Orthomolecular medicine

Orthomolecular medicine, a form of alternative medicine, aims to maintain human health through nutritional supplementation. The concept builds on the idea of an optimum nutritional environment in the body and suggests that diseases reflect deficiencies in this environment. Treatment for disease, according to this view, involves attempts to correct 'imbalances or deficiencies based on individual biochemistry' by use of substances such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, trace elements and fatty acids. The notions behind orthomolecular medicine are not supported by sound medical evidence and the therapy is not effective; even the validity of calling the orthomolecular approach a form of medicine has been questioned since the 1970s.This review and critique has carefully examined the literature produced by megavitamin proponents and by those who have attempted to replicate their basic and clinical work. It concludes in this regard that the credibility of the megavitamin proponents is low. Their credibility is further diminished by a consistent refusal over the past decade to perform controlled experiments and to report their new results in a scientifically acceptable fashion. Under these circumstances this Task Force considers the massive publicity which they promulgate via radio, the lay press and popular books, using catch phrases which are really misnomers like 'megavitamin therapy' and 'orthomolecular treatment,' to be deplorable. Orthomolecular medicine, a form of alternative medicine, aims to maintain human health through nutritional supplementation. The concept builds on the idea of an optimum nutritional environment in the body and suggests that diseases reflect deficiencies in this environment. Treatment for disease, according to this view, involves attempts to correct 'imbalances or deficiencies based on individual biochemistry' by use of substances such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, trace elements and fatty acids. The notions behind orthomolecular medicine are not supported by sound medical evidence and the therapy is not effective; even the validity of calling the orthomolecular approach a form of medicine has been questioned since the 1970s. The approach is sometimes referred to as megavitamin therapy because its practice evolved out of, and in some cases still uses, doses of vitamins and minerals many times higher than the recommended dietary intake. Orthomolecular practitioners may also incorporate a variety of other styles of treatment into their approaches, including dietary restriction, megadoses of non-vitamin nutrients and mainstream pharmaceutical drugs. Proponents argue that non-optimal levels of certain substances can cause health issues beyond simple vitamin deficiency and see balancing these substances as an integral part of health. Linus Pauling coined the term 'orthomolecular' in the 1960s to mean 'the right molecules in the right amounts' (ortho- in Greek implies 'correct'). Proponents of orthomolecular medicine hold that treatment must be based on each patient's individual biochemistry. The scientific and medical consensus holds that the broad claims of efficacy advanced by advocates of orthomolecular medicine are not adequately tested as drug therapies. It has been described as a form of food faddism and as quackery. Proponents point to mainstream sources that have published research supporting the benefits of nutrient supplementation and to instances where conventional medicine uses vitamins as treatments for some diseases. Some vitamins in large doses have been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, of cancer and of death. The scientific consensus view is that for normal individuals, a balanced diet contains all necessary vitamins and minerals, and that routine supplementation is not necessary absent specific diagnosed deficiencies. In the early 20th century, some doctors hypothesised that vitamins could cure disease, and supplements were prescribed in megadoses by the 1930s. Their effects on health were disappointing, though, and in the 1950s and 1960s, nutrition was de-emphasised in standard medical curricula. Riordon's organization cite figures from this period as founders of their movement, although the word 'orthomolecular' was coined by Linus Pauling only in 1967. Amongst the individuals described posthumously as orthomolecularists are Max Gerson, who developed a diet that he claimed could treat diseases, which the American Medical Association's 1949 Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry found ineffective; and the Shute brothers, who attempted to treat heart disease with vitamin E. Several concepts now cited by orthomolecularists, including individual biochemical variation and inborn errors of metabolism, debuted in scientific papers early in the 20th century. In 1948, William McCormick theorized that vitamin C deficiency played an important role in many diseases and began to use large doses in patients. In the 1950s, Fred R. Klenner also tried vitamin C megadosage as a therapy for a wide range of illnesses, including polio. Irwin Stone stated that organisms that do not synthesise their own vitamin C due to a loss-of-function mutation have a disease he called 'hypoascorbemia'. This term is not used by the medical community, and the idea of an organism-wide lack of a biosynthetic pathway as a disease was not endorsed by Stone's contemporaries. In the 1950s, some individuals believed that vitamin deficiencies caused mental illness. Psychiatrists Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer gave people having acute schizophrenic episodes high doses of niacin, while William Kaufman used niacinamide. While niacin has no known efficacy in psychiatric disease, the use of niacin in combination with statins and other medical therapies has become one of several medical treatments for cardiovascular disease.