body as it does for the eggshell, namely dissolving the deposits and putting them into solution, where they could be used, as a serum source of calcium.

Why do arthritics develop a taste for vinegar? One doctor felt it was to tap the copper complexes in vinegar, which accompany, and are in fact essential to yeast metabolism⁴⁴. Beer breweries have to use copper vats to get the yeast to work. And copper complexes are metabolized by the body during the arthritic process. But that might be only the tip of the iceberg. That tip alone might be the body’s way of attempting to kill off or manage Wyburn-Mason's RD amoeba population and reduce inflammation.

It might also be a way of feeding candida populations that produce: alcohol which converts into aldehydes, which in turn convert into acetic acid, vinegar! When enough acetic acid is present, deposits of calcium, like eggshells, would dissolve, break up, and go into solution.

When 61% of the 31 people reported relief in joint pains in "Molybdenum: Recycling Fatigue into Energy," I had originally assumed the relief was from the transformation of aldehyde free radical irritants into something non-irritating, acetic acid-vinegar, which I assumed would simply be excreted out of the body, harming nothing¹².

As I rethink the reason for the improvement in arthritic pain in several people, it would make more sense to think that the aldehydes were attracted to the joints in the first place because they had a job to do. Aldehydes, like formalin and formaldehyde, are used in vaccination laboratories to weaken or attenuate viruses. Aldehydes in the body do similar things to foreign pathogens, weakening them. Part of their job may have been to weaken the RD amoeba.

Aldehydes play a role in attacking or chewing on damaged tissue too, so that when the white blood cells finally get to the scene they will be able to digest the partly chewed up food, damaged cellular debris, bacteria, protozoa, virus, and dispose of it properly.

If too many aldehydes flood the system, the same thing that happens to our own heads when we over-indulge in alcohol may happen to our white blood cells. We both get hangovers, and we can’t see what we’re doing, or what tissues, our stuff or the amoeba stuff, that we’re supposed to. An auto-immune process is likely to begin.

However, when the body is furnished with enough molybdenum, selenium, magnesium, maganese, zinc, B3, B6, B12, the process continues, and the aldehydes, after doing one job, are then transformed into acetic acid, for further clean-up. A fair guess would be that the acetic acid plays a second role in dissolving deposits at the scene of joint injury.

Maybe the deposits are left behind by Wyburn-Mason's Amoeba chromatosa as lime-calcium-uric acid crystals. Uric acid becomes urea too, when assisted by molybdenum, and maybe that involves dissolving uric acid crystals.

Or maybe the mineral deposits are caused by constant withdrawal from the bone’s reserves of calcium to fuel the blood of arthritics low in that and other minerals. The cause wouldn’t matter; the clean-up would take place just the same.

So the same thing that is done to an egg may be why one woman in Yucca Valley California, who had been taking molybdenum and who had a bone spur on her hip, may have subjectively experienced a pleasant "red hot" warmth in her hip where the pain had been¹². Either the aldehyde irritants were transforming themselves into acetic acid and she felt the chemical process as warmth, or it took her longer to experience heat because her problem was not aldehyde irritation at all, but rather pain from the calcium deposit itself, and it took her body two weeks to begin to experience the acetic acid effects of dissolving the bone spurs.

Vinegar on the hands or feet or wherever as a bone soak might work for that reason to reduce inflammation with its copper and dissolve mineral deposits.

Lemon juice, or lemon peel, is said to work the same way by herbalists when ingested.

Vinegar as a metabolic byproduct of the body’s own aldehydes whether from environmental causes or candidiasis might perform a similar role, if the proper nutrients were in good supply.

Candidiasis, like the liver’s failed attempt to produce vitamin C, might be the body’s attempt at trying to produce its own vinegar solution to calcium deposits. Calcium deposits might just become serum calcium from the arteries and the joints if this attempt were successful, and all the vitamins and minerals were in good supply.

Oil too might just help out in the same way. Fatty acids are storage places; they are also transport mediums. Here we’ve developed tastes for oil and vinegar salads, which might have been telling us, yes, eat more good quality linoleic acids to restore the health of the whole system, eat more fresh vegetables, but for arthritics, that taste might also include the body’s own wisdom trying to tell us about the effect of increasing or normalizing our calcium flow.

In Essential Fatty Acids are Essential!¹⁴, one function reported was that linoleic acid or linolenic acid, increases the rate of calcium flow. I’m sure that would happen with ingesting better quality oils, virgin olive oil, cold pressed sunflower, and canola. However, an expeller expressed sunflower oil that I rubbed onto my nerve damaged right leg although not the best of oils, had a more rapid effect when topically applied. Originally, I attributed the improvement in muscular twitches, fasciculations, to the molybdenum in the oil going directly to the muscles that may have needed it and transforming some irritating aldehydes in the process. That may still be partly correct. However, it may be equally correct to think that the oil itself improved the tissue or blood flow of calcium. And too, as aldehydes converted into acetic acid, partly calcified arteries that most of us have had since infancy may have released enough calcium to normalize the involuntary contractions of muscles I experienced and relaxed them.

Oil and vinegar solutions may be great on salads; for arthritics and others with muscle, nerve, and joint problems, the oil and vinegar solution might be equally useful on the hands and everywhere else, massaged into the skin, or used as a soak. The waiter may think it odd when you ask for oil and vinegar, and he sees you rubbing as much into your knuckles as you pour on the salad, but your joints may think much better of you for trying the oil and vinegar solution. It doesn’t cost much to try unless you leave your hand on a plate near a near-sighted, blurry-eyed eating companion who mistakes your hand for his or her salad.

Well, I was very excited about that. Some of my best insights come just the way that one did. So for what it’s worth, here it is. It’s yours if you want it.

Of course, if the vinegar-oil solution works for your's or any one else’s bone spurs, I’ll be pleased as heck.

Addendum

Although I was more than a little wary of what I had logically pieced together about vinegar's possible role in alleviating calcium deposits in arthritis, I found support for my feelings in D.C. Jarvis, M.D.,Folk Medicine, A Vermont Doctor's Guide to Good Health²⁶.

In Jarvis's cattle studies, he found that swelling and inflamed knees in cattle subject to arthritis was relieved with the addition of 2 to 4 ounces of apple cider vinegar to their feed. In one case, a seven-year-old arthritic cow had such thick milk that it was nearly impossible to get the milk out of her with a milking machine. In order to thin the milk, first 2 ounces, then 4 ounces of cider vinegar were tried to see if it would help. Not only did the milk thin so the cow was giving 32 pounds of milk per day rather than the 11 pounds before the vinegar treatment, but the cow's arthritis symptoms cleared up as well.

Dr. Jarvis maintained that whole apple cider vinegar also had a similar healthful blood thinning effect in humans.

A similar account was reported of a farmer with arthritis who had taken ten teaspoonfuls of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water, 3 times a day, with each meal. On the second day, the farmer reported a 20% improvement in symptoms, by the 4th day a 50% improvement, and by the end of a month a 75% improvement.

In attempting to discover why this was helpful and why calcium deposits formed in the first place, Dr. Jarvis had noticed that calcium deposits were commonplace in high calcium water in the teakettle. He then discovered that plumbers had been able to remove calcium deposits in furnaces by adding apple cider vinegar to the furnace water. It was obvious from these observations that vinegar did dissolve calcium deposits. But what caused them in the first place?

Dr. Jarvis knew that calcium deposits also formed when Vermonters boiled maple syrup; calcium malate precipitated out of the syrup solution when the maple syrup was boiled. It was known as "maple syrup sand."

His suspicion was that boiling or cooking actually changed the pH of whatever was cooked. Dr. Jarvis then tested water boiled for tea and in cooking vegetables and found that the pH of the water changed during cooking to alkaline. In Dr. Jarvis's words, "calcium enters into solution in an acid medium and is precipitated in an alkaline medium." The implications of this observation are far reaching: cooked foods may precipitate calcium not only in the teakettle but in the bloodstream. And the cause is not an overly acidic medium, but an excessively alkaline medium.

Dr. Jarvis's findings were apparently the exact reverse of both the herbalists' views of arthritic causation and Dr. Prosch's. The herbalist view is that mineral deposits are caused by acidosis, overly acidic conditions of the blood and tissues. Dr. Prosch had found that many tissues were overly acidic. Since the normal medical view is that the extracellular fluid is weakly alkaline, Jarvis's observations seem to run counter to many assumptions. In attempting to alkalize the system by eating alkalizing foods, the stomach may become overly alkaline, and the blood pH may become overly acidic or overly alkaline in reaction. Some foods may produce unbalanced blood pH's, and the worst pH for people susceptible to arthritis may be an excessively alkaline blood pH.

Dr. Jarvis had pointed out that over consumption of meat, for instance, borrows chlorine from the blood serum, causing an excessive alkaline blood pH, simulating a "fight or flight" pH. Strangely enough, citrus fruits like oranges and grapefruit, though acidic in the stomach, may have the reverse reaction, like meat, on the blood and urine, alkalizing it beyond the normal range. Cranberry, grape, apple juice, and apple cider vinegar, produce an mildly acidic blood pH and acidic urine reaction that is positive.

In Dr. Jarvis's understanding, "By so flooding your blood with a natural acid and the potassium it contains, any deposited calcium enters again into solution."

Whatever the explanation, whether it is the potassium in apple cider vinegar alone, or the chelating affect of vinegar on potassium and other minerals they come in contact with, the promise of adding acid-forming foods, rather than alkaline reacting foods, may be the solution. When Dr. Prosch found overly acidic tissue conditions, rather than finding a pH cause of arthritis, he may have found the body's attempt to right itself.

In any event, a litmus paper experiment might be worth trying. If Dr. Jarvis is right, fatigue, fear and anxiety, are registered in alkaline urine readings. So are urine reactions during colds, flu, and chickenpox. However, bright joyful attitudes, having a good time, are registered as acidic-urine readings. Cold drafts in the winter produce overly alkaline urine readings; warm air, warm foot baths, and hot lemonade, on the other hand, produce acidic readings. When urine readings turn alkaline, you presumably have several days warning of an impending cold or flu. The most reliable times for taking such readings are said to be in the morning on arising and just before the evening meal.

Using a litmus paper urine test might help resolve what works for or against individual people with arthritis. If you have bone spurs and they have not cleared up or improved, take the Squibb litmus paper urine test to assess the pH of the methods your are trying. If the Squibb Nitazine paper turns yellow, whatever you are doing in terms of environment, mood, or diet is producing an acidic reaction. If it turns blue, whatever you are doing is producing an alkaline reaction.

If Dr. Jarvis is correct, mood, diet, and environmental changes should turn the litmus paper yellow, an acid condition. The simple addition of 2 to 10 teaspoons of vinegar in water, 3 times a day, may normalize the urine reaction to acidic. Under the acid circumstance, symptoms should improve. But if Dr. Jarvis was wrong, the reverse reaction would be useful to know.

It might be equally useful to know that whole apple cider vinegar is an inexpensive and rich source of many minerals and trace minerals, among them, potassium, calcium, sodium, iron, silicon, phosphorus, chlorine, magnesium, sulfur, fluorine, and many trace minerals.

If Heinz is still making its vinegar from whole apples, Jarvis mentioned that it was one brand, in 1958 at least, that was worth adding to your diet.

Equally interesting was his discovery that raw unfiltered honey helped raise serum calcium. Does this mean that honey is a natural chelator as well?

Wheat may work against most of us, but corn, cornbreads, corn oil, and rye breads may work for us.

For those of us with mineral poor diets, kelp powder used as a seasoning might help improve them inexpensively.

Bone Spurs, Minerals, Herbs, Sunshine, Color

Copyright 1994

Permission to Publish granted by Stephen Cooter, Ph.D.

All rights reserved by the author

All rights reserved by the The Roger Wyburn-Mason and Jack M.Blount Foundation
for Eradication of Rheumatoid Disease

AKA The Arthritis Fund AKA The Rheumatoid Disease Foundation
5106 Old Harding Road, Franklin, TN 37064

Authors of contributions\quotations are alphabetically arranged; major author, if any, is underlined.

S. Arimori, Dr. Kazuhiki Asai, Robert Bingham, M.D., Oscar Brunler, M.D., Jean Carter, Linda Clark, Sharon Faelten, Richard Gerber, M.D., Col. Dinshah Gladiali, Handler, L. Ron Hubbard, Kwang Jeon, Ph.D., Kandinski, P. Kidd, Jethro Kloss, Royal Lee, S. Levine, Laurie Marzell, N.D., Nathaniel Mead, John Mock, Dr. Moos, Richard Murray, John Ott, Dr. Richard Passwater, Louis Pasteur, D.C., Pfeiffer, Gus J. Prosch, Jr., M.D., Dr. Paul K. Pybus, Linda Rector-Page, N.D., Dr. Reich, Ida Rolf, Ph.D., Smith, Solomon, John R.J. Sorenson, Ph.D., Stetton, Y. Yamamura, Morton Walker, D.P.M., White, Dr. M.W. Whitehouse, Roger Wyburn-Mason, M.D., Ph.D./Responsible editor/writer Stephan Cooter, Ph.D.

When I was experiencing intense pains in a frozen shoulder, I followed my doctor’s advice to alleviate the problem: I exercised, I stretched, and I used heat. But my pains were becoming much worse.

My wife, seeing me in constant pain, suggested reversing my strategies to that of using ice rather than heat, rest rather than exercise and stretching, and to stop whatever new treatment had been advised by my physician.

I had been diagnosed as an almost universal food reactor, allergic to all foods but eggs, oats, and garlic, so I had just begun taking allergy shots which involved minute doses of the food particles I was allergic to. I stopped the shots, I used ice, and I rested. Sure enough, my pains improved.

At the time, no one pointed out that frozen shoulder is frequently connected with Rheumatoid Disease (RD) and has been successfully treated with anti-amoebic medications like copper sulfate and metronidazole [and other of the 5-n-nitroimidazoles]. Dr. Roger Wyburn-Mason, The Causation of Rheumatoid Disease and Many Human Cancers⁴⁸, 1983, believed he had found a limax amoeba which he named Amoeba chromatosa infesting areas of arthritic injury, resembling human macrophages in both appearance and behavior among cellular debris in injured tissue.

Dr. Wyburn-Mason also noted that the Rheumatoid Disease amoeba was attracted to heat. Ironically, orthodox heat-treatment for RD involves everything I was told to do for my frozen shoulder, and everything that is the exact opposite works for active arthritic problems. In active stages of RD, heat and exercise work against inflammation and pain. Cold and rest work to help.

Unknowingly, I had happened on using one essential characteristic of Wyburn-Mason's RD amoeba’s behavior to my advantage. His Amoeba chromatosa was attracted to heat. Their thermotrophic or heat-seeking behavior has been used to make RD amoeba migrate out of inflamed human tissues. It could well be that this very simple characteristic is partly why my use of ice worked to reduce my pain. RD amoeba may have been driven into warmer territory, or may have been put to sleep.

Are these hypothetical RD amoebas attracted to already injured and hotly inflamed tissues, are they organisms responsible for causing the inflammation in the first place, or are their by-products additional causes of cartilage, joint, and other tissue injury? Whether their by-products are free radical irritants like Candida albicans’ aldehydes, and whether these by-products bind with calcium to form excessive mineral deposits are unanswered questions. The course of RD is believed to be halted when the microbe [or some other unknown organism] is killed, but mineral deposits remain at the sites of injury. So the course of the disease is altered, but the aftermath of earlier injury remains, and EDTA chelation therapy seems unable to resolve the problem.

One aftermath is bone spurs. Excess mineralization of bone from one cause or another is assumed to be one player in RD bone spurs, and chelation therapy has been tried to correct the problem. Ideally, chelation therapy takes heavy metal toxins, other irritants, inorganic mineral deposits, cadmium, lead, copper and calcium excesses out of the body’s tissues. The good news is that it removes up to eighty percent of calcium plaques in the peripheral arteries. Many symptoms dramatically improve because of improved arterial volume and greater nourishment to all tissues. Although pain levels and flexibility improve, it has not been reported to have an effect on mineral deposits known as bone spurs or large plaques in arteries.

Unfortunately, chelation also removes essential minerals at the same time it removes deposits, and essential minerals are usually added to the end of the chelation process. I have an awful suspicion, though, that this approach may be almost the exact reverse of what should be tried by many people suffering from RD bone spurs.

John Mock, a friend of mine, had suffered from a painful shoulder for many years and had restricted his calcium intake assuming at the time together with his health counselor that excessive calcium partly precipitated the problem and was responsible for bone spurs that showed up on his X-rays.

Laurie Marzell, N.D.³¹, suggested that his bone spurs were not caused by excessive calcium but a calcium deficiency, and put him on a supplement program of 1500 mg of calcium and 750 mg of magnesium each day. Six to eight months later, new X-rays revealed that the bone spurs had dissolved along with the pain he used to feel in his shoulder³¹.

Most authorities suggest that calcium-magnesium supplementation should be 2:1, two parts calcium to one part magnesium, just as Gus J. Prosch, Jr., M.D.18, found effective in treatment of arthritis, roughly the ratio found in dolomite 1.65:1 made from living organic fossil remains. White, Handler, Smith and Stetton, in The Principles of Biochemistry, recommend a 5:1 calcium-magnesium ratio that these authors found to be normal for human physiology. Now many physicians are recommending equal parts calcium and magnesium. One ratio might work better for some than others.

In one RD protocol, I noticed that mineral supplements had been combined. Although this may be workable for some combinations, combining zinc with calcium is probably a bad idea, as is combining zinc with copper, or molybdenum. Zinc taken with calcium binds with calcium and is lost in feces and urine. Similar antagonistic actions would take place with zinc and copper, and molybdenum and copper, making both sets of minerals less available.

Pfeiffer suggests taking calcium-magnesium supplements at different times of the day⁴⁴.

Dr. Richard Murray’s suggestion is to take calcium supplements on an empty stomach, early in the morning, and just before retiring³⁷.

Combining Dr. Prosch’s protocol¹⁸ of taking fish liver oil supplements at the same time, early in the morning, late at night on an empty stomach, might help increase calcium absorption and use, and the person taking it would get the intended benefit.

Taking zinc mid-morning on an empty stomach separates the competition of both for absorption.

Molybdenum should be insalivated probably at a different time than copper is ingested, if a person were attempting copper supplementation on the same day. One cancels the other’s effects if taken at the same time.

If one is attempting candidiasis treatment, copper treatment might totally interfere with the process since copper encourages yeast activity. More than likely, copper treatment used in amoeba treatment should be reserved for a different month or months altogether.

Dr. Prosch has also found that the great majority of Rheumatoid Disease patients are deficient in free ionic calcium in circulation. On the surface, this presents a paradox. Excess deposits of calcium are found in arteries and joints. Serum calcium is found to be deficient. How can there be this apparent contradiction?

This calcium deficiency in circulation strongly suggests to my way of thinking that the bones which store extra minerals for the body’s needs will be used to compensate for the body’s other serum needs. When infectious or autoimmune processes take place from injury, food allergy, microbe, virus, or fungus, Dr. Richard Murray has pointed out that extra calcium is mobilized by the fever and inflammatory process to fuel the white blood cells to assist them in their microbe digesting purposes, to assist in the inflammatory process, to assist in repairing or digesting cellular debris from damaged or dying cells, or to assist in digesting undigested food particles that find their way into circulation.

Rises in body temperature facilitate calcium going into circulation. Children with convulsions before the turn of the century were submersed in hot water baths to assist the body’s natural process in putting free calcium into the blood stream.

If blood calcium levels were high to begin with, calcium from the bones would not need to be tapped. But if deficiency states exist, extra calcium is drawn out of the bones. This draw on bone calcium is thought by Dr. Marzell³¹ to create a "streaming off" effect from the bones to supply the body’s other needs. As the streaming off may become habitual, bone spurs are the visible results left behind like stalactites or stalagmites slowly forming on the ceilings and floors of cave walls, composed partly of calcium and uric acid salts in the human body near the ends of joints. Giving the body more supplemental calcium might stop the need for withdrawal from the bone’s calcium banks, the streaming off effect would stop, and the body may begin to heal itself, dissolving the excess deposits.

In others, rather than bone spurs, the body’s need for calcium may take the form of erosion and loss of bone density. Prevention Magazine¹¹ conducted a Calcium Research Project in 1977. Of 2,959 responses that were collated, 1,379 people said that bone pains had either been "relieved or abolished" after taking supplemental calcium. So that for slightly more than half of the people participating, extra calcium made a difference in relieving aching joints. Sharon Faelten and the editors of Prevention Magazine suggested that arthritic bone degeneration was "simply the result of too much calcium having been withdrawn from the bones throughout the years in order to keep blood levels of this vital mineral at the required level¹¹. What’s more, there is reason to suspect that the "calcium deposits" that sometimes accompany joint problems are associated not with too much calcium, but rather too little. What may be happening is that the calcium withdrawn from the bones for some reason has a tendency to pile up in the wrong places." A typical amount of extra calcium supplementation was reported as 1200 mg per day, together with a wide range of other vitamins and minerals. Presumably, other minerals with the exception of magnesium should be taken at different times than calcium to prevent competition for absorption.

For some, the solution may be extra copper that folklore popularized in wearing a bracelet to alleviate arthritic symptoms. Copper may absorb topically through the skin to produce both an anesthetic and anti-inflammatory effect. One of the reasons for aspirin’s initial positive effect on alleviating arthritic symptoms is that it prompts the formation of copper complexes in the blood. John R. J. Sorenson, Ph.D., in a 153 person study of people with arthritic like diseases, found that copper levels rose and fell with flare-ups and remission of the disease. He found that giving copper supplements like copper acetate was an effective way to treat inflammation in animal experiments and theorized that copper was the body’s natural way of assisting the inflammatory process, Journal of Applied Nutrition¹¹, April, 1980.

Pfeiffer has pointed out that the body under stress or infection shows a rise in serum copper and a decrease in serum zinc. In animal studies, superoxidase dismutase, a protein containing zinc and copper had been shown to reduce acute inflammation within one hour.

Dr. Wyburn-Mason’s success with copper sulphate also suggests that copper complexes kill his RD organisms as well as repel them⁴⁸. Wyburn-Mason's RD amoebas would not migrate into cultures with copper present, and when copper sulphate was added to the culture, his RD amoebas died. Bile salts and copper sulphate, at 10-25 mg daily, have been successfully used to stop the course of RD in Dr. Wyburn-Mason’s clinical experience, whether the cause be amoebic or something else.

Unlike metronidazole, bile salts and copper sulfate do not cause the Herxheimer reaction. One wonders if metronidazole leaves behind the dead remains of RD amoeba that pile up like dolomite limestone deposits pile up in the sea except these amoeba "skeletons" would pile up elsewhere.

I wonder further if this is what is responsible for the Herxheimer crisis reaction where all RD symptoms are made temporarily exaggerated for short periods of time. Bile salts help digest fat in the GI tract; at the joints, a fat-based amoeba might be so thoroughly dissolved by bile that all minerals and other metabolic by-products go into circulation in non-irritating forms without piling up at the joints.

Copper sulfate might kill the amoeba, then chelate with or bind to the amoeba’s mineral remains, leaving less in the way of toxins to cause a Herxheimer’s reaction.

It did occur to me that "amoebas" that "look like" macrophages might have been macrophages caught in the act of auto-immune attack and were acting like foreign microbes and may have been disabled as if they were vagrant invaders. [This possibility occurred to Dr. Paul K. Pybus, former Chief Medical Advisor to The Rheumatoid Disease Foundation/The Arthritis Fund, and seems to have been confirmed by research performed by protozoologist Kwang Jeon, Ph.D. See the Foundation's The Herxheimer Effect¹⁵.]

Pfeiffer points out that one of aspirin’s and all other NSAIDS' little known effects are chelation: that is, bivalent metals such as copper, zinc, iron, and calcium are borrowed from tissue and bone and increased in the blood supply when aspirin is taken. As Richard Murray, D.C., has pointed out, this is temporarily helpful in assisting inflammatory processes by feeding white blood cells what they need, and in reducing histamine levels in the blood, but may in the long term delay the resolution of the problem³⁷.

Use of NSAIDS, though alleviating symptoms, may have been in part responsible for low iron and calcium levels noted by Dr. Robert Bingham, Fight Back Against Arthritis⁵. Our modern tendency to take an aspirin for every minor ache and pain may have severely drained our mineral banks.

As I understand it, aspirin-like drugs alone are putting a potential drain on the body’s own storehouse of minerals when they are habitually taken over long periods of time. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs themselves may be in part responsible for creating three conditions: mineral deficiency, bone loss, and bone spurs as the calcium-mineral banks are habitually drawn on. In a sense, daily use of aspirin and its over-the-counter cousins would place the body in a constant state of chronic stress resembling the disease process itself.

It would be fascinating to find, though, if calcium-magnesium were added to aspirin that aspirin’s effects would mimic calcium-EDTA or magnesium-EDTA chelation therapy. Aspirin and minerals taken together might increase serum calcium without creating a drain on bone reserves and reduce the hazards of overly acidic stomachs. For pain-relieving affects aspirin aims at, plain old cod liver oil would be a healthier and safer, but not a cheaper alternative, without depleting the body of minerals. Jean Carper in the Food Pharmacy⁷ has pointed out that fish oils or fish block excessive prostaglandin production, in part responsible for the body over-reacting to irritants. Calcium and cod liver oil, which D³ in cod liver oil assists, might make for a winning combination in antihistamine and immune-system boosting effects.

Hard work or exercise in hot weather can also result in calcium losses of 1000 mg per day, Faelton pointed out in The Complete Book of Minerals for Health¹¹.

Feeding the body the minerals it must otherwise mobilize to treat the inflammatory process makes good common sense: extra calcium (taken separately from zinc), extra zinc (also taken separately from copper), extra copper.

Gold salts at one time, Dr. Carl Pfeiffer pointed out, in <I>Zinc and Other Micronutrients⁴⁴, 1978, had been shown to reduce inflammation, at least until gold salts themselves become excessive and reversed their effects. Fascinatingly to me, gold and copper are found in similar foods which are safer sources of the mineral. Dr. M. W. Whitehouse has pointed out that people undergoing prolonged bouts of inflammation begin to develop tastes for nuts, shellfish, and cider vinegar, all rich sources of copper and other minerals. Gold is also found in organic forms in carrots and shrimp. Since shrimp is possibly the only seafood that does not create an overly acidic reaction in the body, and overly acidic conditions are associated with arthritics, the implications for a copper-gold, fish-oil dietary change may be worth looking into. Adding carrots or carrot juice, nuts, and shrimp to the diet might be safer alternatives than supplements or injections, particularly of gold.

The British Journal of Dermatology, October, 1980, reported that 11 arthritic patients had been given zinc sulfate, 220 mg, 3 times a day, for six weeks, then a placebo for six weeks. For those who continued the therapy for six months, significant gains in mobility, reduction of swelling, and stiffness took place. Zinc plays a known role in immune system stimulation and reduces inflammation. It also is known to play a role as a free radical scavenger, neutralizing the effects of many irritants and normalizing the pH of the blood. Severe zinc deficiency shows up in fingernails with ridges and white spots and is associated with prostate problems. In one study, low levels of zinc and histadine were found in rheumatoid arthritis patients. Twelve weeks of 220 mg of zinc three times a day had the result of significant improvements in walking, stiffness, and swelling in the study of the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle⁴⁴. In this study, it was believed that EXCESS copper was removed from tissues by the antagonistic effect of zinc on copper. In some cases, it may be too much copper, in others, too little.

Herbs

The herbalist point of view supports a mineral deficiency-acidosis theory of arthritis. Jethro Kloss, in Back to Eden²⁹, felt, with other herbalists, that devitaminized, demineralized, processed foods, especially sugar, white flour, tea, coffee, liquors, and excessive meat consumption produced an overly acidic condition of the blood where minerals were lost and metabolic waste products accumulated.

Dr. Prosch has also observed very much the same clinical profile, especially that "The great majority of [arthritic] patient’s body fluids are too acid in nature." According to Dr. Prosch, "Acid-forming foods are those which are high in one or more of three elements: phosphorus, sulfur, and chlorine; alkaline diets are those high in potassium, calcium, magnesium and sodium¹⁸." Refined sugars, refined flours, grains, proteins, and fats are largely acidic in nature. The RD amoeba chromatosa is described as containing "acid-fast" structures by Dr. Wyburn-Mason and may either thrive on or create acid conditions.

Much could be gained in healthy mineralization by simply avoiding excessive consumption of caffeinated beverages, soft drinks, and alcohol which are known as mineral wasters, especially wasters of magnesium and calcium. Other gains would come from avoiding refined sugar, white flour and rice, which require B vitamins and minerals that they must borrow from our bodies in order to be digested. The net result of eating refined foods is mineral-vitamin depletion.

Linda Rector-Page, N.D., Ph.D.⁴⁵, an herbalist, points out that acid/alkaline imbalances that result in arthritis are caused by "stress or poor environment . . . adrenal exhaustion, faulty elimination, too many prescription drugs, long-held emotional resentments, an over-acid system, and pessimism about life," How to Be Your Own Herbal Pharmacist, 1991⁴⁵. Dr. Rector-Page suggests that many herbs support detoxification, alkalizing, flushing out inorganic mineral deposits, and furnishing the body with enough organic silica and vitamin C for rebuilding healthy collagen and tissue. She claims that arthritis, rheumatism, bone spurs, adrenal exhaustion, and imbalances in blood pH are helped by the following kinds of herbs.

For blood and colon cleansing, one or more combinations of echinacea, red clover, licorice root.

For dissolving inorganic sediment, lemon or citrus peel, cranberry powder, slippery elm, kelp or other sea vegetables, the kitchen herb turmeric.

For alkalizing the system, aloe vera, rose hips, sarsaparilla, parsley.

For digestion, alfalfa, garlic, and cayenne.

For restoring flexibility and reducing inflammation, yucca, used by Southwestern Native Americans for centuries to treat arthritis, alfalfa, yarrow, aloe vera.

In different carefully controlled studies reported by Dr. Bingham, 50% to 90% of arthritic patients taking yucca alone for months to a year experienced significant improvements⁵. Yucca shares with gingseng herbal saponins which act as biological detergents cleaning out irritants in the system.

For herbal anti-oxidants useful in neutralizing irritants in arthritis, garlic, Pau d’Arco, ginkgo biloba, bee pollen, chlorella, and Siberian ginseng.

Dr. Rector-Page suggests combining one herb from each group to brew tea, or making up combinations of your own capsules from dried herbs in the same way. Many individual responses are possible to different herbs and herb combinations; one combination will work for one individual while another may work for another.

Cayenne does not have a burning effect unless it is heated and, because of that, probably should not be used in tea. I do know from personal experience that cayenne may not burn on its way in, or burn while it’s in the digestive tract, but it can burn on its way out. It is a rich source of beta carotene, has anti-bacterial properties, and acts as a stimulant on circulation and the entire system. Jean Cartper, in the Food Pharmacy⁷, pointed out that cayenne, with other hot peppers, stimulates the body’s own pain-killers, the endorphins and enkephalins, producing not only a pain-killing effect but a kind of euphoria. It acts as a warming agent for arthritic, lower back, and rheumatic pains.

Alfalfa is an Egyptian word meaning "father." It was considered the father of all restorative tonics, rich in vitamins A, D, E, and K, all minerals, and trace minerals. Paradoxically, rich in organic mineral salts, it is one of the herbalist’s ways of ridding the body of inorganic mineral deposits.

Parsley, rich in chlorophyll and magnesium, B vitamins, potassium and other minerals, is also known to help dissolve bladder stones. It may work the same way on bone spurs.

Garlic is a multiple vitamin and multi-mineral in itself, especially rich in selenium and germanium. Selenium and germanium alone have been known to positively affect just about every known disease condition and restore health.

Garlic’s legendary powers, as reported in Morton Walker, D.P.M., The Healing Powers of Garlic⁴⁷, may be in part due to moderate amounts of germanium and selenium.

Dr. Kazuhiki Asai, Miracle Cure: Organic Germanium³, 1981, felt that germanium was the major cause of ginseng’s power to heal. It is found only in small amounts in medicinal plants, but these small amounts may be responsible for its effects. Several herbs used in herbal treatments of arthritis are rich in germanium: garlic, aloe vera, comfrey, chlorella, and ginseng. Dr. Asai reported that you can feel warmth in hands and feet within a half hour of taking organic germanium. He found that germanium alone restored mineral balance, blood pH, and normal uric acid levels.

High uric acid levels have been reported in people with Gouty Arthritis and is associated with two personality traits: high drive and high intelligence.

In studies of rheumatoid arthritis, germanium was found to normalize many immune system functions, including T-cells, B lymphocytes, antibody-dependent cellular toxicity, and other functions, according to S. Levine and P. Kidd et al, Orthomolecular Medical Society Meeting, San Francisco, 1987, S. Arimori et al, Effect of Ge-132 as an Immunomodulator in Immunomodulation by Microbial Products and Related Synthetic Compounds, Y. Yamamura, et al, eds., Amsterdam Holland, and Dr. Asai’s work at the Germanium Research Institute³.

Many of the healing affects of germanium and selenium might be inexpensively acquired through garlic which has both germanium and selenium, and ginseng, which has germanium, the richest source of which is said to be Korean ginseng. Dr. Asai also found that moderate doses of germanium had positive effects on his own symptoms, but large amounts tended to bring back his own chronic complaints.

Dr. Richard Passwater, in Selenium as Food and Medicine⁴³, 1980, reported on the May 1980 meeting of Norwegian researchers who had found depressed selenium levels in the blood of a rheumatoid arthritis group. Dramatic successes mentioned were attributed to selenium’s known effects as a free radical scavenger helping to detoxify irritants, reducing pain, and eliminating symptoms. The combination of natural vitamin E and selenium intensified this effect. Herbalists recommending alfalfa and garlic may have chanced upon the vitamin E and selenium combination together with germanium. High and low levels of minerals may just be righted by the normalizing function of germanium alone.

Sunlight

When John Ott, photographer for Walt Disney’s World of Nature, had gone to Florida hoping that sunshine and warmth would help his own arthritis, he was disappointed after days of basking in the sun. Then, he broke his glasses, and days later was able to throw away his collection of canes, walk without pain, and even run up stairs. His discovery supported other observations he had made in photographing the growth of plants and cellular plant activity. Glass filters out portions of the spectrum and affects cellular activity. He had worn sunglasses in and out of doors his entire life, looked through the glass of car windshields, and looked at the outdoors through glass windows. He began then to spend as much time outdoors as possible, sometimes in the sun, sometimes in the shade, but always as much as possible without wearing eyeglasses. Six months later, X-rays helped confirm why he had experienced greater flexibility, range of motion, and absence of pain. In Health and Light⁴¹, John Ott saw that the X-rays revealed he had an objective 30% improvement in the hip that gave him so much trouble. Sunlight, unfiltered by glass or plastic, had somehow affected the course of his arthritis. And it was not only the sunshine on his skin that produced vitamin D, which is also known to help assimilate and use calcium, but also the effect of the sun on the pineal and pituitary glands, both of which are light sensitive, and both of which help store hormones and regulate the hormone system which is in turn responsible for the growth, maintenance, and repair of the body.

Arthritis may be partly an environmental disease, caused by living too much indoors, under artificial lighting not giving us the full spectrum, and caused by the glasses we wear and the glass windows we look out of. In part, this would make arthritis a sunshine deficiency disease, as to large extent is multiple sclerosis a disease of northern climates and weak sunlight. It wouldn’t hurt to spend more time outside without glasses, not only for the sunshine and the vitamin D but the fresh air. Not only is the price right, but Dr. Robert Bingham⁵ had long observed that well tanned people and arthritis don’t go together. Dr. Bingham recommended 15 to 20 minutes of direct sunlight and as much indirect sunlight as possible. Although the viewing of sunshine from indoors and through eyeglasses had not occurred to him as a problem, Robert Bingham, M.D., did notice that even vision problems improved without wearing corrective lenses while outside.

I have often wondered if it is only vitamin D which is affected by the action of sunlight on skin. Similar transformations may be involved with sunlight’s effect on all other essential nutrients and cellular behavior. Linda Clark¹⁰ has pointed out that water’s nutritional value and taste as well as pasta’s taste and nutrient content are positively affected by sunlight. Pasta dried in the sun has a different quality than pasta dried indoors.

Louis Pasteur had originally noticed that lactic acid produced by synthetic means was different from the lactic acid in milk. Artificial lactic acid, though chemically "identical" to milk lactic acid, is a reversed mirror image³⁰. Natural substances are laevo- or left handed chemicals, but synthetics are dextro- or right handed. They differ in how they reflect polarized light either to the right or the left. Naturally produced lactic acid is known to be a chelator partly responsible for salt and other mineral losses during exercise. In sweating, lactic acid helps cleanse the body of excesses. Sudden remissions from mercury poisoning have been reported during episodes of sweating. The question I have is this: Do synthetic lactic acid food additives function in reverse, precipitating calcium deposits in arteries and joints?

Royal Lee and others³⁰,³⁴,³⁶ in the forties felt that synthetic vitamins were really poisons or anti-vitamins. In animal studies with rats and dogs, animals lived shorter lives on synthetically enriched foods than they did on foods not enriched. In experiments with synthetic vitamin B and E, it was thought that these mirror-image-vitamins combined with real vitamins in food or in the cells of the body in order to complete themselves. Synthetic vitamin E actually resulted in depleting the stores of natural vitamin E in the body, or it had no effect. Synthetic thiamine or B1was unable to reverse beriberi, but modest amounts of rice polish were able to restore health. It may well be that we are not only vitamin-mineral deprived because of loss of nutrients through high temperature cooking, the leeching out of vitamins and minerals into the broth in which they are cooked and canned, but also because of the reversed nature of the synthetic vitamins that food companies use to replace nutrients lost in processing. Vitamins may not only be incomplete in enriched foods and synthetic vitamin supplements, but work differently because of the effect of light on their functions. Reversal of light may mean reversal of function.

Of the many reasons to use organic raw milk products and cod liver oil, Nathaniel Mead, a doctoral student in nutrition in "Eating For Flexibility," Yoga Journal³⁵ wrote that synthetic D² as found in pasteurized milk and cheeses "contributes to calcification by releasing calcium from the bones and raising cholesterol levels in the human body."

Heavy intake of vitamin D² is now believed to contribute to calcium deposits, the exact reverse effect of its intended addition to milk.

Mead cited a 1974, 469 page Food and Drug Administration, report on vitamin D toxicology that suggested a reclassification of vitamin D², ergocalciferol, as a potent "carefully controlled hormone³⁵."

In the 1900s, Mead pointed out, not only did synthetic D² fail to have an effect on arthritis and rickets, but resulted in epidemics of infant and child poisonings.

Synthetics may indeed have the reverse effects of their natural counterparts. In this respect, D² is likely to prove one causative factor in producing bone spurs.

Calcium and vitamin D sources should be chosen carefully.

Houses with artificial lighting have positive ion charges; natural sunlight has a negative ion charge. Living in glass houses with light filtered through glass light bulbs and tubes may not only restrict a part of the spectrum, but reverse the ionization of radiant energy. As Anthony Di Fabio pointed out in The Prevention, Treatment and Cure of Arthritis¹⁸, <P>positive electromagnetic fields are associated with injury; negative electromagnetic fields are associated with healing. Outdoor sunlight’s negative-ion polarity may normalize the polarity of calcium ions. Indoor living may precipitate calcium deposits by reversing its charge.

When I first heard an acupuncturist’s explanation of facial tics, I thought it was strange. Ancient Chinese medicine blames facial tics on the wind. Imbalances in air, earth, fire, water account for everything. Then, it hit me. The Santa Ana winds and the Chinook winds are known to cause terrible physical and emotional stress. What is not so well known is that any wind carries a strong positive-ion charge. I have a strong suspicion that the wind of any form changes the charge of calcium and thereby makes the calcium useless, which in turn causes the tics, a wind-induced calcium deficiency.

Our entire blood pH, proper ionization of tissues and blood, healthful ionization of minerals, may all be geared to outdoor living, living in real sunlight, with the negative ionization it gives to the air, and, I’ll bet, the negative ionization it produces in the body. Excessive free radicals may be encouraged by the electrical fields of homes and offices; normal populations of free radicals may be re-established by spending more time outdoors. Outdoor living might work as well as the Light Beam Generator’s effects of restoring the ‘correct charge,’ I assume the negative charge, to blocked lymph systems and damaged cellular debris¹⁷. Maybe that was what Dr. Reich meant when he said that we evolved under a blanket of solar radiation, that part of solar radiation photosynthesizes into vitamin D, which in turn ionized calcium, which in turn helped energize all cells. Vitamin deficiency and mineral abnormality may be directly related to sunlight deficiency²,¹⁸.

Color

John Ott⁴¹ helped convince me that color should not only be thought of as a matter of personal preference but as a source of radiant energy. Plants and plant cells behave differently under differently colored filters. Tomatoes will not produce fruit in the winter in glass greenhouses that filter out portions of the spectrum.

Col. Dinshah Gladiali, in the Spectro-ChromeMetry Encyclopedia, believed that arthritis and other conditions resulted from color deficiency. A deficiency of red and yellow, he believed, resulted in depression and chronic fear¹⁰. Depression and excitement, Pfeiffer has pointed out, result in lowered calcium levels in the blood.

The staff of Prevention Magazine, Encyclopedia of Common Diseases, 1976, reported on the findings of Dr. Moos, Solomon, and others who investigated the psychological profiles of people subject to arthritis. Depression and fear were part of the profile of those who developed arthritic symptoms. In some cases, this profile was connected with rejection by mothers and strict fathers. In others, arthritic people were described as self-sacrificing, inhibited, perfectionistic people who were characterized as moody, nervous and tense. Defeatist attitudes, depression, pessimism, or gloomy outlooks, may be players in predisposing some people to arthritic problems. Knowing feelings, acknowledging feelings, understanding resentments, and letting them go might well be worth looking into²⁰.

In Rolfing theory and acupuncture, holding onto negative feelings is believed to affect the flow of Chi or the vital force responsible for keeping us alive and well. To Ida Rolf²¹, this vital force was gravity itself, a force that after 8 Rolfing sessions, I began to sense like a kind of electromagnetic water that buoyed me up, help me stand up, and kept me from falling. If negative feelings are held onto, eventually physical blockages take place in the musculature and connective tissues. Piling up of mineral deposits and piling up of feelings may be directly related. Frozen shoulders and frozen feelings go together.

As I believe L. Ron Hubbard was saying, unbending responses to living and stiffness in the joints may be part of the unconscious scripts that our cells learn and confuse¹⁶. Once one automatic response is established, it can be equated and confused with any other feeling or posture.

As Rolfing released a physical block in my neck, I was aware of a large reserve of anger stored in that part of my body as if it were frozen in place, making my neck stiff, and forcing me to relive the stiff neck I experienced when I first got polio. As I sensed the tightness and the pain, anger erupted at my father-in-law. As I followed the anger, the feeling was digested and transformed into grief, and all the grieving I should have done at losing the use of my left leg in my childhood. I thought I was angry that my father-in-law was growing old and dying; he has been very important to me as a male model. But under that anger was a confused deposit of calcified grief that I had never processed or dissolved. As I followed the feelings and sensed them in my body, I let go of many long held resentments against God, the universe, my leg, my friends, and my family who had let me down. In letting those resentments go, I let go of a great deal of stiffness and immobility. I had rejected much about my life and much about myself and confused it all with hurt that I had never fully experienced, an angry mode that I was frozen into, and a grieving process that I never let myself go through. In becoming aware of those confusions, I felt as if I lost 50 physical pounds and another 50 emotional pounds that made my spirit and my body stiff, heavy, and painful to live in.

If we reject ourselves on emotional levels, we may be programming our immune system to attack ourselves physically. Emotional depression and immune depression go hand in hand, according to Richard Gerber, M.D., Vibrational Medicine²³. Rather than acting out what our bodies are telling us unconsciously, we might just be able to program the body for healthier living by telling ourselves and others positive things, by choosing and creating a positive world rather than by being victimized by a negative one, inside and out. I believe we are supposed to learn from our feelings, but at some point, we’re supposed to let them go and move on. Choosing a positive color may be one way of doing just that. In the little things, big things begin.

Simply changing clothing preferences to brighter colors has worked for some people reported in Linda Clark’s, The Ancient Art of Color Therapy¹⁰. Wearing red is said to reduce blood pressure, improve outlook, and increase confidence. Yellow, lemon tones, amber, and golden yellow, Dinshah reported to be helpful in some forms of arthritis as well. Wonderfully enough, Dinshah reported that wearing yellow helped loosen calcium deposits in arthritis. Yellow herbs like lemon and turmeric are said to do the same thing.

Does this mean that at the same time your mood lifts, your calcium deposits lift off as well? It has happened the other way around in chelation therapy. Maybe it works both ways and each goes hand in hand. The mind can chose for the body; or the body can unconsciously mirror the mind’s unconscious choices. Mood, outlook, and health may be all unconsciously affected by drab surroundings, negative circumstances, the color schemes of our homes, the neutral colors of our lives.

Dr. Oscar Brunler, physicist and M.D., also found that beaming yellow on the stomach area helped rid the body of parasites¹⁰. Wearing yellow clothing, a yellow tie, eating yellow foods, cheese, eggs, lemons, yellow sweet potatoes, yellow corn, are all said to produce the desired effects. Orange foods and orange colors also were observed to relieve depression and negative attitudes.

Wearing red or scarlet has been observed to reduce inflammation. Dr. Brunler felt that flooding the body with red light helped rid the body of excessive uric acid deposits and dissolved uric acid crystals in joints. In school children, wearing red improves test performance¹⁰. On Wall Street, the power tie is sometimes red, sometimes yellow. In my personal experimentation with those colors, red and yellow do lift my spirits and improve energy as an adult. It only took a red or lemon yellow tie to change a gloomy day into a bright one for me and those I was in contact with. When I slept on red sheets for one week, I only needed four hours of sleep a night. Wearing a red denim shirt made me feel like dancing. It’s funny, but I hadn’t chosen those colors since I was a kid.

Noticing the effects of different color preferences on our moods may be an inexpensive way of transforming negative feelings into something healthy and robust. Kandinski has pointed out that red is associated with childlike vitality and assertiveness²⁷. For some of us like me who are just beginning to develop that bold childlike side of themselves, color is one way to get there. Choosing foods on that basis might not be a bad idea either. Color is a key to vitamin content, and color may be feeding much more than our spirit when we eat or surround ourselves with something bright and cheerful.

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