Hertha oats

Hertha Hafer , nee Hertha Seekatz , (born May 6, 1913 in the Westerwald ; † October 19, 2007 in Mainz ) was a German pharmacist . She was the inventor of the blend-a-med - toothpaste . While Hafer's basic research on oral cavity biology and the development of dental caries is pioneering to this day, her theory of phosphate disorder as a cause of attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADD) is controversial.

Youth and education

Hertha Seekatz was considered a gifted child and was able to read fluently at the age of four; In 1931 she passed the Abitur . After a two-year pharmacy internship, she worked as a pharmacy assistant in a Leipzig pharmacy. There she met the pharmacist Alfred Hesse (1911–1941) and married him in August 1937. Her husband was drafted at the beginning of the Second World War and died in 1941 on the Eastern Front. During the war she went to Frankfurt am Main to study pharmacy . When her Frankfurt apartment fell victim to the bombs, she left the city and continued her studies in Marburg , where she graduated in 1945 with the state examination and her license to practice medicine. In 1951 Hertha Hesse married the chemist Herbert Hafer (1921–1991), who worked for the Böhringer company, son of the Steiffwerke director Johann Leonhard Hafer from Giengen an der Brenz, and Else Geismann, daughter of the Fürth brewery owner Johann Geismann .

Blend-a-med

After completing her studies, she conducted research on dental caries at the University of Marburg in the (later Physiological-Chemical ) Institute of Karl Dimroth (1910–1995) for Cariosan KG . Using the available literature, she deepened her knowledge in this area and then relied on reports from the American dentist Robert Kesel, who claimed good experience with combinations of ammonium phosphate and urea in toothpastes. Under her then name "Hertha Hesse", she filed a patent for a "dental care product" on November 15, 1948, to which she added another patent on February 9, 1949: "Process for the production of dental and oral care products." This lists ammonium salts of simple and sulfonated fatty acids and fatty alcohol sulfonates as active ingredients. With the result of her research, she approached the Blendax plants in Mainz , which were the European market leader for toothpaste even before the war. Blendax produced their toothpaste under the name blend-a-med .

After A. Stattelmann had drawn attention to investigations by the dentist Basil Glover Bibby in Boston, Massachusetts, as early as 1947, she reported in 1949 in the Dental Review directed by Walter Drum on Bibby's experiments with the local application of higher-concentration fluoride solutions. At the beginning of April 1949, she gave a lecture on some pharmacological and therapeutic findings about the element fluorine at a joint scientific training conference of the Hessian State Chamber of Dentists and the State Chamber of Physicians . It is bactericidal, easily replaces the OH group in the apatite and has an effect on ferments. Used in the USA as a drinking water additive, it increases the number of caries-resistant dentures, but in concentrations above 1 ppm (= 1 mg / l) it produces endemic fluorosis . The amount of calcium absorbed at the same time is also important. In some diseases such as goiter, etc. , fluorine is contraindicated. She was not convinced of fluoride as a toothpaste additive . Contrary to claims that she was the first to produce fluoride toothpaste, she believed that "fluorine is only effective if certain methods of use and exact dosages are followed." "Fluoride-containing dental care products," she continues, "have no effect and the Council on Dental Therapeutics of the American Dental Association recently finally rejected dental care products with inorganic fluorine compounds for caries prophylaxis due to the negative results of the trials." The dental and oral care products later patented by Hertha Hafer for Blendax did not contain any fluoride additives, but chlorinated diarylalkanes as antibacterial agents.

With the support of the Blendax company, Hans Heuser , Director of the Dental Institute of the University of Marburg, and his assistant Wilhelm Kessler carried out experiments on “hardening of the teeth” (after a call from Walter Drum) on Marburg children between 1950 and 1952. The two percent NaF solution produced by Hertha Hesse was combined with Blendax toothpaste containing ammonium in some of the children and thus led to a greater reduction in caries than the fluoride brushing alone. Fluoride research for Blendax was only intensified later by Rudolf Naujoks .

On November 7, 1953, Hertha Hafer was the only woman among the founding members of the international research organization European Organization for Caries Research (ORCA) in Constance .

Hafer worked in blend-a-med research until 1960, and her basic research in the field of oral cavity biology is still groundbreaking today. So she researched the causes and development of dental caries. In cooperation with the Mainz university professor Theo Lammers, she published a textbook on this.

In 1960 she left Blendax and bought a pharmacy in Mainz, which she ran for 20 years. She then lived with her husband for ten years in Switzerland and then again in Mainz.

Theory of phosphate-related ADD development

In 1963 she and her husband adopted a 15-month-old boy. When he started school it turned out that he seemed unable to follow the lessons. Otherwise he became an aggressive problem child with poor concentration . The oats therefore consulted numerous doctors and specialists, but various drug treatments only led to a sometimes drastic deterioration in the state of health of the adoptive son.

After oats had dealt with the nutritional theories of the American Ben F. Feingold, she attributed the ADD clinical picture primarily to an excess of phosphates in the diet. According to Hafers, these food-related disorders increased massively in the middle of the 20th century due to changes in eating habits. She compiled her knowledge and practical advice for a low-phosphate diet in the book The Secret Drug - Food Phosphate , which became a bestseller after a review in Stern magazine .

In 1990 she expanded her research results to include the thesis that phosphate sensitivity is hereditary and affects particularly slim people. In these people, the food phosphates would disturb the hormonal balance of the vegetative nervous system, especially in the frontal lobe .

Hertha Hafer's theory that strict application of the presented nutrition plan should help people with ADD and their families to lead a normal life is still highly controversial today. The plan, based on experiences with her adopted son, forbids foods containing phosphates, including sugar, citric acid, fruit acid, lecithin, milk and cocoa, but favors animal fats and cholesterol .

Since the human body ingests an average of 600 to 1200 milligrams of phosphate a day with food and, in the event of a deficit, removes this substance from the bones, where it is stored as calcium phosphate, many describe the oat diet as dangerous and completely unsuitable for feeding a child.

The last few years

In 1982 Hafer moved with her husband to Switzerland , where Herbert Hafer died in 1991. Hertha Hafer returned to Germany in 1992 and moved to a senior citizens' home in Mainz, where she died in 2007.

Works

• The secret drug - food phosphate as a cause of behavioral disorders and juvenile delinquency , Heidelberg, Kriminalistik-Verlag, 1978, D&M Verlag 1984, ext. 1990

Web links

• History of the blend-a-med toothpaste
• Biography Hertha Hafers (English)
• The oat diet

Individual evidence

1. ^ "Patentliste", Fette und Seifen 53:11 (1951) p. 716
2. ^ "Patentliste" Fette und Seifen 54: 4 (1952) p. 236
3. ↑ Hertha Hesse: Dental care products (DE000P0021861DAZ)
4. ↑ A. Stattelmann: caries. BG Bibby: The use of fluorine to prevent tooth decay. German dentist Magazine 2 (1947) 56 and 162
5. ↑ H. Hesse: About the external use of fluorine salts for caries prophylaxis . Dental Rundschau 58: No. 9 (1949) 149
6. ↑ State Dental Association Hesse . Dental Communications 37 (1949) 108
7. ^ W. Kessler: Scientific advanced training conference on 2/3. April in Giessen . Dental Communications 37 (1949) 189
8. ^ Duschner H .: "50 Years of ORCA: European Organization for Caries Research"
9. ^ Hafer H .: "Prophylaktische Mundpflege", Fette und Seifen 54: 5 (1952) 282-4
10. ^ Hafer H .: "Tooth and oral care products", German patent DE932928, pat. on April 24, 1951
11. ↑ Küspert K., E. Theobald, oats H: "dentifrice" Laid DE1030519, registration March 7, 1953
12. ↑ H. Heuser, W. Kessler: Reduction in the number of new cases of dental caries through fluorine brushing and dental care products containing ammonium ions . Dental Rundschau 61: No. 20 (1952) 603
13. ↑ H. Heuser: On the question of caries prophylaxis by fluorine . The Deutsche Zahnärzteblatt 16: No.14 (1962) 419
14. ↑ Heinz Duschner: 50 years of ORCA: European Organization for Caries Research ( Memento of May 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the Society for Preventive Dentistry
15. ↑ Th. Lammers, H. Hafer: Biologie der Zahnkaries. Causes of resistance or susceptibility to caries , Hüthig Verlag, Heidelberg 1956
16. ↑ Katharina Metternich: When caries was still called tooth decay  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Message on the website of the Neue Westfälische newspaper from March 18, 2011, seen July 7, 2012  
17. ↑ Diet Lexicon  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
18. ↑ Slimming Lexicon: Oat Diet
19. ↑ Oat Diet