Megavitamin 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.