Table Of ContentMegavitamin Therapeutics for Families and Physicians
Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, and Andrew W. Saul, PhD
The information contained in this book is based upon the research and personal and
professional experiences of the authors. It is not intended as a substitute for consulting
with your physician or other healthcare provider. Any attempt to diagnose and treat an
illness should be done under the direction of a healthcare professional.
The publisher does not advocate the use of any particular healthcare protocol but
believes the information in this book should be available to the public. The publisher
and authors are not responsible for any adverse effects or consequences resulting from
the use of the suggestions, preparations, or procedures discussed in this book. Should
the reader have any questions concerning the appropriateness of any procedures or
preparation mentioned, the authors and the publisher strongly suggest consulting a
professional healthcare advisor.
Acknowledgments, vii
Introduction, 1
PART ONE Orthomolecular Medicine
1. What Is Orthomolecular Medicine?, 7
2. The Use of Food Supplements, 39
3. Niacin (Vitamin B3), 65
4. Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid), 83
5. Vitamin E, 107
6. The Other B Vitamins and Vitamin A, 121
7. Vitamin D, 133
8. Other Important Nutrients, 143
9. Minerals, 151
PART TWO Treatments for Specific Ailments
10. Gastrointestinal Disorders, 169
11. Cardiovascular Disease, 189
12. Arthritis, 201
13. Cancer, 211
14. The Aging Brain, 229
15. Psychiatric and Behavioral Disorders, 251
16. Epilepsy and Huntington's Disease, 285
17. Allergies, Infections, Toxic Reactions, Trauma,
Lupus, and Multiple Sclerosis, 299
18. Skin Problems, 317
Conclusion, 321
Appendix: Finding Reliable Information on Orthomolecular Medicine, 323
References, 337
Index, 367
About the Authors, 376
This book is respectfully dedicated to the memories of Drs. Humphry Osmond
and Hugh Riordan.
The list of women and men, boys and girls, doctors, scientists, and patients is simply
too great to be recorded. Whatever I have found useful in the practice of
orthomolecular medicine has been driven into me by all these supporters and
especially by the thousands of patients who allowed me to heal them by using
nutrients and nutrition, with the fantastic advantage that I could follow the golden rule
of medicine, "First, do no harm." But I must thank Linus Pauling, double Noble Prize
winner, for creating the word orthomolecular and providing the scientific explanation
for why some nutrients are needed in large doses. I also thank Premier Tommy
Douglas, of Saskatchewan, Canada, without whose magnificent support there would
have been no research leading to the development of orthomolecular medicine.
-Abram Hoffer
My personal thanks to Colleen Donaldson, Helen F. Saul, John I. Mosher, Richard
Bennett, and Nancy Watson Dean. I add a special thank-you to my ever-healthy cadre
of readers of my DoctorYourself.com website. I would also like to thank Robert
Sarver, Stephen H. Brown, and Robert McHeffey for their contributions to the
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service's educational press releases, a number of
which have been incorporated into this book.
-Andrew W. Saul
he basis for effective medical practice is clinical nutrition, also known as
orthomolecular nutrition or orthomolecular medicine. This book, originally titled
Orthomolecular Medicine for Physicians, was first published in 1989 and has been out
of print for some time. Major advances have been made in the past two decades. We
have updated, expanded, and renamed it Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone
because interest in nutritional medicine, and how to use it properly, has increased at an
enormous pace among the general public. At least half of any population surveyed in
North America is already taking supplemental vitamins in larger than standard dietary
doses.
Not that many years ago, most media coverage of orthomolecular medicine was
negative. This has begun to change. Although pharmaceutical advertising dollars favor
a bias that still exists in many newspapers, magazines, television networks, and even
medical journals, the new orthomolecular medicine of nutrition is now more often
reported in a very positive sense. In our opinion, the public wants and needs this
information, perhaps all the more so when they cannot get it from their doctors.
Indeed, when faced with material such as that contained in this book, many people
ask, "If vitamin therapy is so effective, how come my doctor doesn't use it?"The
corollary question from a physician might be, "if vitamin therapy is so effective, how
come my medical school didn't teach it?" Knowledge is clear only if known. The
interesting history of nutritional therapeutics has been almost completely overlooked
by those who prepare the curricula of medical schools, colleges, and public schools. In
our opinion, selective editing and selective funding results in educational bias and
effective censorship. Those skeptical of such a statement may wish to try searching for
information about pioneering orthomolecular nutrition physicians of the 1930s through
1950s: the extraordinarily successful clinical work of Drs. Frederick R. Klenner, Max
Gerson, William J. McCormick, and Wilfrid and Evan Shute is, to this day, absent
from medical textbooks. The U.S. National Library of Medicine does not even deign
to index the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, even though it is peer-reviewed and
has been published continually for over forty years.
Orthomolecular psychiatry began soon after the two forms of vitamin B3 were
identified as niacin and niacinamide back in 1938. These chemicals were merely bits
of organic chemistry until their nutritional usefulness as antipellagra factors was
identified. Following this, clinical nutritionists began to treat a wide variety of
psychiatric diseases with doses then considered very large-that is, up to 1 gram (1,000
mg) per day. Before 1950, a small number of reports showed that patients with
depression, senile or presenile deterioration, or with some toxic psychoses recovered
when given this vitamin. By 1949, Dr. William Kaufman had published two books
summarizing his studies on arthritis, Common Forms of Niacinamide Deficiency
Disease: Aniacinamidosis and Common Forms ofJoint Dysfunction, Its Incidence and
Treatment. These were very careful, clinically controlled experiments on many
hundreds of arthritics, in which he showed that most of the patients given the vitamin
became normal, or so much better that they were no longer seriously handicapped. But
all these reports were ignored, probably because, in the new era of wonder drugs,
medical schools forgot about nutrition, and what little teaching had been available
virtually disappeared from their curricula. Since then, medical interest in nutrition has
been quiescent or sporadic.
Over the past decades, there is evidence that the public is showing consistently more
interest in clinical nutrition than physicians. There has been an explosion of
information in several areas, which we have sought to address in this new edition.
There is more information about the treatment of schizophrenia using megavitamin
doses of niacin (vitamin B3). Niacin has also shown a beneficial effect in elevating
high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and decreasing the low-density ("bad") cholesterol
and triglycerides. This is the only substance known that has these remarkable
properties. The last twenty years has seen a similar deepening of nutritional
knowledge for numerous nutrients. Despite the common protestation that there are no
studies showing that highdose nutrition works, there are in fact thousands and
thousands of clinical studies that do just that. While we cite a representative number,
readers are encouraged to search further using the online bibliographies posted at
Doctor Yourself.com and other orthomolecular websites listed in the Appendix.
Such a search will show that the vast medical literature on nutrition is often diffuse
and hard to access. We seek to remedy that situation by writing this book. Our title,
Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone, promises to provide physicians and the
general public with a single volume compiling the information they most need to
employ orthomolecular medicine. This book contains descriptions of how
orthomolecular medicine is used to treat diseases of the various organ systems, such as
the psychoses, gastrointestinal disorders, arthritis, autoimmune diseases, and even
cancer. This book is not a replacement for texts dealing with physiology, pathology,
and biochemistry. Ideally, it is to be used in conjunction with the standard core of
established medical knowledge already available elsewhere. Nor is orthomolecular
treatment a complete replacement for standard treatment. A proportion of patients will
require orthodox treatment, a proportion will do much better on orthomolecular
treatment, and the rest will need a commonsense blend of both.
Anyone who wishes to become familiar with orthomolecular medicine may do so by
simply beginning with a whole foods, sugar-free diet and a few vitamins. Even with
this simple approach, people report success. Doctors who have actually used this
treatment are so persuaded by the results that they have become orthomolecular
physicians. We have prepared this book for practitioners and for the increasingly
interested public as well. Part One looks at the basic principles of orthomolecular
nutrition and provides detailed guidance for various nutrients. Part Two examines
orthomolecular medicine's approach to a number of specific disease conditions. What
you will discover is that nutritional treatment is effective, free of side effects, and
cheap. What you may first have to overcome is an old assumption that anything that is
cheap and safe cannot possibly be effective. Freed of that assumption, health awaits
you.
