Chapter Eight
How to Quit Tobacco 2
Vitamins that Reduce Craving
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This chapter is one that you will not find in most on quitting tobacco. You are about to learn nutritional information that can help you conquer the craving for the nicotine weed.

VITAMIN C AND TOBACCO

W.J. McCormick, M.D., of Toronto, Canada, was one of the first to make the discovery that the nicotine and other poisons in cigarettes and other forms of tobacco, when introduced into the body, rapidly use up the available reserves of vitamin C.

This, of course, should not be a difficult conclusion to come to. In addition to other helpful features, vitamin C specifically works in the body to neutralize and destroy poisons. Smoking, cigars, and snuff put a lot of poison into the system; and the vitamin C is quickly used up in trying to eliminate it.
Yet, oddly enough, it has been discovered that when the supply of vitamin C is exhausted—the body tends to crave the nicotine in the tobacco even more than before!

Dr. McCormick's first articles on this new discovery were published in the April 1952 issue of Archives of Pediatrics. In it, he described how he used massive amounts of vitamin C to so saturate body tissue with this protective agent, that it helped people overcome the tobacco habit.

In clinical and laboratory testing, Dr. McCormick found that the smoking of one cigarette neutralizes in the body approximately 25 mg. of vitamin C. This is the amount of vitamin C in one tree ripened orange. But many smokers consume a pack a day. His first cigarette after breakfast will use up whatever vitamin C he took with the meal, if any. From then on, his body is trying to function normally on a short supply of a very necessary vitamin. On through the day he goes, using all available reserves of this crucial vitamin. Even a moderate smoker will always be extremely short on his supply of vitamin C.

How important is this vitamin? Vitamin C is used by the body, not only to fight toxins and poisonous substances; but it is also used, in collagen, as glue to hold the body together! For example, did you know that a slipped disc is closely related to a lack of collagen formation in the body?

In his article, Dr. McCormick considered this lack of vitamin C in smokers to be the reason they have, for example, a four times greater likelihood of contracting postoperative pneumonia. In connection with this, he mentioned two physicians who, by giving massive doses of vitamin C before and after operations—no longer have any cases of postoperative pneumonia.

According to Dr. McCormick, the use of tobacco not only creates a vitamin C deficiency in the bloodstream, but it also deposits toxic substances there. It is the effect of these deposited poisons in the bloodstream—that sets up part of the powerful craving for tobacco.

When massive doses of vitamin C are given (either intravenously or orally), these toxic substances are cleared out of the system.

Thus, by taking large amounts of vitamin C, the body can more quickly eliminate the nicotine and other noxious poisons—and the one trying to get off tobacco can do so more easily and quickly.

THE VITAMIN B COMPLEX AND TOBACCO

Poisonous substances, when introduced into the body, cause great damage in a variety of ways. Everyone knows that nicotine is a poison. Certain poisons, some of which may even be mild ones when brought into the body, rob it of vitamins. For example, aspirin removes vitamin K, thus making people more susceptible to internal bleeding. Baking soda is an unnatural substance which robs the body of B vitamins by creating a too alkaline condition in the digestive tract.

Smoking not only withdraws vitamin C from the system, it removes a number of the B complex vitamins as well. For example, one of these vitamins that tobacco products removes is thiamine (B1). This very important vitamin is vitally concerned in promoting the health of our nervous and digestive systems. Without it, your body cannot handle carbohydrates (sugars and starchy foods) properly. Thiamine has been called the "morale vitamin," because a lack of it results in depression, irritability, fatigue and inability to concentrate. —Yet those are the very problems pressing on them, which are used by smokers as "pressure reason" to light up another cigarette, which, in turn, then removes still more of the "morale vitamin" from their bodies!

Because of the over refining and chemicalization of food that has taken place in the past one hundred years, in peoples' diets, it is difficult to obtain enough of the B complex vitamins without the added nuisance of smoking. But when nicotine is added, then the burden becomes intolerable for the body.

So, if you wish to stop being jumpy and jittery—stop using tobacco!

(Incidentally, an almost identical process occurs when you take sleeping pills. The barbiturates in them block carbohydrate metabolism, robbing you of B vitamins and thiamine. You then become more nervous, which causes you to take more sleeping pills in the evening in order to sleep. And this results in still more nervousness!)

In connection with this, it is of interest to note that one type of partial blindness is caused by smoking and, to a lesser extent, by taking alcohol. This is the condition known as amblyopia, a disturbance of vision usually occurring in men between 35 and 55.

"A correlation between malnutrition and the incidence of tobacco amblyopia has long been noted: deWecker commented on its frequency during the siege of Paris in 1870; and a tenfold increase was observed under the German occupation of Belgium between 1940 and 1945. Carroll has reported complete or partial recovery in 25 patients with what he terms 'tobacco-alcohol-amblyopia' when their diets were supplemented with the vitamin B complex or vitamin B1 (thiamine) itself."—British Medical Journal, March 29, 1952.

Then there is cancer. Nutritional research teams are well aware of the fact that, in cancer research, the B vitamins are continually coming to the foreground. A diet extremely rich in the B vitamins has protected laboratory animals from getting cancer, even when they were exposed to deadly substances known to cause cancer. In contrast, the control animals, not protected by vitamin B complex, became cancerous. A number of experiments establishing these facts were carried out over a period of many years at the Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and were reported in Journal of Nutrition, July 10, 1951.

Thus, you can see that your nicotine filled body is quite deficient in the B vitamins on the day that you announce to the world that you are quitting tobacco. So you will be wise to begin taking adequate daily amounts of the entire B complex. For this purpose, use natural vitamins from a health food store, plus fresh salads, cooked greens, only whole grain breads, and grain products. Also begin taking a teaspoon of brewer's yeast every day at meal time. Also consider taking a vitamin B complex supplement from the health food store.

Cut out any foods made from white flour or white sugar. These are also B vitamin thieves. No cakes, white bread, soft drinks, chewing gum, doughnuts, or other foods containing processed white sugar or white flour.

Faithfulness in doing this will do two great things for you: (1) You will be able much more easily to successfully stop using nicotine (and coffee and alcohol also). (2) You will much, much more quickly and thoroughly rebuild your body and retain health that you had earlier lost.

Here is something very important to keep in mind: The nutritional aides which will help you quit smoking—are the very nutrients that will help you stay off of it and maintain better health in the years to come. So do not just live more healthfully for ten days; do it for the rest of your life!