Crusador Interviews Nutritional Researcher Christopher Barr
Source: http://www.healthtruthrevealed.com
August 2, 2007

“The trace element mineral chromium is the single most important nutrient discovered to date, though very few know very much about it, and most of what those few know is wrong.”  -- Christopher Barr

Do you have Type II diabetes, elevated blood sugar levels or hypoglycemia? Have you been diagnosed with high cholesterol or heart disease? Are you struggling with extra body weight that you just can’t seem to get off even after dieting and exercising?  Do you have erratic ups and downs in energy levels throughout the day? Are you pregnant or trying to get pregnant and want your baby to develop properly with healthy metabolism for life? Are you a health and nutrition enthusiast and want to live a long, disease-free life?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then you need to learn more about the essential trace element chromium. The mineral chromium plays a prominent role in your health from the day you are conceived up until the day that you die. Without the right amount of chromium in the proper form, your body will eventually succumb to a debilitating health problem that will eventually kill you.

Chromium is intimately involved in the metabolic management of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. The sad truth is what you don’t know really can hurt you when it comes to chromium. Most people don’t know they have a desperate need for chromium, so that hurts them. They also don’t know about the great difference between forms of chromium available, so that often hurts them.

In this insightful interview with Christopher Barr, you will learn why chromium is so important to your health, how chromium works, why you need chromium, the amount of chromium that is needed, what form of chromium works the best, what forms of chromium don’t work well, and what popular form of chromium works harm.

Crusador:  Thanks for your time, Chris. Can you give our readers a little background about yourself and how you’ve become such an expert in the field of chromium research, food grown nutrients, and the health benefits these elements can have on the body?

Thanks for the time you’ve allowed me to give, Greg.  I’ll do my best to give “a little background” though that barely gives an adequate explanation for the expertise which I have developed – or rather been blessed with to be more accurate.

My raising was on an exaggerated caricature of stereotypical Standard American Dietary (SAD) choices.  Truly SAD choices of ultra refined white bread and white refined/bleached flour products laden with white refined sugar (i.e. pre-fab cereals, crackers, cookies, and an array of Hostess snack cakes) made up the core of my SAD “nourishment”.  Meats consisted of the least expensive hamburger, hot dogs, and cold cuts, with an occasional spot of tuna and a traditional Sunday pot roast and potatoes dinner.  Fruit was limited to the occasional apple sauce and an even less occasional banana. Vegetables were canned ones warmed on the stove with sugar added to them.

By the time I was an adult it was difficult to wake in the morning, and mid-morning and mid-afternoon lulls were the norm – classic hypoglycemia as I later learned.

Lives are commonly changed by the demands that come about after birth of a first born baby.  Mine was uncommonly changed as my desire for “the best for my baby” drew me to nutritional awareness which up until that time in my life had been a foreign subject.

The foundation of my experience began with Antoine Béchamp -- the preeminent yet largely unknown greatest scientist of modern times, if not of all time.  That foundation upon which my expertise has been built was firmly strengthened through the works of Arnold Ehret, Royal Raymond Rife, Dr. Edward Shook, Dr. Weston Price, Dr. Henry Alfred Schroeder, M.D., Ph.D., Dr. Klaus Schwarz, Dr. John Raymond Christopher, and finally Dr. C. Samuel West through whom I became a Certified Lymphologist.

I have investigated and applied research in nutrition through four decades. I have been involved in chromium research through three decades. I have instructed doctors on nutrition in both a classroom setting and in private consultations. I write a regular weekly newspaper column on health issues, and I am a frequent guest on Robert Scott Bell’s popular radio program.

Crusador:  It’s your belief that most people in America are severely deficient in chromium and other important nutritional elements, including those taking most dietary supplements, and that by properly supplying the body with these elements dramatic health changes occur. Can you elaborate on this further?

Certainly!  The simple and tragic fact of the matter is that chromium deficiency has been a serious problem in America for many decades. Chromium deficiency has become more chronic with each passing decade. Chromium deficiency is still getting worse in this decade and has reached a crisis state in America today.

In addition to chromium, most people are also severely deficient in other important elements such as selenium and magnesium because their diets consist of far too many processed foods stripped of nutrition. Trying to obtain the necessary elements your body requires from the dietary supplements has been a big problem because very few are in a food grown state that can be utilized effectively at the cellular level.

Those who introduced me to the subject of nutrition emphasized the superiority of “natural” and that nutrients from food were provided by The Almighty in different forms than those synthesized (or SINthesized) by man.  The difference was not limited to form, but to function as well. Though the instruction received was truth, I quickly learned that the products provided did not meet the standards spoken of by those doing the teaching – time and time again.

Finally, I learned that several years before this the FTC had ruled that the word “natural” had no meaning in commercial use.  This was learned from my work as a consultant to a company called Paradise Marketing. Paradise Marketing (PM) agreed in principal about the superiority of nutrients in a grown state, but noted that availability of such was a far stretch from common.

PM had two nutrients available in such a grown state – the trace mineral nutritional elements selenium and chromium.  What others would call “miracles” was often seen. The company focused primarily on selenium with which they were seeing reversals of arthritis and cataracts.  My intrigue was drawn much more to chromium.

In all my years in the nutritional field, I have never witnessed a single element do more for people’s health problems than I have with chromium. It has been astounding. Grown chromium supplementation is the best option to make up for a lifetime of poor dietary habits. Grown chromium supplements are the only ones that are truly effective in restoring levels of this sparkling mineral more precious than gold to your health. 

Crusador:  You have labored through four decades doing research on chromium and how the lack of it in the diet is one of the biggest culprits in the diabetes epidemic. Can you elaborate on this further?

Almost 50 years ago the mineral chromium was established as an essential nutrient at the federal offices of the National Institutes of Health by Dr. Klaus Schwarz.  It was precisely for its role in blood sugar metabolism that this trace element chromium was established as essential.

A molecule named Glucose Tolerance Factor (GTF) that corrected abnormal sugar metabolism was found to be composed primarily of the mineral chromium. Dr. Walter Mertz, then an assistant to Dr. Schwarz, reportedly noted at that time in 1959 “Type II diabetes is not a disease.  It is the lack of a natural ingredient, known as GTF Chromium.”

Diabetes is rampant in my family on both my father’s side and on my mother’s side, and on both the father’s and mother’s sides of both of my parents as well.  For this reason chromium research became of much greater interest to me than selenium research.

Chromium works together with insulin in providing sugar to the cells for energy.  If chromium levels decrease then sugar delivery to the cells from insulin decrease accordingly.

Modern medical terms such as “insulin resistance” and “insulin sensitivity” should be replaced by “gross chromium deficiency”.  It is not that insulin is “resistant” or lacks “sensitivity,” but rather that insulin is lacking a vital – in fact essential – component for sugar metabolism that is this mineral chromium.

Insulin is a transport mechanism.  It is like a truck that transports glucose to the cell.  At the cell destination there is an insulin receptor site that is comparable to a loading dock.  This is where the glucose is unloaded and passed into the cell. Chromium rich GTF molecules are in essence dock workers that assist the sugar (glucose) from the insulin “truck” at the insulin receptor site “loading dock” into the cell. If there are less and less GTF chromium “dock workers” then the work of providing sugar to the cells for energy slows and becomes unproductive.  A traffic jam of insulin “trucks” in the blood stream results in higher and higher levels of blood sugar as the problem of chromium deficiency increases with the passing of time.

Crusador:  How is it that a deficiency of chromium occurs?

Whole wheat and raw sugar from sugar cane are rich in chromium.  The refining of whole wheat into bleached, white flour removes 91 per cent of that chromium.  The refining of raw sugar into white sugar removes 98 per cent of that chromium.

The refined flour and refined sugar are quickly reduced in the body into simple sugars that require chromium to be efficiently metabolized – chromium that is substantially no longer there.  The most important component for your body to use the refined flour and refined sugar is very nearly entirely removed.  This turns foods wholly good for you into those which are essentially unholy foods to you.

The body has to pull chromium from storage that is intended to last a lifetime through emergencies such as famine, etc.  If you live daily and routinely off of emergency storage then chromium stores will not last through your lifetime.  Quite literally every time you consume a refined, white flour or refined, white sugar product your body loses chromium.

Government figures indicate that 20 per cent of the American diet consists of refined, white flour.  Couple that with refined, white sugar consumption and these SAD choices constitute more than one third of the diet.

Dr. Henry Alfred Schroeder, M.D., Ph.D., graduate of Columbia and Yale, and professor at Dartmouth medical school wrote more than 30 years ago that “the typical American diet, with about 60 per cent of its calories from refined sugar, refined flour, and fat … was apparently designed not only to provide as little chromium as feasible, but to cause depletion of body stores of chromium.”

Dr. Schroeder compared tissue levels of chromium in teenagers and those 40 years of age in Americans to those of three other cultures that did not follow after Westernized dietary choices in Mideast, southeast Asian, and African communities.  He discovered very little change in the non-American cultures but dramatic decreases in Americans.  Almost 25 per cent of Americans had no detectable levels of chromium at all by the age of 40!  That was more than 30 years ago and things have not gotten any better – if anything things are worse.

This is a significant part of the reason that the average age of adult onset (Type II) diabetes is continually decreasing.  A hundred years ago diabetes was a disease primarily of old age.  Now the average age is approaching 40.

There is a dramatic increase of children developing adult onset diabetes in the last ten years.  Imagine that.  Children are developing adult onset diabetes before they even become adults!  The field of medicine is baffled but I am not baffled at all.  This is only the logical end result of the SAD choices of the past 80+ years.

This is compounded by the fact that chromium is one of the first elements to pass the placental barrier to the developing baby in the womb.  However, if the mother does not have much chromium to deliver to the baby then there is not going to be much chromium delivered to the baby and that baby will start life with less chromium than the previous generation.

The grossly deficient SAD choices of the past 3 or 4 generations have left each generation starting out with less and less chromium.  Therefore they run out of chromium faster and faster hence, the average age of adult onset diabetes continues to decrease with ever greater numbers of children counted in that number.  The polluted mainstream of medicine is befuddled by this because they are befuddled about chromium and its integral role in blood sugar metabolism and therefore in diabetes.

Crusador:  Tell us why chromium has been allowed to be taken out of our food supply by the government and can you go back into the history of how this happened so our readers understand how serious this situation really is?

In 1913 government agents of the Bureau of Chemistry (forerunner of the FDA) confiscated refined, bleached white flour from Kansas City, Missouri millers as a violation of the Pure Food & Drug Act.  This case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court where it was upheld that refined, bleached white flour was a violation of the Pure Food & Drug Act.  That decision has never been reversed.  Yet not very long thereafter white bread from refined, bleached white flour entered the marketplace.  I have never found reference for what back room meeting arrangement or payoff resulted in this blatant defiance of both the United States Supreme Court and the Pure Food & Drug Act law the agency was charged to uphold, but Wiley had already quit in disgust at interference with his work.

All of this was detailed by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, M.D., head of the Bureau of Chemistry and father of the Pure Food & Drug Act – it was originally referred to as The Wiley Act.  Dr. Wiley is referred today by the FDA as ‘Father of the FDA’ though he wrote of that agency in his book ‘History of a Crime’ identifying those pirates for the criminal enterprise that it is.

Permitting refined, bleached white flour against a Supreme Court decision and against its own Pure Food & Drug Act, as well as permitting the adulteration of the pure food of whole sugar even after the discovery almost 50 years ago for the prominent role of chromium in blood sugar metabolism is at best one of criminal neglect by the FDA.

Though the FDA lays claim to Dr. Wiley as ‘Father of the FDA,’ every day when it opens its doors it desecrates the memory of Dr. Harvey W. Wiley.

Crusador:  Tell us what the difference is between food derived nutrients and food grown nutrients and why is one far superior to the other?

Food grown nutrients are those nutrients that are biologically grown in a food source and contain accessory nutritive factors.  Food derived nutrients are those extracted breaking molecular bonds and leaving behind accessory nutritive factors, as well as breaking molecular bonds.

There are many, many more accessory nutritive factors that we do not even have any knowledge of what they do than there are nutritive factors that have been identified as to function.  Food grown nutrients are noted to be utilized far better than others time and time again.

Other supplements called “food based” means that there is some food mixed with the product though the “nutrients” are usually synthetic in such products. Some products say “whole food” on them though they may only contain some whole food or whole food nutrients.  I recommend using only 100 per cent whole food nutrient products.

“There is a difference and your body knows the difference between nutrients in the form The Almighty made them versus the form that man makes them.”  -- Christopher Barr

Crusador:  Why should all non food grown sources of chromium be avoided?

When it comes to nutrition those nutrients that are grown are always superior to those concocted by man in his laboratories.  There is a difference and your body knows the difference between nutrients in the form The Almighty made them versus the form that man makes them.  In no circumstance is this difference more pronounced and profound than with regard to chromium.  It is largely due to chromium nutrition needs that food grown nutrition was finally developed.  I say “finally developed” because this was noted at least as far back as 1937 by Dr. Albert Szent-Györgi in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech for his alleged discovery of vitamin C.

It was not until the 1970s that Szent- Györgi finally addressed this at length in his book, ‘The Living State’ which included the following admission/confession:

“My own scientific career was descent from higher to lower dimension, led by a desire to understand life. I went from animals to cells, from cells to bacteria, from bacteria to molecules, from molecules to electrons. The story had its irony, for molecules and electrons have no life at all. On my way life ran out between my fingers.”

Again, in no circumstance is this difference more pronounced and profound than with regard to chromium. Chromium chloride was the only supplemental chromium form available when the profound need for chromium was discovered.  The absorption rate of chromium chloride is less than one-half of one per cent.  That is right next to nothing.  The other non food grown chromium sources only raise that absorption rate to around two per cent.  That is a great increase over less than one-half of one per cent but still not all that far removed from next to nothing.

The absorption rate of food grown chromium is from 10 to 25 per cent and more.  That is a huge difference from any and all non food grown chromium forms.  Again, there is a difference and your body knows the difference between nutrients in the form The Almighty made them versus the form that man makes them.

Diabetic studies with non-food grown chromium such as chromium picolinate utilize 1,000 to 1,500 micrograms daily for results that are inconsistent at best.  Whole food chromium utilized at only 200 to 300 micrograms daily provides results that are consistent and often dramatic with regard to reducing high blood sugar, A1C scores and LDL cholesterol, and for increasing HDL cholesterol. Also, when it comes to chromium picolinate – the form most commonly available in the marketplace – there are matters of long term safety to be considered.

Crusador:  Can you expound on chromium picolinate and safety considerations a little further since this seems to be the form found in most supplements on the market?

Well, that’s a long story. More than 25 years ago as the company pioneering whole food nutrition with selenium and chromium supplements was putting their main emphasis on selenium, I was the primary proponent for chromium.  It was a very hard sell because the importance of chromium had received a lot of attention in the previous decade but results with chromium supplementation just didn’t pan out.  Therefore people were very closed off to chromium supplementation.  However, if I could get people to use the new grown variety of chromium in the right amount – 100 micrograms three times daily – then the results were very convincing.

As I labored hard and slowly made inroads with this dramatic grown chromium food, suddenly there was a tsunami of chromium information that flooded the field – but always mentioning chromium picolinate that I had never heard of before.  I had never heard of it because it had not been all that long since chromium picolinate did not even exist.

I went to the research director of the company and asked, “What is this chromium picolinate that so much is suddenly being written about?”  He laughed and told me not to be concerned about it because in the previous decade picolinic acid had been identified as a highly cytotoxic agent.  “Cytotoxic” is from cyto for cell and toxic for, well, toxic!  In other words, a cytotoxic substance is one that is a very toxic agent to cells.

I had already learned by that time not to trust facts to anyone no matter how trusted the individual – and I did have great respect for this research director.  I verified independently the truth of his statement as to the cytotoxic nature of picolinic acid.

Unbeknownst to me at that time, the company was negotiating with the actual producer of the grown selenium and grown chromium products for a renewal of their contract for exclusive representation.  The producer was willing to grant the selenium renewal but not to the chromium renewal because chromium sales were so low owing to the primary emphasis having been placed upon selenium.  The producer wanted to open up food grown chromium options to other companies.

Not long thereafter chromium picolinate entered the marketplace with this company holding exclusive rights.  The research director became the primary promoter in the scientific literature of chromium picolinate.  I was stunned – and very much stunted in the little progress I had been making in the marketplace with food grown chromium.

Through the years I have routinely seen what others call miracles amongst those who would utilize the little known, but far superior, 100% whole food chromium.  In recent years growth has finally begun to increase at a greater rate.

It is very fitting that this interview should come up at this time because there has been a resurgence of that original chromium picolinate tsunami in the past few months now that my many years of labor on behalf of food grown chromium have begun to increase at a greater rate in the past few years.

Commercials on prominent, national radio broadcasts for Chromax chromium picolinate flooded the airwaves a few months ago once again attempting to wash out the growing, grass roots interest in food grown chromium. I still have the original Chromax chromium literature from more than 25 years ago before chromium picolinate ever entered the marketplace to poison the well.  That original Chromax chromium literature was about food grown chromium.

Crusador:  How are food grown nutrients produced and are there any companies in the supplement industry that you know of who are making high quality products of this nature?

It is a cumbersome and tedious process in which nutrients are introduced into a growth medium at just the right time and in just the right way into a broth specific for that nutrient.  In this way the nutrient is biologically incorporated in the same form as it occurs in food but at a much higher rate.  I have recommended only 100 per cent whole food nutrients as provided by Innate Response for decades.

Crusador:  I heard you explain the difference at the molecular level between synthetic nutrients and food grown nutrients that was very interesting. Could you share that with our readers?

I love when a doctor or biochemist tells me, “There is no difference between synthetic nutrients and nutrients in food.”  My response is always a quick, “Yes” with a pregnant pause followed by “chemically speaking” with yet another pregnant pause followed by “but physically there’s a difference.”  This usually brings some nervousness from the doctor or biochemist because they all had to take physics – and most people hate physics – and they remember enough to know that there is something to what I’m saying before I even say it.

We are not just two dimensional and neither are nutrients.  Though chemically synthetic nutrients – and I hate to even refer as nutrients those that are synthetic – and food grown nutrients may have the same chemical makeup, they do not have the same form.

If you examine under an electron microscope at 100,000 magnification, the synthetic compounds appear as large, misshapen rectangular boulders.  The food grown nutrients on the other hand appear as tiny, smooth circular bodies.  They do not look anything at all alike.  Which do you think is more available to your cells – large, misshapen rectangular boulders, or tiny, smooth circular bodies?

Again, there is a difference and your body knows the difference between nutrients in the form The Almighty made them versus the form that man makes them. Physical differences are also clearly noted with color chromatography and also with nuclear magnetic resonance imaging.

Crusador:  In addition to everything you’ve already said about diabetes, inadequate supplies of chromium have been linked to high cholesterol and heart disease as well. Can you elaborate a little further about this and some of the other diseases you have seen food grown chromium supplementation help?

Few, if any, scientific researchers of the last 100 years were more accredited and experienced researchers regarding cardiovascular health than the late Dr. Henry Alfred Schroeder, M.D., a long time Dartmouth University professor. Dr. Schroeder identified chromium deficiency as the primary cause of heart disease.  I think that is a little overly simplistic, but chromium deficiency is most certainly a primary part of the problem with heart disease. Dr. Schroeder noted that cholesterol increases were linked to sinking levels of the trace element chromium more than 30 years ago.

Schroeder discovered that chromium was the factor that managed cholesterol as he wrote, “We found that chromium in the aorta was not detected (too low to be found) in almost every person dying of coronary artery disease, one manifestation of atherosclerosis, and was present in almost every aorta of persons dying accidentally.”

Cholesterol has been blamed for decades as a primary cause of heart disease.  However, cholesterol problems are only an effect caused by a deficiency of chromium.

Schroeder wrote of “the typical American diet, with about 60 per cent of its calories from refined sugar, refined flour, and fat”.  He noted that this diet “was apparently designed not only to provide as little chromium as feasible, but to cause depletion of body stores of chromium.”

“The result is a prevalent disease, in this case, atherosclerosis,” concluded Schroeder, about chromium deficiency.

Schroeder noted chromium supplements that are grown rather than concocted by man in his laboratories to be “100 times more active”.  He expressed great hope for atherosclerosis and diabetes when these grown source chromium supplements became available.  It was not until after his death during the 1970s that these supplements became available.  They have been tragically ignored ever since.

My own personal observations with a great many individuals have confirmed the postulations from Dr. Schroeder and his research.  Reductions of LDL and total cholesterol levels, and increases in HDL levels are consistently noted with use of chromium supplements from grown origins.  Reductions of triglyceride levels have been noted as well.

It is the right form of chromium (that which is grown) in the right amount (100 micrograms three times daily) that has been consistently shown to help diabetics – and almost any and every other individual for their life and living.

I should note that I did not pull out of a hat 100 micrograms three times daily or through some extensive trial and error.  Human studies 40 years ago determined that 200 to 290 micrograms of dietary chromium intake “maintained chromium equilibrium”.  In other words, that is how much chromium you need to take in so that you don’t lose more than you use.

It was noted that chromium intake from SAD choices at that time varied from 50 to 200 micrograms daily with an average of about 60 micrograms daily.  However, it was also noted that a diet considered adequate in all other nutrients could contain as little as 5 micrograms of chromium.  This deficiency of chromium is a very serious one of very long standing.  Today the average chromium intake is noted as much less than even 60 micrograms daily.

As for chromium and other diseases – that is a very long list.  Chromium has great importance at the cellular level from before you are born until the day you die.

Briefly, there is gestational diabetes and prevention of birth defects regarding the beginning of new life. Then there is energy production.  OK, that is not a disease matter UNLESS you want to get into hypoglycemia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  People have greater energy and also feel better due to mental health issues.  You know, the brain uses more sugar than any other organ in the body.

Vision loss is another hallmark of chromium deficiency and that is why there is much more vision loss with diabetics than with non-diabetics.

Cancer is another condition in which chromium is of profound importance. 

There is so much I could get into that it would approach the size of a Sunday newspaper to explain everything. I strongly encourage your readers to obtain a copy of my book on chromium through Crusador to learn more about why everyone should be taking this wonder element in a food grown form every day.

Crusador:  Thanks, Chris. I really appreciate you taking the time to share this incredibly beneficial health information with our readers. I’m sure that those who take your advice and start using the food grown chromium will be blessed in their health immensely.

Thank you for letting me share this information. I look forward to covering more on this and other important health issues in the future.

#