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Orthomolecular Medicine: Can Vitamins Help Those That Medications Fail?
This article appeared in Schizophrenia Digest, Spring 2008, Volume 6, Issue 2, Pg 24-28.
Journalist Paul Forsyth presents a balanced examination into the controversy surrounding this alternative treatment therapy to combat symptoms of schizophrenia.
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A confusing debate
It is certainly understandable that consumers are confused by the debate for and against multivitamin therapy for psychiatric disorders.
In a 2003 study published in the journal Schizophrenia Research, researchers from India tested the effect of giving Vitamin C and Vitamin E as well as omega-3 fatty acids—which come naturally from sources such as coldwater fish—to people with schizophrenia over a four-month period. The researchers said they witnessed a significant improvement in symptoms that continued even after omega-3 levels in participants returned to pre-treatment levels following the study, leading them to conclude that supplementation could be a very effective treatment.
In 2002, Israeli researchers studied the possible use of Vitamin B6 as an add-on treatment for people suffering from chronic schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, noting “anecdotal reports” of a reduction in psychotic symptoms among people who took the vitamin as an add-on treatment. But their study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, found the vitamin was no better than placebo in reducing symptoms.
Studies of dietary supplements for other psychiatric conditions have added to the confusion. In a 2004 study, researchers from Turkey said that because previous studies have suggested a deficiency of zinc plays a role in the onset of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), they gave 400 boys and girls diagnosed with ADHD either zinc sulfate or placebo over 12 weeks. They found zinc sulphate was statistically superior in reducing hyperactive, impulsive, and impaired socialization symptoms, but not in reducing attention deficiency symptoms.
In 2001, Wallace Sampson, MD, a former clinical professor of medicine at the prestigious Stanford University School of Medicine in California, wrote in Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Schools, that U.S. schools for doctors fail to present complementary and alternative medicine in a way that encourages “skepticism and critical thinking appropriate for unproven therapies.” He called on medical schools to alter their curriculum so that young doctors can analyze and assess the validity of alternative medicine claims.
In the 2004-05 fall/winter issue of the journal Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, researchers from the Simon Fraser University Department of Psychiatry in Burnaby, British Columbia, presented a study questioning the level of protection for consumers using supplements, citing “lax” regulations in the sale of herbs and vitamin supplements in Canada and the United States.
Many producers of such products provide consumers with “inaccurate and potentially harmful information” on the products, taking advantage of the fact many consumers wrongfully believe such products have been regulated and tested for safety and effectiveness by government agencies, the researchers said.
In 2001, Barry Beyerstein, a professor of psychology and one of the Simon Fraser researchers, wrote in the journal Academic Medicine about why he believes many people turn to dietary supplements despite the fact they haven’t been subjected to rigorous scientific testing.
“When people become sick, any promise of a cure is beguiling,” he said.
The British Medical Journal reported that in the Netherlands in 2006, a medical disciplinary tribunal banned one doctor from practicing medicine and suspended two other physicians for prescribing exclusively complementary treatments, such as food supplements and homeopathic medicine, for Dutch actor and comedian Sylvia Millecam, who died of breast cancer. The journal stated that the stiff measures were a warning that doctors must urge patients with serious illnesses to seek conventional treatment.
“Alternate medicine can be combined with—but never replace—regular evidence-based care,” said Johan Legemaate, professor in health law at Amsterdam’s Free University.
Is there a compromise?
Steven Carter, the executive director of the International Schizophrenia Foundation, based in Toronto, Ontario (of which Hoffer was the founding president), says that orthomolecular advocates aren’t necessarily against medication.
Combining orthomolecular treatment with traditional drug treatment can have astounding results, he says. “It’s meant to be a companion to medicine.”
By correcting balances of essential nutrients in the body, many people with schizophrenia do fine with lower dosages of medication, while roughly half no longer need medication at all, he says.
He believes that resistance from doctors is in large part due to the fact that during their years of training, they get at most eight hours of instruction in nutrition. Their education is almost completely pharmacology-based. “This [drugs] is all they know,” he says.
Angela Webster, executive director of the Lotte and John Hecht Memorial Foundation, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based philanthropic organization that, in 2007, named Hoffer a winner of the inaugural Dr. Rogers Prize for excellence in contemporary and alternative medicine, said the 89-year-old Hoffer and others who promote orthomolecular medicine should be applauded for their work. The prize is named after Dr. Roger Rogers, a University of British Columbia professor emeritus who was a champion of complementary and alternative medicine.
When Hoffer was first pushing the idea that nutrition is the basis for health and is a good place to look to find the causes of disease in the 1960s and ’70s, “it was heretical,” Webster told The Vancouver Sun. “(It’s) now mainstream.”
Certainly, a growing number of people have bought into the worth of complementary and alternative medicines: A survey commissioned by British Columbia-based think tank, The Fraser Institute, said Canadians—in a market one-tenth the size of the United States—spent about $7.84 billion in the latter half of 2005 and the first half of 2006 on such products, an increase of nearly $2.5 billion over a decade ago.
Carter says many other countries recognize the worth of orthomolecular medicine, too: Japan has 30,000 practitioners, Brazil has 8,000, and Holland and Germany have been training doctors in orthomolecular medicine for 30 years.
He says Krampf is one of “literally tens of thousands of people who have had their lives restored” through orthomolecular psychiatry. “This is certainly worth investigating,” Carter says. “It’s not a fad.” Krampf says the strict dietary rules he follows have allowed him to cope with his disorder for more than 30 years, as well as to follow his calling to write poetry. The western New York State resident will soon have his fifth book of poetry published, he has taught poetry and creative writing, and he reads his work in universities.
And because of his success with orthomolecular treatment, he’s concerned that the powerful pharmaceutical industry will fight “tooth and nail” to have over-the-counter vitamins restricted through prescription regulations because, he says, they pose a threat to those companies’ prescription medications.
He acknowledges that the newer generation of atypical antipsychotics developed since the 1990s help many people and have fewer side effects than the older medications, “but they don’t work for everybody.”
“I’m not proselytizing for anybody,” Krampf says,“but I feel it would be extremely stupid and even highly irresponsible to automatically dismiss the gains and research made in the field of orthomolecular medicine.
“I’m not preaching a miracle cure,” he continues. “(But) it worked for me and it worked for a lot of other people.
“I feel very lucky for having survived.”
Paul Forsyth, a professional journalist for 25 years (and a former editor of Schizophrenia Digest), lives in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
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