chemistry

Megavitamin therapy

Megavitamin therapy is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Megavitamin therapy rather than just read about it. In short: Megavitamin therapy is the use of large doses of vitamins, often many times greater than the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) in the attempt to prevent or treat diseases. Megavitamin therapy is typically used in alternative medicine by practitioners who call their approach orthomolecular medicine.

Key takeaways

Megavitamin therapy belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Megavitamin therapy to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Megavitamin therapy from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Megavitamin therapy is the use of large doses of vitamins, often many times greater than the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) in the attempt to prevent or treat diseases. Megavitamin therapy is typically used in alternative medicine by practitioners who call their approach orthomolecular medicine. Vitamins are useful in preventing and treating illnesses specifically associated with dietary vitamin shortfalls, but the conclusions of medical research are that the broad claims of disease treatment by advocates of megavitamin therapy are unsubstantiated by the available evidence. It is generally accepted that doses of any vitamin greatly in excess of nutritional requirements will result either in toxicity (vitamins A and D) or in the excess simply being metabolised; thus evidence in favour of vitamin supplementation supports only doses in the normal range. Critics have described some aspects of orthomolecular medicine as food faddism or even quackery. Research on nutrient supplementation in general suggests that some nutritional supplements might be beneficial, and that others might be harmful; several specific nutritional therapies are associated with an increased likelihood of the condition they are meant to prevent.

Multivitamin vs megavitamin Megavitamin therapy must be distinguished from the usual "vitamin supplementation" approach of traditional multivitamin pills. Megavitamin doses are far higher than the levels of vitamins ordinarily available through western diets. A study of 161,000 individuals (post-menopausal women) provided, in the words of the authors, "convincing evidence that multivitamin use has little or no influence on the risk of common cancers, cardiovascular disease, or total mortality in postmenopausal women".

History In the 1930s and 1940s, some scientific and clinical evidence suggested that there might be beneficial uses of vitamins C, E, and niacin in large doses. Beginning in the 1930s in Canada, a megadose vitamin E therapy for cardiovascular and circulatory complaints was developed by Evan Shute and colleagues, named the "Shute protocol". Tentative experiments in the 1930s by Claus W. Jungeblut with larger doses of vitamin C led to Frederick Klenner's development of megadose intravenous vitamin C treatments for polio and other viruses in the 1940s. William Kaufman published articles in the 1940s that detailed his treatment of arthritis with frequent, high doses of niacinamide. Rudolf Altschul and Abram Hoffer applied large doses of the immediate release form of niacin (Vitamin B3) to treat hypercholesterolemia. In a 1956 publication entitled Biochemical Individuality, Roger J. Williams introduced concepts for individualized megavitamins and nutrients. Megavitamin therapies were also publicly advocated by Linus Pauling in the late 1960s.

Usage as therapy Although megavitamin therapies still largely remain outside of the structure of evidence-based medicine, they are increasingly used by patients, with or without the approval of their treating physicians, often after recommendations by practitioners of orthomolecular and naturopathic medicine. The proposed efficacy of various megavitamin therapies to reduce cancer risk has been contradicted by results of one clinical trial.

Vitamin C

The US Recommended Dietary Allowance for vitamin C for adult women is 76 mg/day and for adult men 90 mg/day. Although Linus Pauling was known for highly respectable research in chemistry and biochemistry, he was also known for promoting the consumption of vitamin C in large doses. Although he claimed and stood firm in his claim that consuming over 1,000 mg is helpful for one's immune system when fighting a head cold, the results of empirical research do not align with this view. A meta-analysis concluded that supplementary vitamin C significantly lowered serum uric acid, considered a risk factor for gout. One population study reported an inverse correlation between dietary vitamin C and risk of gout. A review of clinical trials in the treatment of colds with small and large doses of Vitamin C has established that there is no evidence that it decreases the incidence of common colds. After 33 years of research, it is still not established whether vitamin C can be used as a treatment for cancer.

Vitamin E The US Recommended Dietary Allowance for vitamin E for adult women and men is 15 mg/day. The US Food and Nutrition Board set a tolerable upper intake level (UL) at 1,000 mg (1,500 IU) per day derived from animal models that demonstrated bleeding at high doses. In the US, the popularity for vitamin E as a dietary supplement peaked around 2000, with popular doses of 400, 800 and 1000 IU/day. Declines in usage were attributed to publications of meta-analyses that showed either no benefits or negative consequences from vitamin E supplements.

Niacin The US Recommended Dietary Allowance for niacin for adult women is 14 mg/day and for adult men 16 mg/day. Niacin is available as a prescription product, either immediate release (500 mg tablets; prescribed up to 3,000 mg/day) or extended release (500 and 1,000 mg tablets; prescribed up to 2,000 mg/day). In the US, niacin is also available as a dietary supplement at 500 to 1,000 mg/tablet. Niacin has sometimes been used in combination with other lipid-lowering medications. Systematic reviews found no effect of niacin on cardiovascular disease or death, in spite of raising high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. Reported side effects include an increased risk of diabetes.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Megavitamin therapy

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Megavitamin therapy claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Megavitamin therapy before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Megavitamin therapy ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Megavitamin therapy

In research: Megavitamin therapy appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Megavitamin therapy in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Megavitamin therapy is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Medical treatments, Orthomolecular medicine, Therapy, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Megavitamin therapy outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Megavitamin therapy in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Megavitamin therapy means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Megavitamin therapy out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Megavitamin therapy in simple terms?

Why does Megavitamin therapy matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Megavitamin therapy?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Megavitamin therapy.