---
title: "Orthomolecular medicine"
chunk: 1/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthomolecular_medicine"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:37:48.897533+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Orthomolecular medicine is a form of alternative medicine that claims to maintain human health through nutritional supplementation. It is rejected by evidence-based medicine. The concept builds on the idea of an optimal 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 for chronic disease prevention; 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.
American chemist 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. There are specific narrow applications where mainstream research has supported benefits for nutrient supplementation, and where conventional medicine uses vitamin treatments for some diseases.
Some vitamins in large doses have been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and 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 outside of specific diagnosed deficiencies.

== History and development ==
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. The word "orthomolecular" was coined by Linus Pauling 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 Evan Shute and his brother, 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.
In the late 1960s, Linus Pauling introduced the expression "orthomolecular" to express the idea of the right molecules in the right amounts. Since the first claims of medical breakthroughs with vitamin C by Pauling and others, findings on the health effects of vitamin C have been controversial and contradictory. Pauling's claims have been criticised as overbroad.
Later research branched out into nutrients besides niacin and vitamin C, including essential fatty acids.

== Scope ==
According to Abram Hoffer, orthomolecular medicine does not purport to treat all diseases, nor is it "a 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 skillful blend of both." Nevertheless, advocates have said that the right  nutrients at the optimum dose for the individual concerned can prevent, treat, and sometimes cure a wide range of medical conditions. Conditions for which orthomolecular practitioners have claimed  some efficacy are: acne, alcoholism, allergies, arthritis, autism, bee stings, bipolar disorder, burns, cancer, the common cold, depression, drug addiction, drug overdose, epilepsy, heart diseases, heavy metal toxicity, acute hepatitis, herpes, hyperactivity, hypertension, hypoglycemia, influenza, learning disabilities, mental and metabolic disorders, migraine, mononucleosis, mushroom poisoning, neuropathy & polyneuritis (including multiple sclerosis), osteoporosis, polio, a hypothesised condition called "pyroluria", radiation sickness, Raynaud's disease, mental retardation, schizophrenia, shock, skin problems, snakebite, spider bite, tetanus toxin and viral pneumonia.

== Orthomolecular psychiatry ==

Hoffer believed that particular nutrients could cure mental illness. In the 1950s, he attempted to treat schizophrenia with niacin, although proponents of orthomolecular psychiatry say that the ideas behind their approach predate Hoffer. According to Hoffer and others who called themselves "orthomolecular psychiatrists", psychiatric syndromes result from biochemical deficiencies, allergies, toxicities or several hypothetical contributing conditions which they termed pyroluria, histadelia and histapenia. These purported causes were said to be found during an "individual biochemical workup" and treated with megavitamin therapy and dietary changes including fasting. These diagnoses and treatments are not accepted by evidence-based medicine.