Dr. Weston A. Price was a pioneer in research and writing on nutrition and how it related to physical degeneration during the 1930's and 40's. He traveled the world and studied the health of different cultures and related his findings to differences in diet and nutritional make up of the different foods.

One startling discovery that never gained proper notoriety in the sciences was Dr. Prices work with high vitamin butter oil and activator X. Dr. Price identified activator X as a hyper-immune system builder through exponentially effecting the immune systems ability to utilize nutrients. He described activator X as a vitamin like activator.

Long Lost Medicinal Discovery is Rediscovered

The follow is a summary of Dr. Prices work on activator X that will be published this summer by New Trends Publishing of Washington D.C. in a book titled 'The Untold Milk Story' by Dr. Ron Schmid.

"Weston Price believed that the primary reason for dental decay was that some specific food substance was not adequately provided in modern nutrition. He presented evidence in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration that it was not one of the recognized vitamins, but was a fat-soluble substance that played an essential role in the maximum utilization of minerals and tissue components. He demonstrated its presence in the butterfat of milk, fish eggs, and the organs and fats of animals. He measured the amount in dairy products, and found that the substance was most concentrated in certain butters and most potent in controlling dental caries and associated health factors. In his extensive records, he used the term activator X for this substance.

Price analyzed over 20,000 samples of dairy products from districts of the United States, northwestern Canada, Australia, Brazil and New Zealand. The greatest influence on the content of nutrients, including activator X, "…was found to be the pasture fodder of the animals. Rapidly growing grass, green or rapidly dried, was most efficient." These periods of growth were more directly related to the rains and harvest than to the amount of sunshine or the temperature.

Price also studied the mortality data from the various districts, carefully constructing graphs plotting the number of deaths versus the vitamin content of the dairy products. His rather fascinating conclusion: "A study of the data of the health departments of all these districts regarding mortality for heart disease and pneumonia disclosed that the curves were always found to be lowest when the vitamin content of the dairy products was highest."

He found in his studies of the control of dental caries that while the consumption of butter was an aid in mineral metabolism, greater potency was obtained by melting high vitamin butter at physiological temperatures and then centrifuging it. This produced a butter-oil concentrate with a solid crystalline layer below, the oil being much richer in activator X than the whole butter.

Rickets, a disease of children with softening of the bones and bow-legs, was prevalent in Price’s time. Price demonstrated that rickets in rats could be healed by adding to a deficient diet butter-oil concentrate from a high-vitamin butter, in the amount of two percent of the calories in the diet. The quantity of oil used would constitute about one-half ounce for a child eating two pounds of food a day.

Price describes the case of a four-year old boy brought to him with a fracture and rampant tooth decay. He had been suffering from convulsions for over eight months and broken his leg in a fall to the floor during one of the convulsions three months before. The fracture had not healed. The minister who brought the boy to Price had been called to the home to baptize the boy for burial because he was considered so near death.

The diet had consisted primarily of white bread and skimmed milk. The only treatment was to change the diet to whole raw milk and gruel made from freshly ground whole wheat, with a large spoonful of butter-oil concentrate poured over it. "After his first meal," Price wrote, "the boy slept his first night without a convulsion. He was fed five times the next day on the same diet, and had no convulsions. Recovery was very rapid. Without operation on his teeth, dental caries were controlled. He grew to be an athletic young man, active in sports, particularly baseball." Before and after X-rays demonstrate the healing of the fractured femur.

The importance of activator X was demonstrated in an experiment with turkeys. Animals whose stock food diets were supplemented with both cod liver oil and butter-oil concentrate rich in activator X grew more than twice as rapidly as those supplemented with cod liver oil alone. Within just one week there was an obvious difference in their condition and appearance, along with marked changes in the calcium and phosphorus content of their blood.

Price also found significant changes in the chemical constituents of the saliva and the growth of L acidophilus in human subjects adding butter high in activator X to the diet. "Clinically," he wrote, "the use of butter high in activator X, in conjunction with a favorable selection of natural foods, as shown through a period of seventeen years, is highly effective in the control of dental caries. Primitive races controlled dental caries with diets high in body building factors which included activator X.