Anti-fatigue Factor

Food as medicine

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I don’t know why eating a small portion of my liver pâté helps me so much. But it does. Like many super foods it contains many nutrients. I reckon the most useful super foods are not from the plant family, they are foods that come from harvested meats, and milk. But what do I know? Not much, I am not a nutritionist or anything. Just a lay person.

I love a mystery. In this post I want to get into the mysterious ingredient that is known as anti-fatigue factor. We don’t know what it is, but we know it is there. Isn’t that exciting? Sometimes we don’t know things, but that doesn’t mean mysterious things don’t exist. I love it!

“„Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery, teach me how to trust my heart, my mind, my intuition, my inner knowing, the senses of my body, the Blessings of my spirit…”

But first, here are some of the things that we know liver provides:

• An excellent source of high-quality protein

• Nature’s most concentrated source of vitamin A

• All the B vitamins in abundance, particularly vitamin B12

• One of our best sources of folic acid

• A highly usable form of iron

• Trace elements such as copper, zinc and chromium; liver is our best source of copper

• CoQ10, a nutrient that is especially important for cardio-vascular function

• A good source of purines, nitrogen-containing compounds that serve as precursors for DNA and RNA.

The Mysterious Anti-Fatigue Factor

Anti-Fatigue factor was first described by Benjamin K. Ershoff, PhD, in his July 1951 article ANTIFATIGUE DIET published in the Proceedings for the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine.

Ershoff divided laboratory rats into three groups. The first group were given a basic diet, I am guessing there was no cheese, this was fortified with 11 vitamins. The second group was given the same sludge but they were also given vitamin B complex. The third ate the original sludge, but instead of vitamin supplements they were given a ration of desiccated liver, or freeze dried liver.

A 1975 Prevention magazine article explains what happened next: “After several weeks, the animals were placed one by one into a drum of cold water from which they could not climb out. They literally were forced to sink or swim. Rats in the first group swam for an average 13.3 minutes before giving up. The second group, which had the added fortifications of B vitamins, swam for an average of 13.4 minutes. Of the last group of rats, the ones receiving liver, three swam for 63, 83 and 87 minutes. The other nine rats in this group were still swimming vigorously at the end of two hours when the test was terminated. Something in the liver had prevented them from becoming exhausted. To this day scientists have not been able to pin a label on this anti-fatigue factor.”

We still don’t know where the anti-fatigue factor comes from but there is a lot of speculation. One speculation puts that liver contains so many nutrients that it is able to correct existing deficiencies. Another speculation is that these rats were likely anaemic and the iron from liver is a highly bio-available form allowing for it to be easily absorbed.

The Li-Chi, a handbook of rituals published during China’s Han era (202B.C. to 220A.D.), lists liver as one of the Eight Delicacies. Throughout most of recorded time humans have preferred liver over steak by a large margin, regarding it as a source of great strength and as providing almost magical curative powers.

Do we always need to know why or how something works for it to work? Sure it would be great to know. But isn’t it also beautiful to not know sometimes, and to just be?