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Vitamins and Supplements

© John McManamy

"Within two weeks, his mood and emotional control improved drastically."

"She lived and loved lavishly," reads the cover story of the Canadian magazine Homemaker of actress Margot Kidder, best known for her portrayal of Lois Lane in the Superman movies. "She made millions and spent most of it."

Her lovers included Brian De Palma, Michael Crichton, Richard Pryor, Russell Means, and Pierre Trudeau. Then there were three husbands.

In 2000, she spoke to the Metropolitan King County Council in Washington State: "Four years ago this week, I was locked up in a nut house in LA, thinking 38 CIA agents were after me," she told her audience. She had been found wandering the streets of LA in a wildly disheveled and highly delusional state. She was eventually released from the mental hospital by faking sanity, though these days the system seems to do that for you: "You smoke, you eat sugar, you get drugged, and when your insurance runs out in 30 days, you are declared sane."

A freak car accident left her partially paralyzed, and the surgery to repair the damage left her financially destitute. As her career sputtered, her mental health deteriorated, culminating in the breakdown that made front pages around the world. After a number of sessions with an acupuncturist, Margot decided that she was not going to rely on drugs to get well. She was told about Dr Abram Hoffer, a pioneer in orthomolecular medicine, but was unable to see him. Back at her Montana residence, she did her own research and put herself on a strict program. Eventually, she did get to see Hoffer, who "gave me a few tweaks to my regimen."

In 1969 the Nobel scientist Linus Pauling coined the word "orthomolecular" to describe the use of naturally occurring substances, particularly nutrients, in maintaining health and treating disease. According to Pauling: "Orthomolecular psychiatry is the achievement and preservation of mental health by varying the concentrations in the human body of substances that are normally present, such as the vitamins."

It is part of a system of orthomolecular medicine that treats other diseases of the body, but, in Pauling's words: "The functioning of the brain is probably more sensitively dependent on its molecular composition and structure than is the functioning of other organs."

The principle is nearly the same as that advanced by the Safe Harbor Project, a California nonprofit organization devoted to alternative health. According to William Walsh PhD, Senior Scientist at the Health Research Institute and Pfeiffer Treatment Center in Illinois, writing on Safe Harbor's Alternative Mental Health On-Line website:

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