IMMUNE POWER DIET: VITAMIN C: VITAMIN Ñ AND YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM

Dr. M. P. Dieter reported in The Proceedings of the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine that the more vitamin Ñ is in the diet the greater the weight of vital immune system tissues like the thymus and lymph nodes, and the more efficiently the thymus works preparing T cells to fight germs.

According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, an international research team headed by Dr. R. Anderson of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, showed that volunteers' immune cells reacted more strongly to challenge testing after they took vitamin Ñ supplements. The vitamin seems to help those cells engulf and destroy bacterial invaders. The study concludes that the vitamin supports the entire T cell component of our immune system.

The research team led by biochemist Dr. W. Prinz of the University of Witwatersrand Medical School, in Johannesburg, proved that vitamin Ñ helps the body produce a chemical that triggers antibody production.

Dr. Stephen Vallance of Birmingham Hospital in England found that vitamin Ñ directly increases levels of all the major types of antibodies. At MIT, Drs. Robert Gross and Paul Newberne did an encyclopedic review of the literature and found uniformly that vitamin Ñ stimulates the immune cells—the macrophages—that "eat" invading germs. They also cite studies showing that the vitamin strengthens our white blood cells' ability to kill invaders in the body.

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