Many more people are taking charge of their health before they get sick by eating well and taking supplements:
Eams is one of millions of Canadians who take vitamins to improve their health. In fact, so many people are using so-called alternative therapies that medical students now learn about them in school.
“All medical schools recognize that a big proportion of our patients – a third to one-half – are using complementary and alternative therapies outside the mainstream of medicine,” says Dr. David Rayner, associate dean of undergraduate medical education at the University of Alberta.
“There’s no way we’re going to change that, so we have to take the standpoint that students have to know about complementary therapies and they have to know something about the interface between regular biomedical theory and the complementary and alternative approaches.”
Orthomolecular medicine – promoting health and treating illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, migraine headaches and stress with diet and dietary supplements – has been around for 40 years, says Jonathan Prousky, a naturopathic doctor and professor of clinical nutrition at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine in Toronto.
The term was coined in 1967 by Linus Pauling, an American chemist and two-time Nobel Prize laureate. He theorized that substances normally present in the body are necessarily good, and can be used at high doses to prevent or treat disease.
For example, taking 400 mg of riboflavin (found in vitamin B2), a dose higher than a typical diet provides, can reduce the pain of migraine headaches and their frequency, Prousky says.
Taking fish oil or omega-3 essential fatty acids every day is very good for heart health, he adds. They slightly thin the blood so they reduce thrombotic or clotting events, he explains. They also help to reduce arrhythmia or irregular heart rhythms and have a mild effect on lowering cholesterol.
For cancer prevention, vitamin D3 or an antioxidant like vitamin C may have some value, Prousky says. And selenium, a trace mineral, can boost the immune system.
“I certainly advocate for good nutrition and good eating . . . but food alone, including organic food, doesn’t do it (provide nutrients in large enough doses).” This is especially true when the diets of the vast majority of North Americans don’t meet daily nutritional requirements, he notes.
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