“The Sugar made me do it” & the Kid Goes Free........
Some dozen years ago or so a teenage gang kid in Florida got off a 1st degree murder rap copping an unlawful homicide plea because his lawyer was smart enough to find a doctor to say that the kid ate too much junk food and sugar, which made him do it. You can just imagine what right wing hang ’em high America thought of such a verdict. Can’t see that happening in Texas, now or then, can you? And yet even pre-Jeb Bush Florida was never exactly a lilly-livered liberal state, now was it? So how did the kid’s lawyers pull off a stunt like that?
Orthomolecular medicine that’s how.
Ortho what? Hang on a bit and I’ll explain.
What they did was find a doctor specialising in orthomelecular medicine who testified convincingly enough to persuade the jury that the kid was off his tree, because he lived on a junk food diet of rancid oils, french fries, packaged foods, soda pops and most of all sugar. Yes folks, sugar can certainly do that for you, it is that powerful. And, unless you are one of those who believe in an eye for an eye, no matter what kind of loony you’re dealing with, the jury was right to do it. The kid was off his tree.
The Late Great Linus Pauling
I would guess that would be the first many Americans got to hear of orthomolecular medicine. And I imagine a good few were none too impressed. In fact the name has been around for over 40 years. The term was introduced by that remarkable and delightful man, genius and double Nobel Prize-winner, founding father of antiaging, Dr Linus Pauling. He originated the term to describe an approach to medicine that uses naturally occurring substances normally present in the body. “Ortho” meaning correct or normal. Orthomolecular physicians have shown that many cases of physiological and psychological disorders can be successfully treated by correcting or normalising the balance of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other substances within the body.
Actually the principles of orthomolecular medicine are older than that, going right back to the 1920’s when vitamins and minerals were first used to treat illnesses unrelated to nutrient deficiency. It was found that vitamin A prevented childhood deaths from infectious diseases and irregular heartbeat could be stopped by doses of magnesium. It was not until the 1950’s that scientific evidence was forthcoming with the treatment of schizophrenics with high doses of vitamin B3 (niacin), more than doubling the existing rates of cure. Continuing research showed that malnutrition and improper nutrition can often put a person’s health at risk, directly causing or contributing to many diseases and psychiatric disorders. It was further found that health is impaired by consumption of refined, empty-calorie foods such as white bread, pastries and the the over consumption of sugar. Decreased intake of dietary fibre, bran, minerals and complex carbs were also found in patients with certain forms of mental illness, along with a loss of vitamins and increase in dietary fat. At the time the notion that diet could actually cause or contribute to disease was a new and controversial idea.
Alas, it still is to about a third of the medical profession. It is a sad fact that in four or five years studying medicine most doctors attended an average of no more than 2.5 hours on nutrition. No wonder then that the subject is the fastest growing sector in ongoing medical education today. No red-blooded doctor is happy when his or her patients know more about the subject than they do. And that’s exactly what’s been happening. A salutary and healthy development I would say.
Folks are Different Doc.......
And yet even today too many doctors ignore the value of proper nutrition to health. The prevalent notion still reigns, that a “balanced” diet (whatever that is, take your pick) will provide all the nutrition a body needs. What is overlooked is that in the US and increasingly the rest of the world our food supply is grown in nutritionally depleted soil and polluted with chemicals. Ortho docs recognise this. They are among the few who recognise the stunningly obvious fact that we are all different and biochemical individuality plays a crucial role in our good health. Which brings us to government minimum or recommended daily allowances (RDA) for nutrients. These are solely designed to prevent deficiency disease. That’s all. They trail current knowledge by 40 years at least as to what really provides for optimal health and it totally ignores a host vital nutrients.
The principles of orthomolecular medicine may be summed up as follows:
u Nutrition comes first in medical diagnosis and treatment. Nutritional-related disorders are usually curable once nutritional balance is achieved.
u Biochemical individuality is the norm, thus RDA values are not reliable nutrient guides. Many people require an intake of certain nutrients or megadose far beyond the RDA range due to their genetic disposition or environment.
u Drug treatment is used only for specific indications and always mindful of potential dangers and adverse side effects. No one should take any drug for an extended period unless it is absolutely unavoidable.
u Environmental pollution and food adulteration are an inescapable fact of life today. It is a medical priority to take nutritional steps to avoid the effects.
u Blood tests do not necessarily reflect tissue levels of nutrients.
Megavit Therapy
The essentials of orthomolecular medicine are now well known to almost everybody who has even the smallest interest in health matters. The basis of it lies in creating a healthy diet. Junk foods, refined sugar, and food additives are eliminated. Every effort is made to eat nutritious whole foods, high in fibre and low in fat. A regimen of supplementation is selected to encourage and maintain optimum health. In the case of a particular condition to be treated the types and amounts of nutrients are determined by blood tests, urine analysis and the clinical experience of the doctor. In some cases doses of vitamins are injected to speed initial response followed by oral supplementation. This is why orthomolecular medicine is sometimes known as megavitamin therapy.
One of the arguments used by the backwoodsmen of the medical fraternity, and they usually are men, to debunk megavitamin therapy is that high doses of certain vitamins can be toxic. While that can be true, the statement is utterly irrelevant, if not mischievous. No doctor is going to have you take a toxic amount of vitamins to the extent it is dangerous. And absolutely not to the extent it’ll kill you. You can effectively put that out of mind.
But consider this, according to the AMA, in the 7-year period 1983 to 1990 some 750,000 men and women in America were killed by correctly prescribed drugs given to them by doctors in hospitals.
That is a horrifying and outrageous statistic which the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry would prefer us to ignore.
During the same period not a single death caused by high doses of vitamins was reported.
If symptoms do arise your doctor simply lowers the dose until they disappear.
What it Can Do for You.....
The many conditions benefited by orthomolecular medicine have been well researched and documented and are now accepted by a majority of doctors, if not practised by enough of them because it’s easier, if not more rewarding, to prescribe drugs. For the public too, the benefits have become common knowledge.
As we’ve seen, niacin has long been used to treat schizophrenia; beta-carotene (a precursor of vitamin A) lowers the risk of several cancers; Folic acid (a B vitamin) is commonly prescribed pregnant women as it protects the newborn against brain and spinal damage. Folic acid is also used to treat cervical dysplasia, a pre-cancerous condition of the uterus, and for this reason is given to women taking birth control pills or who are pregnant. Magnesium sulphate aids recovery in heart attack victims; vitamin C, magnesium sulphate, vitamin B6 and zinc all help prevent high blood pressure and post-surgical complications. Chromium helps treat and prevent diabetes and hypoglycemia by regulating the body’s response to sugar and insulin. It also lowers cholesterol; essential fatty acids (EFAs), which the body cannot make for itself reduces risk of heart disease and helps treat and prevent many other conditions, including psoriasis and arthritis. Orthomolecular treatments are frequently used to good effect with acne, anemia, angina, elevated cholesterol, cystic mastitis, headache, herpes simplex, infertility and high blood pressure.
In fact a good Ortho Doc can often find the answers to a whole lot more than this. All those chronic conditions so many of us suffer from which stumps the doctors we see because all they know is to prescribe drugs.
They just do not know how to treat their patient as a whole human being. It’s like the detective in the 50’s TV series Dragnet, “Just the symptoms, Ma’am”. They really don’t want to know. In fact, anything more can even annoy them. It is very inconvenient of you not to respond in the pharmacologically desired way. There must be something wrong with you!
Maldigestion and malabsorbtion are all too common, even when our diet is a good one, and this leads to countless ‘hard to treat’ conditions. It makes absolute sense then for a doctor to find out what substances you lack or have too much of in your body and what you are reacting to, allergies etc., and treat you accordingly. This often leads to dramatic and speedy recoveries from conditions that have persisted for years. This is what a good Ortho Doc does. Go and share the good news of your recovery with your regular doc and strangely he seldom seems to be that pleased for you. Funny that.......
Good for The Blues.....
Another area where orthomolecular medicine achieves dramatic results is with the treatment of mood enhancement, wellbeing , anxiety, stress and depression. If it cures schizos, why wouldn’t it? The neurotransmitters which govern our emotions are composed of amino acids. By supplementing with amino acids you can actually govern the nature and intensity of your brain messages. For example, the traditional treatment for many types of anxiety disorders is the use of various drugs which stimulate the production of the amino acid GABA. Unfortunately these drugs can have many toxic side effects, most particularly on kidney and liver function. You don’t want that. Using the real thing, GABA, which is incidentally a lot cheaper, can effect speedy and dramatic improvements. Many people suffering depression or anxiety disorders are simply deficient in GABA. You’d think it worth finding that out first, before stuffing them full of all those nasty drugs, wouldn’t you? But don’t bet on it.
Glycine and L-Theanine are also amino acids that can relieve anxiety and depressive conditions. Then are are a whole list of some dozen natural cognition enhancers that also play a large role in improving mood and sense of well being, quite apart from memory and preventing Alzheimer’s.
Unfortunately there is still considerable residual prejudice against nutritional therapy. Most medical schools have limited programs in nutrition and most graduating doctors have little more knowledge in this respect than their predecessors. As conventional medicine has a history of rejecting nutritional intervention, most doctors simply are not trained to think along these lines and do not use nutrition in their practices.
Dr Neanderthal Still Don’t Get It.....
No need to be surprised by this as it usually takes mainstream medicine 40 years or more before they are forced to accept what has been staring them in the face all along. It took forty years for surgeons to accept the need to wash their hands before operating, it was forty years before penicillin was prescribed generally, it was forty years before it was accepted that elevated homocysteine was a major cause of heart disease. And most recently, it is only after 40 years that the medical profession has been forced to accept what was known to many all along, that hormone replacement therapy for women increased the risk of breast and endometrial cancer unacceptably. Countless lives have been needlessly lost as a result.
It is now well known nutritional medicine works, that it contributes to the overall health of a person and prevents chronic disease. Richard P. Huemer MD, a pioneer of orthomolecular medicine and a colleague of Dr Linus Pauling says, “We need a paradigm shift and it’s happening. We need to ensure we take the optimum levels of nutrients to prevent disease. In so doing we will produce an enormous upsurge in human health over the next 10 years”.
Many of us already knew that. Now go tell your doctors.............
ParacelsusAsia
Comments or queries
ParacelsusAsia@yahoo.com
They really don’t know how to treat their patients as human beings. It’s like the detective in the 50’s TV series Dragnet, “Just the symptoms, Ma’am”. They don’t want to know. Anything human is irksome. It’s very inconsiderate of you not to respond in the pharmacologically desired way. There must be something wrong with you!
