Orthomolecular medicine uses vitamins, minerals, and amino acids to create optimum nutritional content and balance in the body,  and, thus, targets a wide range of conditions, including depression, hypertension, schizophrenia, cancer, and other mental and physiological disorders.

  In 1968, Nobel Prize - winner Linus Pauling, Ph.D., originated the term "orthomolecular" to describe an approach to medicine that uses naturally occurring substances normally present in the body. "Ortho" means correct or normal, and orthomolecular physicians recognize that in many cases of physiological and psychological disorders health can be reestablished by properly correcting, or normalizing, the balance of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other similar substances within the body.

  Explaining a basic principle of orthomolecular medicine, Jonathan Wright, M.D., of Kent, Washington, says that our physical bodies are made up of water, fat, protein, carbohydrates, and similar substances. Therefore, it's logical to expect that if something is wrong with our bodies, proper manipulation of the elements of which they are made will be a major factor in reestablishing health.

  Vitamins and minerals were first used to treat illnesses unrelated to nutrient deficiency in the 1920s. During that time, it was discovered that vitamin A could prevent childhood deaths from infectious illness, and that heart arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat) could be stopped by dosages of magnesium. Scientific evidence supporting nutritional therapy did not fully emerge, however, until the 1950s, when Abram Hoffer, M.D., and Humphrey Osmond, M.D., began treating schizophrenics with high doses of vitamin B₃ (niacin). Their studies showed that niacin, in combination with standard medical therapy, doubled the number of recoveries in a one-year period.

 

  As research continued it was found that malnutrition and improper nutrition could place a person at risk, directly causing or contributing to the development of disease and psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, it was noted that health can be impaired, due, in part, to the consumption of refined, empty-calorie foods such as white bread and pastries and the overconsumption of sugar. Decreased intake of dietary fiber, bran, minerals, and complex carbohydrates were also found in patients with certain forms of mental illness, along with a loss of vitamins and an increase in dietary fat. At the time, the notion that diet could contribute to disease was a new and controversial idea.