Dr. Janson’s approach is orthomolecular and his message is a life-saver: take supplements, and here’s why. His book is concise, like an exceptionally well-written thesis. It is readable, like a well-written magazine article. And most important, it is dose-specific and practical, like few other 91-page books that you’ve ever seen. It contains level-headed advice coupled with discussion ranging from time-honored herbal remedies to the latest nutraceuticals. The role of homocysteine is well explained and duly emphasized. There are especially good sections on heart-friendly amino acids, magnesium, and essential fatty acids. This is to be expected in a book authored by Janson, a highly-experienced physician, and one of a popular series edited by veteran nutrition writer Jack Challem.

Skeptics looking for unguarded statements or extreme recommendations will be quite disappointed. Dr. Janson advocates good-sense lifestyle modification, appropriate medical testing, and seeking out a knowledgeable nutrition-oriented physician. He is sharply critical of high protein and fad diets, a group that he specifically indicates to include the Atkins, “Zone,” and “Blood Type” diets. Janson urges readers to eat very little, if any, meat. He writes: “Meats from land animals, including poultry, and dairy products are unnecessary in the diet, although very small amounts are not likely to do too much harm.” And he’s right.

As in his previous books (Chelation Therapy and Your Health and Dr. Janson's New Vitamin Revolution) Janson makes a welcome departure from medical orthodoxy in recommending a bevy of supplemental nutrients in large doses. He strays even further from the fold in expressing a very positive view of chelation therapy. On the other hand, his diet and exercise recommendations are indisputable, his vitamin C and niacin sections are measured and reasonable, and the section on vitamin E is actually quite conservative. Additionally, the book contains short but content-dense chapters on healthy heart function, heart abnormalities, and risk factors for heart disease. Nutritional suggestions for a comprehensive heart treatment program are clearly provided in tabular form, a convenience readers always appreciate. I would have liked to have seen a brief consideration of lecithin included. There is a good selection of references listed at the end of the book, although I think the addition of in-text numbered footnotes would add persuasive power without adding pages or slowing down the reader.

This is a fine little book, well-written, well-supported, and well-indexed. Page for page, it is the best writing on how to beat cardiovascular disease that I have yet seen. I highly recommend The User's Guide to Heart-Healthy Supplements for patients and practitioners alike.

- Originally printed in Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine Vol. 21, No. 2, 2006. Pg 116-117.

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III.  What Really Causes Alzheimer's Disease by Harold Foster, PhD.
Trafford Publishing, Victoria, BC. 2004, Paperback, 256 pages.
Review by A. Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.

Is there no end to the pandemics of diseases that afflict us all? What have we gained by extending the average duration of life if we have to look forward to the re­maining ten or more years of affliction and misery from cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis and other degenerative diseases? Is it worth the battle? Maybe Nature was correct after all. Maybe we should have been aiming at healthier lives, which would in turn lead to longer and healthier lives and not just to temporary band-aids that do not really get at the basic factors that are creating these discomforts. Yet we can have everything. We can achieve longer lives, we can achieve healthier lives, we can prevent many of the chronic diseases from which we suffer. Maybe we can protect our fellow men and women from becoming the walk­ing wounded. But do we have to do it with each individual disease? Perhaps we should drop the concept of individual diseases and simply class all of them as diseases of dete­riorating western diets and increasing toxic environmental loads.

In his book, Professor Foster treats one of the diseases–Alzheimer’s. Everyone has heard about it, most have seen what it does and drug companies are racing to find something that if it does nothing else will decrease the onset of symptoms a few months or years. If every condition considered a disease were to be treated in the same way that Foster treats Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia and HIV/AIDS we would soon see some effect in improving the overall health of our population. But I doubt one person can write such a book for every known chronic disease. Nor is it necessary. Orthomolecular nutrition will cover the field.

Lets see how he treats Alzheimer’s dis­ease. This disease is increasing rapidly and if his recommendations are not followed will reach 14 million in the United States by the year 2050. I expect this is an underestimate as the many factors involved are probably accumulative in an exponential sense.

He writes “The western diet promotes Alzheimer’s disease in three distinct ways. First, it tends to be deficient in calcium and magnesium, making those who eat it very susceptible to aluminum toxicity. Secondly, many foods are canned, wrapped, and/or cooked in aluminum. The more acid the food, the more easily it dissolves this metal. Third, maltol is added to many processed foods in an attempt to improve flavour. This addition facilitates the passage of aluminum through the blood brain barrier. There can be little doubt also that the typical western diet is too low in many minerals. Consider, for example, magnesium. This occurs at relatively high levels in unrefined whole grain cereal and in green leafy vegetables, nuts, seed, lentils, bran and peas. However farmers do not routinely add magnesium to soils, so its levels are often relatively de­pleted in their crops. Since it is fairly soluble, food processing and cooking also often can greatly reduce magnesium levels in foods. To illustrate, the milling of whole grain lowers the magnesium content to only 20 percent of that initially present. Processing further reduces it, so that while one slice of whole wheat bread contains 24 mg of magnesium, a slice of white bread contains only 6 mg. For such reasons, daily intakes of magnesium have been declining from a least 100 years in the USA, falling from about 500 mg to 175-225 mg per day.”

Foster’s conclusion follows a very careful and arduous review of the relevant literature. It unites large number of observations into a single coherent theory which is easy to follow and to understand. I think there are few as able as Foster, who is one of the world’s most knowledgeable geographers and one of the wisest scientists on the connection between the mineral content of soils and the health of the people who live upon them. His scientific reasoning is developed in these 16 chapters which are very thorough, very complete, very informative and even more, fun to read. Few scientists have this gift.

Well, what are you going to do about Alzheimer’s’? Governments won’t tackle it. I suggest that obtain a copy of this book or download it free. Then take a month to read and to study it very carefully. Having done that discuss it with your doctors and if that is not helpful take action on your own because Foster’s recommendations do not require professional assistance. You should be especially interested if you are approach­ing 55 years of age and even more if there is a history of this disease in your family. Even though genes are involved it does not mean that the disease will strike you if you follow the recommendations outlined in this valuable book. I will not list for you what you should do, but you will have to change your life style, improve your foods and nu­trient intake and make sure that you have adequate amounts of the B vitamins and the anti-oxidants. Recently a study in Chicago completed by the Centers for Disease Con­trol showed that a population of residents getting 15 milligrams of B3 daily had twice the incidence of Alzheimer’s compared to the population in the same area getting three times as much. In both cases these daily intakes are much too low.

- Originally printed in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine Vol. 20, No. 4, 2005. Pg. 280-281.

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IV.  Solving the Mystery of ADHD Naturally by Linda Santini, M.Ed.
Acorn Publishing, Battle Creek, MI 2004. Paperback, 228 pages
Review by Andrew W. Saul, PhD

"What's he done this time?" How many times have I heard a parent say this after I've commandeered the school phone to call home about their child's behavior. Author Linda Santini, herself a teacher, has been on both ends of such a conversa­tion. While it is no picnic to teach a class populated with ADHD kids, life is infinitely harder for Mom and Dad, the long-suffer­ing people Dr. Abram Hoffer calls "battered parents." And with good reason.

Most if not all ADHD kids are stimu­lation addicts. They are little adrenaline junkies, craving the very rush that poi­sons their cranium. Adrenaline is the catecholamine neurotransmitter of sturm und drang, of storm and stress. Over stimulation can mean overproduction of adrenaline. Excess adrenaline is oxidized into adrenochrome, an LSD-like bad trip hallucinogen that, to use a 1960s phrase, flips you out. Commonly, such adreno­chrome-whacked kids also crave dietary overstimulation, particularly colored and sugared junk food, which further assaults their brain. All the time, day after day.

If you have an ADHD child, Santini's new book, Solving the Mystery of ADHD Naturally, will instantly resonate with you. "That's him!" you will say. I know, because I did. The book perfectly describes a boy I helped to raise for eight years. As a preadolescent, he was having worse than usual behavioral problems at school and at home. Interestingly enough, the child had been taking physician-prescribed little bits of niacin, though totaling less than 150 mg/day. Not a bad beginning, since the RDA for kids is under 20 mg/day. But it wasn't enough to be effective, and the lad was slated for the Ritalin-for-lunch bunch. But pharmacy was no answer, for when tried, drugs generally made him worse: more angry and still more confron­tational, bordering on paranoid.

The boy did not want to take much niacin because he so strongly objected to the flush. Knowing that the dose had to be increased far over 150 mg/day for any hope of success, his Mom finally tried giving him 500 mg niacinamide three times daily (1,500 mg total). There was noticeable improvement. At 3,000 mg/day, the youngster was doing even better, but developed nausea from the niacinamide, and the dosage was cut way, way back. In time, the boy had a violent psychotic epi­sode severe enough that his parents had to hold him down while the now 13-year-old lad screamed death threats at them.

After that, to increase the B3 dose without nausea, the now highly-motivated mother went to plain niacin, flushes and all. With about 500 mg every two hours, the boy was a new person. He was the most cheerful, cooperative, affectionate youngster imaginable. Adding vitamin C and B6 to his regimen helped even more. His school performance soared, and the teachers loved him. When his liver func­tion tests read high, the niacin dose was again reduced, but not by so much this time. At age 15, his maintenance dose is about 3,000 mg/day. This is exactly in line with what Dr. Abram Hoffer has repeatedly demonstrated effective for over 50 years.

Behavior is at least as much bio­chemical as anything else. Unresponsive, uneducated physicians routinely overlook the nutrition connection. That's fine for them; they see the child as a patient for only minutes. Parents cannot escape: they go home at the end of the day to a child that may be hostile, antsy, and out of control. Behavior modification and counseling, while laudable ideas, all too often fail because ADHD kids are unre­ceptive to behavior counseling because the behavior itself is biochemical. As you cannot implant happy thoughts in a victim of arsenic or cyanide poisoning, so you cannot adequately counsel kids with adrenochrome coursing through their bodies.

Linda Santini, an experienced coun­selor, knows this well, and she communi­cates it even better. Solving the Mystery of ADHD Naturally is especially well written. The author has a clear and engaging writ­ing style. Her facts are straight and her anecdotes are well paced, to the point, and vivid. The book is well organized and well indexed. The first portion of the book spotlights the problems, as intensely witnessed by the author and her family, while part two accentuates the solution. The combined result is an excellent, easy to follow presentation of orthomolecular medicine which should be required read­ing for all health professionals.

As actress Margot Kidder says, "You can fix your brain. You can fix your brain with nutrition." I highly recommend Solv­ing the Mystery of ADHD Naturally, a book that shows you how, and offers a way out for you and your ADHD child.

– Originally printed in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine Vol. 20, No. 4, 2005. Pg. 281-282.

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