Dr. L. Ray Matthews has gained worldwide attention for his Vitamin D research over the past two decades, and millions of more people had the opportunity to read about his patent last month.
The Indianola native and retired physician and professor was featured on a page in Forbes magazine’s February print edition.
Matthews told The Enterprise-Tocsin that he hired a public relations firm, Atlanta-based EPI Media Group, back in 2020 to help spread the word about the positive effects of a Vitamin D regimen.
As he and his medical and business partners prepare to bring a new patented nutraceutical to market soon, the opportunity for exposure in one of the world’s premier business magazines was a no-brainer.
“My biggest hope is to see people get better,” Matthews said. “When you’re diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or dementia or Parkinson’s (Disease), a lot of times those diseases are a death sentence, or they severely impact people’s lives in a bad way. It’s taxing on the caregivers. As a health care provider, I just always like to see people get better. I like to offer solutions that actually work.”
Many are familiar with Matthews’ research into Vitamin D, which is a hormone that is produced naturally in the body, but his partnership with Dr. Alexzander Asea, one of the world’s leading experts in heat shock protein, could revolutionize treatments for things like traumatic brain injuries, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, strokes and more.
“Heat shock protein (HSP) is made by the human body. It is made in very small quantities,” Matthews said. “(Asea) figured out how to make heat shock protein commercially. Before him, nobody had figured out how to make it commercially.”
Matthews said that HSP in the body keeps proteins in their 3-D shape. When the body is under stress from medical events like strokes, heart attacks or traumatic brain injuries, proteins may lose their shape and thus their functionality.
“Both Vitamin D and heat shock protein can help the body maintain its function to a certain degree, but they can do it better when they are combined together,” Matthews said.
The patent that Matthews and Asea plan to bring to market, hopefully in the next year, will be a combination of Vitamin D, heat shock protein and glutathione, a “master antioxidant.”
While head of trauma surgery at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Matthews began to treat some of his more severe trauma patients with Vitamin D years ago.
He said that he began to see remarkable results, with some people coming out of comas and returning to a normal lifestyle he says is due to the hormone supplement.
As word spread about his research and treatments, he said that he was introduced to boxing legend the late Muhammad Ali, who was suffering by that time with Parkinson’s disease.
“People started to hear about the results that I was getting with my traumatic brain injury patients, about how they were waking up and coming out of comas and not going into nursing homes,” Matthews said.
Matthews worked with Ali for five years before he passed away, he said.
“He got 40% better just on Vitamin D,” Matthews said. “When I first met him, he was in a wheelchair, and I put him on Vitamin D. He was able to start walking on the treadmill. He gained a lot of function back, but he plateaued at around 40%. I couldn’t get him above 40%. I said, ‘I’m missing something.’”
That something was apparently heat shock protein.
In the lab, Matthews said he and Asea had epithelial cells in a petri dish, and they used hydrogen peroxide on them, which initially killed 99% of the cells.
When they introduced Vitamin D to the dish, 40% of the cells survived.
“We did the same thing with heat shock protein, 40% of the cells,” Matthews said. “When we put heat shock protein and vitamin D together, 98% of the cells survived. That result was so amazing… The only thing that gets you up to that 98% of the cells surviving is adding the heat shock protein. We tried many other different products, and nothing else even approached that.”
Matthews said that once production is underway on the nutraceutical, it will be available to millions of Americans, over the counter.
“This is to benefit everybody, where everybody should be able to afford it,” he said.
Matthews said Americans are spending $4.5 trillion per year on health care costs, something he said is not sustainable.
He does not want to see government interference in the pharmaceutical marketplace to help curb those costs, and he said his product, and others like it, could help save billions of dollars in treatments.
Rather than competing with traditional pharmaceutical companies, Matthews said his patent should keep government interference out of the marketplace when it comes to price controls.
“We can save billions of dollars,” Matthews said. “I’m not looking to cut into anybody’s profits. If we don’t get these health care costs under control, the government is going to have to limit how much you can charge for your pharmaceutical products. I want to maintain a free market.”
Matthews’ appearance in Forbes hit the shelves in February.
Financial analysts have estimated that Dr. Matthews' patent will bring in $4 billion in revenue in the first year alone.
