This is an old article from Marshall Smith of the Brother Jonathan Gazette website. Now only on the Internet Archive. It presents an interesting finding that I hadn't seen anyone else discuss, but which I think has some validity.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090402020236/http://brojon.org/DigestArchives/060419.html
THE FACTS ABOUT THE B6 BOMBER
"The Greatest Source of Disease and Death in the World"
The other story about the so-called vitamin B6
Several months ago I wrote a series of articles about Winter People and the Three Circadian Clocks in the human body. I mentioned that one of the primary chemicals which operates the circadian clocks was made in the brain from tryptophan in the diet. Tryptophan in the bloodstream is converted into the neurochemicals serotonin in the morning when you wake up, and then is converted into melatonin in the evening to make you sleep. Thus the very same dietary chemical, tryptophan, is used by the body to raise and lower the brain temperature to create the sleep/wake cycle.
I also mentioned that surplus "vitamin B6" in the diet completely disrupts the circadian rhythms. Many readers wrote to ask how could so many people have surplus B6 in their diet. What I will show you here is that most people unknowingly actually get about 10 times the RDA for B6 even if they don't take any vitamins or diet supplements. And if they do take daily vitamins with B6 they are almost toxic and morbid because of the surplus. This is a tremendous health disaster caused by false food advertisements and profiteering. In fact, B6 is not a vitamin and it should never be used in the diet. There is no RDA for B6 - that false number was incorrectly based on the RDA for Niacin and not B6.
I first discovered the problem with B6 about 20 years ago. I found that B6 destroys all the tryptophan in the diet by converting it directly into the vitamin Niacin while still in the bloodstream right after ingesting the B6. By doing that, none of the tryptophan can later enter the brain and become converted into either serotonin or melatonin to operate the circadian clocks. The sudden excess of Niacin caused by the B6 in the bloodstream is simply wasted and peed away.
High levels of serotonin in the brain raises the brain temperature, causing a sense of wakefulness, well-being and satisfaction. It is the feedback mechanism when eating food to tell the brain you have had enough to eat -- you are satisfied and don't need to eat any more. Without the feedback mechanism tryptophan, the individual has low levels of serotonin and has "a brain chemical imbalance" and is diagnosed as ADD or ADHD, obese, hyperactive, needing Prozac etc (along with a very long list of related mental and physical disorders). All caused simply by a surplus of B6 in the diet and the resulting disruption of the circadian rhythms. It is the primary cause of the recent "epidemic" of obesity. Obesity is NOT caused by simply eating fast foods. The sudden rise in obesity around the world "by coincidence" started about 20 years ago, at the same time as most prepared food makers started adding extra B6 and other vitamins to all their food products.
About 20 years ago, most food manufacturers started the trick of adding vitamins to enhance their food advertisements. It started when Ovaltine added vitamins up the wazoo to compete with Borden's chocolate milk. This was to overcome mother's concerns about chocolate milk having added sugar. But Ovaltine with vitamins was "good for you" according to their advertisements. So other food companies started doing the same thing. That was a big mistake.
In 1985 I started reading the list of ingredients on most food products. By 1990 all and every breakfast cereal had added 100 % of the RDA for B6, along with most other vitamins. It is also added to all flour products as "enriched flour" and a whole plethora of other food products. B6 is added, since it is a simple and stable synthetic chemical which does not degrade with age or cooking. It is also very cheap and adding 100% RDA costs almost nothing. But it is NOT a vitamin. It is not found in any natural food. And there is no natural form of B6. It is not a food. It's just a chemical.
Thus B6 is the only "vitamin" which is neither natural nor a vitamin. By 2006, of all the hundreds of commercial breakfast cereals in a box on the market shelves, only one remains a true food product which does not add any vitamins. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to see if you can find that one cereal box on your store shelf which has no added "vitamins." And if you do -- buy it and try it. Let me know if your kids like it. It has no B6.
B6 was simply used since about 1920 as a way to enhance Niacin levels in the American diet. Low Niacin levels had caused the then prevalent American disease called Pellagra, a bleeding of the lips, gums and loose teeth. The result of that disease, caused by lack of Niacin in the diet, was a debilitating condition which led to other diseases. But natural Niacin quickly degrades when left on the shelf. So the USDA told food makers to add the simple synthetic chemical B6 to raise the level of Niacin in diet, since it instantly converted dietary tryptophan in the bloodstream into Niacin. In the 1920's most nutritionists assumed that tryptophan was useless and had no function in the body. So using it as a precursor for Niacin seemed to be a health benefit. That was a horrible mistake.
In the 1920's, nobody noticed that tryptophan, which does not ever enter body cells but just remained in the bloodstream by itself, while all the other amino acids were absorbed into the body cells, was not just a precursor for Niacin, but was also the only precursor for serotonin and melatonin in the brain. That wasn't discovered until the 1970's. But by then the "fiction" that B6 was a vitamin precursor for making Niacin was too well entrenched in nutrition theories. B6 was recommended as a food supplement and added to almost everything.
It's a long story, which I will tell in a later article. But the average person in America, and now throughout the world, who eats a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a McBurger bun for lunch and other snacks and desserts, gets about 1,000% or ten times the RDA for B6. That is an extreme overdose of B6. This stops all the natural tryptophan in the diet from ever getting into the brain, to become the neurochemicals serotonin and melatonin. B6 is THE SOURCE of the so-called "chemical imbalance in the brain" which affects about half the population. If you were ever diagnosed as have a "brain chemical imbalance," it was most probably caused by the excess B6 in your diet.
Seventeen years ago I worked with a professor and a group of his grad students at the University of Ohio. They were excited about doing some experiments to confirm my discoveries. But the school term ended before they could complete their experiments and I lost contact with the professor. That was before the Internet, and I was using the Compuserve Medical Forum to communicate with those Docs at Ohio. Those were the days when AOL and Compuserve were competitors. But AOL seemed to win everything, and in the explosive growth of other ISP's connecting to the Internet, the Compuserve Medical Forum simply disappeared.
I also, 15 years ago, worked with some pediatricians. I told them about all the new synthetic powdered mother's milk formulas (Similac and many others) now being fed to babies, containing surplus B6, and that it was the major cause of the increasing problem around the world of colic (crying, over eating and swollen stomach) and obesity in infants. They were amazed and had never heard of that before. But it sure seemed to make sense, when I explained it to them. I proposed that experiments could be done with baby formulas which could be made without B6 and comparing the results to standard baby formulas. So far, that experiment has not been done, but the results are easy to predict.
There is no B6 in natural mother's milk. Mother's milk is the highest dietary source for tryptophan. Nobody, other than me, has ever explained why mother's milk is so high in tryptophan. It is the biochemical method found in all mammals, which naturally runs the baby's eating feedback mechanism and kick starts the neonate baby's sleeping/eating circadian rhythm cycles. With surplus synthetic B6 in the baby's diet, the normal circadian rhythms are disrupted and the baby overeats and becomes obese. Obesity becomes a chronic lifestyle and disease.
The bottom line -- almost all of the dietary problems, mental and physical disorders, which are "inexplicably" becoming increasingly common around the world, are all simply due to a huge surplus of the synthetic chemical called B6 in the modern diet. Notice I don't even call it a vitamin, since it is not and never has been a vitamin, but simply a very cheap synthetic chemical food additive which is used in product advertisements to falsely promote the food product.
Thus when I say, "too much B6 interferes with serotonin and leads to obesity" that is only a very small part of the increasing major debilitating health problems now occurring in most children and adults.
I have already researched enough material and done enough experiments to fill a research journal which I call "The B6 Bomber." But, if you notice, I do research and conduct studies and publish articles in a large variety of areas. So the B6 story has been on the back burner for about 10 years, while I publish much more critical research. But be patient. Everything in its own time...
Marshall Smith
Editor, Brother Jonathan Gazette
newseditor@brojon.com
