Principles That Identify Orthormolecular Medicine: A Unique

Principles That Identify Orthormolecular Medicine: A Unique Medical Specialty

Richard A. Kunin, M.D.

In 1969 Linus Pauling coined the word "Orthomolecular" to denote the use of naturally occurring substances, particularly nutrients, in maintaining health and treating disease. At that time megadose niacin therapy for schizophrenia and dietary treatment of "hypoglycemia 7 were the major focus of the movement. Since then Orthomolecular psychiatry and medicine have emerged as a distinct and important specialty area in medical practice.

In the meantime, other medical movements have sprung up out of the public demand for Hope in the face of a worsening epidemic of cancer, heart attacks and mental illness and in response to the outcry against adverse effects of modern medical treatments and invasive diagnostic and intensive care procedures. Alternative therapies have come forward to fill the vacuum left by modern Medicine, which failed to provide effective treatments for the major epidemic diseases and in protest against Medicine's over-reliance on pharmacology, for the drug treatments seem to have fostered the epidemic of drug-dependence which is the major epidemic of our time. The public majority were ready for a new medicine based on nontoxic, non-invasive, "natural" medicines to go with the re-discovered "natural foods". Read more