Angina

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Angina

 

And when you get better, remember.

Samuel Hahnemann, MD

 

 

It was a bit odd to have a conversation with my

67-year-old father about his sex life.

 

" I'm on this medicine, Andrew, " he said. " It's for

angina. My doctor sent me to a heart specialist, and

they both agreed I have to take it. The problem is

that it causes impotence. "

 

I let that image sink in for a minute, as he

continued.

 

" Is there any one of your natural remedies that will

substitute for the angina medicine? " he asked.

 

Historically, it was an unusual event for my dad to

ask my view about anything. One of his mottoes was,

" If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you. " So I

was duly impressed with the gravity of the situation.

 

" Vitamin E, Pa, " I said. " High doses of vitamin E

have been used to treat angina since the early 1950's.

Drs. Wilfrid and Evan Shute, who were both brothers

and cardiologists, gave patients somewhere between

1,600 to 2,000 International Units of vitamin E daily

and it eliminated angina symptoms in hundreds and

hundreds of documented cases. " I fully expected him

to ridicule the idea, and I was surprised and not a

little gratified when he thoughtfully nodded his head.

 

" OK, " he said, and we gratefully moved on to another

topic.

 

My dad started at about 400 IU a day, gradually

working up to 1,600 IU over a period of a few weeks.

I've always maintained that the body likes " gradual. "

This goes for decreasing drugs as well as for

increasing vitamins. Pa's G.P. was an open-minded

man, quite British and quite willing to offer my

father a dosage-reduction schedule for his

medication.

 

And that is all it took.

 

Pa called a couple of weeks later.

 

" Is it all right to take this much vitamin E? " he

asked.

 

" How much are you up to, Pa? "

 

" Uh, 1,200 a day. "

 

" Is it the natural, D-alpha form of E that I

suggested? "

 

" Let me get the bottle, " he said, and I heard the

phone drop and bang on the table.

 

A long-distance minute later, he was back.

 

Yep, D-alpha tocopherol, " he said.

 

" That's the one. So how do you feel? "

 

" Pretty fair, " he said. " I'm practically off the

medication now. "

 

" Any symptoms? " I asked.

 

" No. "

 

" Why don't you go to 1,600 with no drugs, " I said.

 

" OK. "

 

The subject did not come up again for months. What

can I say? This is how our family did things.

 

" So Pa, how's that angina? " I asked one day.

 

" What angina? " he said.

 

" Your angina, Pa, your angina. "

 

" I don't have angina. "

 

" Used, to Pa. Maybe a year ago. "

 

" I never had any angina, " he said.

 

" Two doctors said you did, Pa. They had you on

medication, remember? "

 

" Oh, that. I haven't had any sign of that since I

took the vitamin E. "

 

" OK. Keep taking the E, Pa. "

 

" I do. 1,600 every day. "

 

And that was that. He never had angina symptoms

again.

 

" Angina? What angina? "

 

That was nice.

 

 

Usually the fur really flies when you bring up the

Shute brothers' vitamin E treatment for cardiovascular

disease. This has been a controversial area of

medicine for 60 years. Most textbooks state that " E "

is of no value here. Textbooks have said for years

that E is a quack's cure in search of a disease.

There is considerable evidence that the texts are

wrong, and that the Shutes were right.

 

Consider intermittent claudication, which is calf

muscle pain upon walking. Even banal nutrition

textbooks acknowledge scientific proof of this

successful treatment with vitamin E. " This therapy

helps reduce the arterial blockage, " says Williams,

Nutrition and Diet Therapy, Seventh Edition (Mosby,

1993, p 186), a standard dietetics work.

 

Is there something so special about the arteries

between the knee and the ankle? What about " reducing

the blockage " in other arteries? This is the whole

idea of using Vitamin E for circulatory diseases.

 

Medical doctors Wilfrid and Evan Shute of London,

Ontario successfully treated well over 30,000

cardiovascular disease patients with up to 3200 IU of

vitamin E daily. For that achievement, they were

ostracized from their medical society. Here are the

principles of the therapy:

 

1) Vitamin E has an oxygen-sparing effect on the

heart, enabling the heart can do more work on less

oxygen. The benefit for recovering heart attack

patients is considerable. 1200 to 2000 IU daily

relieves angina very well.

 

2) Vitamin E moderately prolongs prothrombin clotting

time, and has a limited Coumadin/warfarin effect.

This is the reason behind the Shutes' using vitamin E

for thrombophlebitis and related conditions. Their

dose? about 1000 to 2000 IU daily.

 

3) Vitamin E dilates and promotes collateral

circulation and benefits diabetes patients or anyone

threatened with gangrene. Dose: tailored to patient;

about 800 IU or more.

 

4) Vitamin E strengthens and regulates heartbeat like

digitalis (foxglove) and its derivatives at a dose

adjusted between 800 to 3000 IU daily.

 

5) Vitamin E reduces scarring when frequently applied

topically to burns or sites of lacerations or surgical

incisions along with a daily oral dose of 800 IU.

 

6) Vitamin E helps gradually break down clots at a

maintained dose of between 800 IU and 3,000 IU.

 

7) Vitamin E is vastly safer than drugs, as doses of

up to 56,000 IU per day fail to harm adult humans.

Gradual dosage increase is advised, and patients with

congestive heart failure, rheumatic hearts or high

blood pressure need careful medical supervision

 

So why hasn't vitamin E been more highly regarded in

medicine? Ambiguous results from a rather small

number of highly publicized, poorly controlled

studies, that's why. The most common reason for

irreproducibility of successful vitamin E cures is

either a failure to use enough or a failure to use the

natural (D-alpha) form, or both. Such studies must be

weighed against the Shute's 30,000 cured patients and

their four books: Complete Updated Vitamin E Book

(Keats), Health Preserver (Rodale, 1977), Vitamin E

for Ailing and Healthy Hearts (Pyramid, 1975) and Your

Child and Vitamin E (Keats, 1979).

 

And vitamin E is safe, remarkably non-toxic. In

fact, " toxicity symptoms have not been reported even

at intakes of 800 IU per kilogram of body weight

daily for 5 months " according to the Food and

Nutrition Board. This demonstrated safe level would

work out to be around 56,000 IU daily for an average

adult, some 5000 times the RDA!

 

Here is an example. Overexposure to oxygen has been

a major cause of blindness in premature infants.

Oxygen-tent retina damage is now prevented by giving

preemies vitamin E, a natural antioxidant. Williams,

Nutrition and Diet Therapy, 6th ed, indicates the

dosage as 100 mg E per kilogram body weight. That

dose (around 200 IU for a preemie) is equivalent to an

adult dose of about 7,000 IU for an average-weight

adult. " There have been no detrimental side effects, "

said the New England Journal of Medicine, Dec. 3,

1981. Nevertheless, the nutrition textbook advised

that " healthy persons stand the chance of developing

signs of toxicity with the megadoses that are

recommended in these studies. " That statement is not

true.

 

In less than healthy persons, there are some valid

cautions in giving large doses of vitamin E. Among

hypertensive patients, sudden large vitamin E

increases cause temporary increases in blood pressure.

The solution is to increase the vitamin gradually,

with proper monitoring (which hypertensive patients

should have anyway). To avoid any possible risks of

an asymmetric heart contraction, patients with

rheumatic hearts or congestive heart failure need

small doses (around 75 IU) and increases under medical

supervision. It is best to inquire about all of these

conditions when taking or submitting a patient

history. For additional information, it is most

worthwhile to contact the Shute Institute, London,

Ontario, Canada or read any books by Wilfrid or Evan

Shute, M.D.. If their books are hard to find, try

Interlibrary Loan (ILL) at any public library.

 

Why supplement with vitamin E? Our need for vitamin

E increases with increased age, exposure to toxins

(smoking, air pollution, chemical oxidants), pregnancy

and lactation. Even an increased consumption of

polyunsaturated fats requires more vitamin E to

protect the unsaturated fatty acids from free radical

attack. For most healthy adults, an optimum daily

amount of vitamin E would probably be about 600 IU.

It must certainly be higher than the US RDA of only

about 10 or 15 IU.

 

It is true that many foods contain vitamin E, such as

milk products, eggs, meats, fish, whole-grain cereals

and whole-grain breads, wheat germ, and leafy

vegetables. However, the vitamin is present in these

foods only in very small quantities. Americans do not

get enough vitamin E in their diet, and it is

impossible to get even 100 IU per day from even the

finest of diets. This is at least partly due to the

widespread milling of flour since the start of the

twentieth century. Coincidentally, heart disease has

also been on the steep increase since 1900. Very

likely there is a connection here.

 

The New England Journal of Medicine published two

papers in the May 20, 1993 issue (Vol. 328, pp

1444-1456) which both supported vitamin E megadoses,

reporting an approximate 40% reduction in

cardiovascular disease. Nearly 40,000 men and 87,000

women took part in the study. The more vitamin E they

took, and the longer they took it, the less

cardiovascular disease they experienced.

 

And the Shute brothers, those quacks, pointed it out

first... sixty years ago. They said: " We didn't make

vitamin E this versatile. God did. Ignore it at your

peril. "

 

And ignore it we have. Even in the very issue

carrying the two very favorable, major vitamin E

studies mentioned above, was an editorial article

advising doctors not to use it.

 

Copyright C 1999 and prior years Andrew W. Saul,

Number 8 Van Buren Street, Holley, New York 14470.