FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, May 23, 2005

MOST DIETS NEED SUPPLEMENTATION - Even "Good" Ones

Most illness is due fundamentally to malnutrition. This not only includes the chronic diseases, but also viral and bacterial acute illnesses, which are greatly aggravated by inadequate nutrition. The usual US diet provides an insufficient amount of vitamins to maintain optimal health. And the evidence base for the clinical effects of vitamins is increasing rapidly.

Only 3 percent of a large sampling of U.S. adults practices what is commonly considered a healthy lifestyle. An American Medical Association survey of 153,000 men and women between the ages of 18 and 74 found that only 23.3 percent reported consuming five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. [1] New federal nutritional guidelines specify a minimum of nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day. [2] Many Americans find that consuming the minimum quantities of fruits and vegetables each day is impractical, and appear unable to provide the needed nutrition for themselves and their families. An alternative is to eat all the fruits and vegetables possible, and supplement with a multivitamin/multi-mineral, 400 IU of vitamin E and 1000 mg of vitamin C. [3] A better alternative is to supplement twice a day after meals.

The usual U.S. diet provides an insufficient amount of vitamins. [4] Yet decades of scientific evidence has shown that vitamins, especially vitamin C and vitamin E, are of the utmost importance to human health.

Two-time Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling was among the first to realize vitamin C's crucial importance in the maintenance of a healthy immune system. In 1970 he proposed that regular intake of vitamin-C in amounts far higher than the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) could help prevent and shorten the duration of the common cold. Although the medical establishment immediately voiced their strong opposition to this idea, many ordinary people believed Dr. Pauling and began taking large amounts of vitamin-C. Most people immediately noticed a great decrease in the frequency and severity of their colds. [5]

A recent study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that when multivitamins are combined with antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamin E, death risk from heart disease, cardiovascular disease and stroke goes down. The study compared the death rates of persons who used multivitamins in combination with vitamin E and other antioxidants, as well as those persons who used antioxidant vitamins only, versus the death rate of those who used no vitamins at all. Persons who took vitamin E and other antioxidants along with multivitamins had a 15 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease than those who took no vitamin supplements at all. [6]

A Californian study concluded that people who consume more than 750 mg/day of vitamin C reduce their risk of dying prematurely by 60 per cent. [7]

Researchers from the National Institute on Aging report that elderly people who take vitamin C and E supplements have a 50 per cent lower risk of dying prematurely from disease than do people who do not supplement. [8]

New England Journal of Medicine has published two articles in, both of which clearly support vitamin E supplementation. Persons taking vitamin E supplements had an approximately 40% reduction in cardiovascular disease. Nearly 40,000 men and 87,000 women took part in the study. The more vitamin E they took, and the longer they took it, the less cardiovascular disease they experienced. Such effective quantities of vitamin E positively cannot be obtained from diet alone. [9]

Points to Remember:
* Two-time Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling estimated that the rate of heart disease would be reduced by 80 per cent if adults in the US supplemented with 2,000 to 3,000 mg of vitamin C each day. [10]
* Two landmark studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine [11,12] followed a total of 125,000 men and women health care professionals for a total of 839,000 person study-years. It was found that those who supplement with at least 100 IU of vitamin E daily reduced their risk of heart disease by 59 to 66%.
* The number one side effect of vitamins is failure to take enough of them.
* The reason one nutrient can cure so many different illnesses is because a deficiency of one nutrient can cause many different illnesses.
* Restoring health must be done nutritionally, not pharmacologically. All cells in all persons are made exclusively from what we drink and eat. Not one cell is made out of drugs.
* Supplements are not the problem; they are the solution. Malnutrition is the problem.

What is Orthomolecular Medicine?
Linus Pauling defined orthomolecular medicine as "the treatment of disease by the provision of the optimum molecular environment, especially the optimum concentrations of substances normally present in the human body." Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness. For more information: http://www.orthomolecular.org

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Editorial Review Board:
Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
Harold D. Foster, Ph.D.
Bradford Weeks, M.D.
Carolyn Dean, M.D.
Erik Paterson, M.D.

Andrew W. Saul, contact person. email: omns@orthomolecular.org Tel. (585) 638-5357

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References
[1] Arch Intern Med. 2005; 165:830.
[2] USDA, The Food Guide Pyramid, 2005.
[3] Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, 2003; Vol. 18, Numbers 3 and 4, p. 213-216.
[4] Vitamins for chronic disease prevention in adults. Fletcher RH, Fairfield KM. JAMA. 2002;287:3127-3129.
[5] Pauling L. Vitamin C and the Common Cold. Freeman, San Francisco, CA, 1970 [6] American Journal of Epidemiology 2000; 152: 149-162. [7] Enstrom, James E., et al. Vitamin C intake and mortality among a sample of the United States population. Epidemiology, Vol. 3, No. 3, May 1992, pp. 194-202 [8] Vitamin E and vitamin C supplement use and risk of all-cause and coronary heart disease mortality in older persons. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 64, August 1996, pp. 190-96
[9] New England Journal of Medicine May 20, 1993 issue (Vol. 328, pp 1444-1456), [10] Rath, M., Pauling, L. A unified theory of human cardiovascular disease leading the way to the abolition of this disease as a cause for human mortality. J of Orthomolecular Medicine, 7: 5-15.7. [11] Stampfer MJ, Hennekens CH, Manson JE, Colditz GA, Rosner B, Willett WC. Vitamin E consumption and the risk of coronary disease in women. N Engl J Med. 1993;328:1444-1449. [12] Rimm EB, Stampfer MJ, Ascherio A, Giovannucci E, Colditz GA, Willett WC. Vitamin E consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease in men. N Engl J Med. 1993;328:1450-1456.

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