Orthomolecular medicine , a form of alternative medicine, aims to maintain human health through nutritional supplementation. This concept is based on the idea of ​​the optimal nutrition environment in the body and shows that the disease reflects the deficiencies in this environment. Treatment for the disease, according to this view, involves attempts to correct "imbalances or deficiencies based on individual biochemistry" using substances such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, elements and fatty acids. The idea behind orthomolecular drugs is not supported by sound medical evidence and ineffective therapy; even the validity of calling for an orthomolecular approach to a form of medicine has been questioned since the 1970s.
This approach is sometimes referred to as megavitamin therapy because its practice develops from, and in some cases still uses, the doses of vitamins and minerals are many times higher than the recommended dietary intake. Orthomolecular practitioners can also incorporate various other treatment styles into their approach, including dietary restrictions, non-vitamin nutritional doses and major pharmaceutical drugs. Advocates argue that certain levels of substances that are not optimal can cause health problems beyond simple vitamin deficiencies and see balancing this substance as an integral part of health.
Linus Pauling coined the term "orthomolecular" in the 1960s to mean "exact right amount of molecule" ( ortho - in Greek implying "right"). Proponents of orthomolecular medicine argue that treatment should be based on the individual's individual biochemistry.
The scientific and medical consensus states that the wide claims of efficacy put forward by orthomolecular drug advocates are not adequately tested as drug therapy. It has been described as a form of faddism food and as shamanism. Supporters point to mainstream sources that have published research supporting the benefits of nutritional supplementation and samples in which conventional drugs use vitamins as a treatment for some diseases.
Some vitamins in large doses have been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and death. The scientific consensus view is that for normal individuals, a well-balanced diet contains all the necessary vitamins and minerals, and that routine supplementation does not need undiagnosed special flaws.
Video Orthomolecular medicine
History and development
At the beginning of the 20th century, some doctors hypothesize that vitamins can cure disease, and supplements are prescribed in megads in the 1930s. Its effects on health were disappointing, though, and in the 1950s and 1960s, nutrients were not emphasized in the standard medical curriculum. Riordon organizations cite figures from this period as the founders of their movement, although the word "orthomolecular" was coined by Linus Pauling only in 1967.
Among those described posthumously as orthomolecularists is Max Gerson, who developed a diet that he claimed to treat the disease, which the American Medical Association's 1949 Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry found to be ineffective; and Shute's brothers, who are trying to treat heart disease with vitamin E. Some concepts now cited by orthomolecularists, including individual biochemical variations and innate metabolic error, debuted in a scientific paper in the early 20th century.
In 1948, William McCormick theorized that vitamin C deficiency plays an important role in many diseases and begins to use large doses in patients. In the 1950s, Fred R. Klenner also tried vitamin C megadosage as a therapy for various diseases, including polio. Irwin Stone stated that organisms that do not synthesize their own vitamin C because mutations lose function have a disease that he calls "hypoascorbemia". The term is not used by the medical community, and the idea of ​​a lack of organisms from biosynthetic pathways as a disease is not supported by Stone's contemporaries.
In the 1950s, some people believed that vitamin deficiency caused mental illness. Psychiatrist Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer gave people who had episodes of acute high-dose niacin schizophrenia, while William Kaufman used niacinamide. While niacin has no known efficacy in psychiatric illness, the use of niacin in combination with statins and other medical therapies has been one of several medical treatments for cardiovascular disease.
In the late 1960s, Linus Pauling introduced the "orthomolecular expression" to express the idea of ​​precisely the right amount of molecule. Since the first claims of medical breakthroughs with vitamin C by Pauling and others, the findings on the health effects of vitamin C have become controversial and contradictory. Pauling's claim has been criticized as an overbroad.
Then the study branched into nutrients other than niacin and vitamin C, including essential fatty acids.
Maps Orthomolecular medicine
Coverage
According to Abram Hoffer, orthomolecular drugs are not intended to treat all ailments, nor are "substitutes for standard treatment." Some patients will need orthodox treatment, the proportion will be much better on orthomolecular treatments, and the rest will require a skilful combination of both. supporters say that nutrients can prevent, treat, and sometimes cure various medical conditions, including: acne, alcoholism, allergies, arthritis, autism, bee stings, bipolar disorder, burns, cancer, colds, depression, drug addiction, overdose medicine, epilepsy, heart disease, heavy metal poisoning, acute hepatitis, herpes, hyperactivity, hypertension, hypoglycemia, influenza, learning disabilities, mental and metabolic disorders, migraine, mononucleosis, mushroom poisoning, neuropathy & polyneuritis (including multiple sclerosis), osteoporosis, polio, hypothetical conditions called "pyroluria", radiation illness, Raynaud's disease, mental retardation, schizophrenia, shock, skin problems, snake bites, spider bites, tetanus toxin and pneumonia virus.
Orthomolecular Psychiatry
Hoffer believes that certain nutrients can cure mental illness. In the 1950s, he attempted to treat schizophrenia with niacin, although orthomolecular psychiatric supporters said that the idea behind their approach preceded Hoffer. According to Hoffer and others who call themselves "orthomolecular psychiatrists," psychiatric syndromes result from biochemical deficiencies, allergies, toxicities or some hypothetical contributing conditions they call piroluria, histadelia and histapenia. These supposedly reported causes are found during "individualized biochemical examinations" and are treated with megavitamin therapy and dietary changes including fasting. These diagnoses and treatments are not accepted by evidence-based drugs.
Principles
According to Abram Hoffer, "primitive" people do not consume processed foods and do not have "degenerative" diseases. In contrast, the typical "Western" diet is said to be insufficient for long-term health, requiring the use of vitamin supplements, dietary minerals, proteins, antioxidants, amino acids, 3 fatty acids, fatty acids -6, medium chain triglycerides, dietary fiber, short and long chains, lipotropes, systemic and digestive enzymes, other digestive factors, and prohormones to counteract the anomalous hypothetical metabolism at an early stage, before they cause disease.
Orthomolecularists say that they prescribe for optimal amounts of micronutrients after individual diagnosis based on blood tests and personal history. Changes in lifestyle and diet can also be recommended. Battery tests that are ordered include many that are not considered useful by drugs.
Prevalence
Orthomolecular medicine is practiced by some medical practitioners.
A survey released in May, 2004 by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine focuses on who uses alternative medicine, what is used, and why it is used in the United States by adults ages 18 and over during 2003. The survey reports on the use in the previous twelve months including the use of orthomolecular-related: Nonvitamin, nonmineral, natural products 18.9%, therapy-based Diet 3.5%, therapy Megavitamin 2.8%.
The CAM survey recently reported that 12% of liver disease patients use silymarin antioxidants, more than 6% use vitamins, and that "overall, 74% of patients reported using CAM in addition to the drugs prescribed by their doctors, but 26% did not tell their doctors about their CAM use. "
Although health benefits are not established, high-dose vitamin use is also common in people who have been diagnosed with cancer. According to Cancer Research UK, cancer patients should always seek professional advice before taking the supplement, and using it as a substitute for conventional treatments "can be harmful to their health and greatly reduce the chances of curing or controlling [them] cancer".
Medical and scientific acceptance
Methodology
Orthomolecular therapies have been criticized for lack of sufficient evidence base for clinical use: their scientific foundations are too weak, studies that have been conducted too little and too open to interpretation, and reporting positive findings in observational studies conflict with more rigorous clinical trial results. Thus, "there is no evidence that orthomolecular drugs are effective". Proponents of orthomolecular drugs strongly dismiss this statement by citing studies that show the effectiveness of treatments involving vitamins, although this ignores the belief that a normal diet will provide enough nutrition to avoid deficiency, and that orthomolecular care is not actually associated with vitamin deficiency. The lack of scientifically rigorous testing of orthomolecular drugs has led to its practices being classified with other alternative forms of treatment and considered to be unscientific. It has been described as food faddism and quackery, with critics arguing that it is based on "excessive belief in the effects of nutrition on health and disease." Orthomolecular practitioners will often use dubious diagnostic methods to determine what substance is "true"; one example is hair analysis, which produces fake results when used in this mode.
Proponents of orthomolecular medicine argue that, unlike some other forms of alternative medicine such as homeopathy, their ideas are at least biologically based, do not involve magical thinking, and are capable of producing testable hypotheses. Orthomolecular is not a standard medical term, and the use of clinically specific nutrients is considered a form of chemoprevention (to prevent or delay the progression of the disease) or chemotherapy (to treat existing conditions).
Despite the lack of evidence for its efficacy, interest in intravenous high-dose vitamin C therapy has not been permanently extinguished, and some research groups continue to investigate whether it has an effect as a possible cancer treatment.
Views about security and efficacy
In general, the vitamin megadda recommended by orthomolecular drugs is not supported by scientific consensus. Some toxic vitamins are in high doses, including niacin (B 3 ), cholecalciferol (D) and tocopherol (E). The view from the medical community is that there is no evidence for the efficacy of Orthomolecular drugs as a treatment for cancer, and that high vitamin doses may - on the contrary - increase overall mortality. Nutritional care is generally not accepted as aiding for psychological health. His claims have been criticized by most medical organizations, including the American Cancer Society, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the CHAMPUS, and the Canadian Pediatric Society. The American Medical Association describes as a "myth" the notion that adequate nutrition is not easily achieved with normal food, all foods grown with poisonous pesticides, all additives of toxic foods, deficiency of vitamins and minerals are common, that the cause of most illnesses is poor diet, which can be prevented with nutritional supplements.
Similarly, the American Cancer Society commented that current scientific evidence does not "support the use of orthomolecular therapy for most promoted conditions." Some supplements have shown benefits for certain conditions, while some have been confirmed dangerous; consumption of nutritious foods is the best known method for getting vitamins, minerals, and nutrients essential for good health. Barrie Cassileth, an alternative medicine adviser for the National Institutes of Health, stated that "scientific research found no benefit from orthomolecular therapy for any disease," and medical textbooks also reported that "there is no evidence that megavitamin or orthomolecular therapy is effective in treating diseases any. "
A 1973 task force of the American Psychiatric Association unanimously concluded:
These reviews and criticisms carefully examine the literature generated by megavitamin supporters and by those who have tried to replicate their basic and clinical work. This concludes in this case that the credibility of megavitamin supporters is low. Their credibility has diminished with consistent refusals over the last decade to conduct controlled experiments and report their new results in a scientifically acceptable way. Under these circumstances, the Task Force considered the massive publicity they expressed through radio, press and popular books, using catch phrases that truly misnomers like "megavitamin therapy" and "orthomolecular treatment," became disgraceful.
In response to claims that orthomolecular drugs can cure child psychosis and learning disabilities, the American Academy of Pediatrics labeled ortomolecular drugs as a "cult" in 1976.
Proponents of orthomolecular medicine say that some vitamins and nutrients are now used in medicine as a treatment for certain diseases, such as megadose niacin and fish oil for dyslipidemia, and megavitamin therapy for a group of innate congenital metabolic errors. A review in Annals of Internal Medicine concluded that while some therapies may be beneficial, others may be harmful or interfere with effective medical therapy. A recent study of more than 161,000 people was provided, in the authors' words, "convincing evidence that the use of multivitamins has little or no effect on the risk of general cancer, cardiovascular disease, or total mortality in postmenopausal women." A recent meta-analysis at JAMA suggests that supplementation with a combination of antioxidant vitamins (beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E) may increase mortality, although in relation to beta-carotene this conclusion may be due for known harmful effects on smokers.
Security
In the United States, drugs should prove safe and effective for FDA satisfaction before they can be marketed, whereas dietary supplements should be proven unsafe before regulatory action can be taken. A number of orthomolecular supplements are available in the US in pharmaceutical versions that are sometimes very similar in strength and general content, or in other countries arranged as medicines. The US regulation also has provisions to recognize the general level of safety for established nutrients that can cancel new drug safety tests. Orthomolecular drug supporters argue that supplements are less likely to cause harmful or harmful side effects, as they are usually present in the body. Some toxic vitamins in high doses and almost all (with the possible exception of Vitamin C) will cause adverse effects due to the high rate of excessive doses for long periods as recommended by orthomolecular practitioners. Unsupported medical care that supports orthomolecular treatment can lead to poor health outcomes.
Healthcare professionals see orthomolecular drugs as individuals who are encouraging to give themselves doses of vitamins and other nutrients in large numbers without conventional surveillance, which they fear can damage health. Potential risks from inappropriate vitamins and supplements include increased risk of coronary heart disease, hypertension, thrombophlebitis, peripheral neuropathy, ataxia, neurological effects, liver toxicity, congenital abnormalities, spontaneous abortion, gout arthritis, jaundice, kidney stones, and diarrhea. In their book Trick or Treatment? Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh concluded that "The concept of orthomolecular drugs does not make sense biologically and is not supported by the results of rigorous clinical trials.These problems are exacerbated by the fact that orthomolecular drugs can cause damage and are often very expensive. " Example: vitamin E
Orthomolecular supporters claim that even large doses of vitamin E pose no health risk and are useful for the treatment and prevention of a wide list of conditions, including heart and circulatory disease, diabetes and nephritis. Early expectations for the usefulness of vitamin E in orthomolecular treatment are based on epidemiological studies showing that people who consume more vitamin E have a lower risk of chronic illness, such as coronary heart disease. This observational study can not distinguish between whether higher levels of vitamin E improve health itself, or whether confounding variables (such as diet or other exercise factors) are responsible. To distinguish between these possibilities, a number of randomized controlled trials were conducted and the meta-analysis of this controlled clinical trial has not shown any clear benefit from any form of vitamin E supplementation to prevent chronic disease. Further clinical studies show no benefit of vitamin E supplementation for cardiovascular disease. The current position of the American National Institutes of Health is that there is no convincing evidence that vitamin E supplements can prevent or treat any illness.
Beyond the lack of real benefits, a series of three meta-analyzes reported that vitamin E supplementation was associated with an increased risk of death; one meta-analysis performed by Cochrane Collaboration also found a significant increase in mortality for vitamin A and beta-carotene. A subsequent meta-analysis found no death benefit from vitamin E, but also no increased mortality.
Use in AIDS
Several articles in alternative medicine literature have suggested that dietary supplements associated with orthomolecules may be helpful for patients with HIV/AIDS. A study that used 250 mg and 1000 mg of vitamin C along with other antioxidants to treat people with AIDS found no benefit whatsoever. However, this dose is much smaller than that used by orthomolecular physicians for the treatment of AIDS.
A meta-analysis in 2010 found that micronutrient supplementation reduced the risk of death and improved outcome in HIV-infected pregnant women in Africa. A Cochrane 2017 review found no strong evidence to suggest that micronutrient supplementation prevents death or effectively slows the progression of disease for adults with HIV. It is very important for people living HIV to eat enough healthy food. For people with HIV who are clinically demonstrating deficiencies in micronutrients or for people who can not consume the recommended daily amount of minerals and vitamins, supplementation is still recommended. Vitamin A in children with HIV appears to be safe and beneficial. Vitamin A deficiency is found in children with HIV infection who may or may not have symptoms of AIDS. Vitamin A supplementation reduces morbidity and mortality in symptomatic children with AIDS, but has no effect in asymptomatic children. It does not prevent HIV infection, can not treat chronic HIV infection, and will not cure AIDS.
Death due to an illegal vitamin test in South Africa
Matthias Rath has been heavily criticized for presenting his vitamin supplements as a treatment for AIDS and for testing them in illegal trials in South Africa. A former colleague of Linus Pauling, Rath has promoted vitamins as a treatment for HIV infection, describing treatment with effective antiretroviral drugs as toxic and part of a global conspiracy serving the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry. In a lawsuit found against Rath, the South African Medical Association blamed its vitamin product for several deaths. The World Health Organization and two United Nations health agencies also describe Rath's advertisements as "wrong and misleading" and "irresponsible attacks on antiretroviral therapy." The South African Social Science Research Center described the trial as a "state-sponsored pseudo-science science". The Rath trials, conducted with the aid of the AIDS antidote, David Rasnick, were unlawful by the Cape Superior Court; Rath, Rasnick and their foundation are prohibited to conduct further unlawful clinical trials and from advertising their products.
Suspected institutional bias
Proponents of orthomolecular drugs, including Pauling, Hoffer and Ewan Cameron have claimed that their findings are actively suppressed by the medical and pharmaceutical industries. Hoffer writes "There is no conspiracy led and directed by one person or by one organization, there is no Mafia in psychiatry, but there is a conspiracy led and directed by a large number of their professionals and associations with a common goal to protect the orthodoxy they produce with difficulty, no matter what it costs to their opponents or their patients. "
The Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, founded in 1967 as the Journal of Schizophrenia, is a major publication of orthomolecular medicine. As Abram Hoffer writes:
- We had to create our own journal because it was impossible to get into an official journal of psychiatry and medicine. Before 1967 I found no difficulty in publishing reports in these journals, and at that time I had about 150 articles and some books in the press company.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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