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AIDS and Vitamin Supplementation |
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Vitamins and AIDS |
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by Andrew W. Saul Question: What's the
difference between decades of AIDS drug research and a truckload of Pentagon
five-hundred-dollars-apiece hammers? Answer: The public
has received more honest value from the hammers. It's been known since 1993 that nutrition stops AIDS
better than any pharmaceutical drug. Yes, 27 years ago, a Johns Hopkins
study (1) demonstrated that supplements slow AIDS, and even help halt it. The
seven year long study of 281 HIV positive men showed that those taking
vitamins had only about ONE HALF as many new AIDS outbreaks as those not
taking supplements. Imagine: a 50 percent reduction in AIDS cases just from
vitamins! The real wonder is that the dosages used were so small:
only 715 milligrams of vitamin C a day, and about 5 times the US RDA of the
B-vitamins and beta carotene. Larger, orthomolecular amounts would almost
certainly save still more lives. Even so, Tang et al (1993) concluded that
"The highest levels of total intake (from food and supplements) of
vitamins C and B1 and niacin were associated with a significantly decreased
progression rate to AIDS (as were) vitamin A, niacin, and zinc." At about the same time, Jean Carper's nationally
syndicated column (February 24, 1993) reported that "heavy doses of beta
carotene pills, 180 mg a day taken for a month, boosted the immune
functioning of HIV-infected patients." If you are therefore thinking
that carrot juice may have more punch against AIDS than previously thought,
you may be right. Today, right now, over 30 million of the world's people
have AIDS. How many deaths have resulted from 16 years of nutritional
inaction? On July 1, 2004, reported from Harvard as if it were
original news, a study by Fawzi et al (2) now ALSO
found that vitamins cut AIDS deaths by 27% and slow the progression to AIDS
by 50%. "Multivitamins also resulted in significantly higher CD4+ and
CD8+ cell counts and significantly lower viral loads. . . Multivitamin
supplements delay the progression of HIV disease." VITAMIN C MEGADOSES FIGHT AIDS But multivitamins are just the beginning. Robert Cathcart,
M.D. in Depressing indeed is the sentence of death implicit with
the diagnosis of either cancer or "HIV positive". Go get medical
treatment, yet expect to actually get little more than hope for a drug cure .
. .eventually. But therapeutic nutrition? Of course not: that is typically considered
medicine's poorest cousin. Today,
almost no AIDS patient is offered carrot juice. Almost no AIDS patient is
offered vitamin therapy, especially not 200,000 mg/day of vitamin C. AND STILL WE WAIT Pharmaceutical-fueled research conferences open and close
with still no AIDS drug cure in sight. In July 2004, the Joint United Nations
Program on HIV/AIDS estimated the amount of money needed to treat the world's
poorest AIDS patients will top $12 billion. Implicit in this prediction are
two silent assumptions: 1) treatment efforts will be continue
to be pharmaceutically-based, and 2) people will continue to eat
highly-processed, nutrient-deficient diets Yet “1”
won’t work because drug therapy has been spectacularly ineffective in
lowering either the spread or the mortality rate of AIDS. “2”
won’t work because the Standard American Diet obviously hasn’t
cured AIDS. High-dose nutrition research might. Just how much research has
been funded to see how well really large doses of vitamins do fighting AIDS?
Very little. Drug research, yes. But not megavitamin research. Any limited
approach diminishes the humanity of AIDS sufferers to that of already-doomed
pharmaceutical customers. But it does not have to be that way. We can start here:
since not everyone that is HIV positive ends up with full-blown AIDS,
let’s ask why. If it is because some people have stronger immune
systems, it is logical and essential to go out of our way to nutritionally
build up the immune system of every AIDS patient. The body's natural defense
system, so weakened by the AIDS virus, is highly dependent on that
individual's diet. Any grade-school child can grasp that a weak immune system
is much more likely to be due to a nutritional deficiency than to a drug
deficit. And to make it plain for educated grown-ups, we have 2004
Harvard research confirming what the 1993 Johns Hopkins study indicated: even
very modest doses of nutritional supplements slow, or even help stop,
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. To the tune of 50%. If there were a drug that did that, it would be trumpeted
from every media rooftop. WHAT, PUBLICIZE VITAMINS? The last thing the medical profession needs is to prove
Voltaire correct when he bitterly commented that "Doctors give drugs of
which they know little, into bodies of which they know less, for diseases of
which they know nothing." Nutrition poses a tremendous threat to
medicine and pharmacology. If large doses of vitamins can do a better job
than drugs, then it is an embarrassment to health professionals who have
maintained "you don't need vitamin pills; just eat a balanced
diet." It goes beyond this, though. When vitamins outperform
drugs, then big money is at risk. Vitamin C powder costs less than $30 a
pound. (You can find it at many health food stores or with a Google search.)
Multiple vitamin pills cost just pennies each. Carrots grow in your garden.
All are nonprescription. If these common nutrients work, they certainly
cannot be patented by a drug company. No potential for profit? Then no
interest or funding for research. Yes, there is righteous need for urgency. For those that
have already died from AIDS, it is too late for us to apply yesterday's
research. For those dying from AIDS right now, tomorrow's research is too
late. Only one thing matters, and that
is living results. Even the small amount of nutritional research done has
shown more promise than heavily funded medical research. The public has been
told to line up, wait for, and try out new high-risk, high-cost drugs as they
come along. Up until now, that same public has been told to NOT try those
"dangerous" vitamins. There is a bolt loose here somewhere. For the
HIV positive individual, and certainly for the AIDS patient, it must be
"any port in a storm." SELENIUM AND AMINO ACIDS TO FIGHT AIDS Dr.
Foster’s book, What Really Causes AIDS, provides an original theory for
the causes and therefore the treatment of AIDS. It also describes a nutritional strategy
to halt the AIDS pandemic. It would seem that it is high time for a major clinical
trial of Professor Harold Foster's nutritional AIDS prevention protocol (3)
of selenium, cysteine, glutamine and tryptophan. With
every delay, AIDS patients suffer and die, and so many unnecessarily. It is
time for a full-blown nutritional study for such a reasonable approach that
has already shown promise in stopping full-blown AIDS. The Foster treatment, which has been successfully
field tested in I therefore ask my readers to please send a brief email to
the editor of their local newspaper and respectfully urge its physician
readers and the medical profession to conduct an extensive clinical trial of
Dr. Harold Foster's four-nutrient (selenium, cysteine,
glutamine and tryptophan) regimen to fight AIDS. For further reading:
http://www.doctoryourself.com/aids.html
References: 1. Tang AM, Graham NM, Kirby AJ,
McCall LD, Willett WC, Saah AJ. Dietary
micronutrient intake and risk of progression to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in human
immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-infected homosexual men. Am J Epidemiol. 1993
Dec 1;138(11):937-51. 2. Fawzi WW, Msamanga
GI, Spiegelman D, Wei R, Kapiga S, Villamor E, Mwakagile D, Mugusi F, Hertzmark E, Essex M, Hunter DJ. A randomized trial of multivitamin supplements and HIV disease
progression and mortality. N Engl J Med. 2004 Jul 1;351(1):23-32. 3. Foster, H.D. What Really Causes AIDS. Copyright C 2020, 2009, 2004,
and prior years Andrew W. Saul. Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE
YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at
http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
)
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