The Classic Anti-Aging Book For Longevity And Vibrant Health

One of the best books ever written for laymen on human health and nutrition was How to Live Longer and Feel Better by Linus Pauling. The book reflects his scientific authority and presents clearly stated views on a wide variety of health and nutrition issues that face us all as we grow older. Some of it may be a little out-of-date but the book still resonates with the wisdom of a great scientist who was dedicated to bettering the human condition and who was unafraid of making enemies in high places. These include, the medical establishment, the pharmaceutical industry, or government agencies, especially the FDA that he thought were too rigid in their thinking. It gave Dr. Pauling a platform from which to air his opinions of the federal government’s record in providing nutritional information to the public. As you would imgine, these opinions did not make the government happy by any stretch of the imagination. Here are a couple of passages from the book that give you a good idea of what he thought of the feds.

From page 4:

It is far easier to obtain reliable information about the factors determining the health of guinea pigs or monkeys than of human beings, and I have relied to some extent on the studies made on these and other animal species.

I am, for example, impressed by the fact that the Committee on the Feeding of Laboratory Animals of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council recommends far more vitamin C for monkeys than the Food and Nutrition Board of the same U.S. National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council recommends for human beings. I am sure that the first committee has worked hard to find the optimum intake for the monkeys, the amount that puts them in the best of health. The second committee has not made any effort to find the optimum intake of vitamin C or of any other vitamin for the American people. In its Recommended Daily Allowances, so well publicized that they are referred to on breakfast cereal boxes by the initials RDA, the committee rations the vitamins at not much above the minimum daily intake required to prevent the particular deficiency disease that is associated with each of them.

No evidence compels the conclusion that the minimum required intake of any vitamin comes close to the optimum intake that sustains good health.

And From page 18:

The discovery of vitamins during the first third of the twentieth century and the recognition that they are essential elements of a healthy diet was one of the most important contributions to health ever made. Of equal importance was the recognition, about twenty years ago, that the optimum intakes of several of the vitamins, far larger than the usually recommended intakes, lead to further improvement in health, greater protection against many diseases, and enhanced effectiveness in the therapy of diseases…

As early as 1937, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the scientist who isolated vitamin C, had said that vitamins, used in the proper way, could have fantastic results in improving human health. Yet even now, a half century later, the old-fashioned nutritionists, speaking with the authority of the Food and Nutrition Board of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council, continue to ignore the evidence about the value of the optimum intakes of these important substances. They persist in recommending no more than the minimum supplementary intakes, established by clinical experience a half century and more ago, necessary to prevent the diseases associated with deficiency of the vitamins in the diet. Their recommendations stand in the way of wider popular understanding and practice of the new nutrition.

Since Pauling wrote those words 21 years ago, the situation has improved very little if at all.

Pauling L. <>How to Live Longer and Feel Better W H. Freeman, New York, 1986.