In 1989 my father in his sixties suffered a massive heart attack. He never smoked. He didn't drink. He tried to exercise. He had a sweet tooth and he had a low bowel tolerance for vitamin C.
On his doctor's advice in the 1950s, he began taking at least 400 mg of Vitamin E daily. Two weeks before his heart attack, after almost 40 years on vitamin E, his vitamin E ran out. He didn't bother going to the store to get more. Two weeks later he had the heart attack, and shortly thereafter he died, after telling me this story.
Another close relative, in his fifties, ran out of his vitamin E in December of 1998. Two weeks later, he was suffering chest pains and sent to the hospital. The EKG said he had had a heart attack and he was advised to have more tests. Which he declined. He is alive and well on the Pauling Therapy.
I noticed the coincidence. In both cases, approximately 2 weeks after vitamin E was suddenly stopped, after it had been taken regularly for years, these people had a cardiac "event." I have read, but not confirmed, that red blood cells require about this amount of time to be formed in our blood marrow. There may be an important connection. Perhaps red blood cells are more "sticky" if formed without sufficient vitamin E?
Recently I was speaking to a gentleman on the phone who had suffered a heart attack. He told me that after the 1998 media vitamin C scare, he stopped taking his vitamin C. A few weeks later he had his heart attack.
This proves nothing of course, but I think it might be prudent to heed the advice of Linus Pauling. Pauling in his book HOW TO LIVE LONGER AND FEEL BETTER advised us to take vitamin mega doses, but "not to skip even a single day." Pauling didn't waste words. It may not be wise to suddenly stop vitamin E or vitamin C. The National Institutes of Health could do us all a service by investigating.
-- Owen Fonorow
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