Vitamin Popper or Vitamin Pauper

People who follow the advice of giants of orthomolecular medicine like Prof. Roger Williams, Dr. Abram Hoffer, and Prof. Linus Pauling, inevitably end up "popping" pills of several different nutritional supplements every day. However, far from being "Vitamin poppers", they are just trying not to be  "Vitamin paupers", that is, people who are very nutritionally deficient.  Incidentally all three giants just mentioned lived past the age of 90; Williams till 94, Hoffer till 91, and Pauling till 93!

Now it might seem odd that one should need nutritional supplements everyday. Shouldn't one get all required nutrition from food? After all, we have not evolved from creatures that took supplements everyday. The "madness" of vitamin popping makes more sense when we keep in mind the following facts (see Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone by Dr. A. Hoffer and Dr. A. Saul)

1. Modern foods are terribly nutritionally deficient: Foods are nowadays processed to increase their shelf life. This means that the foods are made unpalatable for other creatures which might feast on our food before its time for us to eat it. Unfortunately, this is done by depleting foods of important vitamins, minerals, and fiber (for example by milling grain), thereby making the food unpalatable for us too! Humans have lost the instinct to sense the presence or absence of particular nutrients in food, and only sense the need for energy. As a result, most of us are clueless about how nutritionally deficient a lot of foodstuffs are.
2. The RDAs were designed to prevent severe deficiencies, not moderate ones: Many of the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA) for vitamins and minerals were originally set only to prevent diseases such as scurvy, beri-beri, pellagra, goiter, rickets etc. which are caused by severe deficiencies of different nutrients. RDAs do not represent optimal doses of nutrients for anyone, and are often insufficient to prevent diseases caused by moderate deficiencies. The optimal doses of nutrients can be orders of magnitude higher than the RDA for some people. Note that moderate deficiencies can over a long period of time cause diseases as bad as or even worse than those caused by severe deficiencies. For example, while it is well-known that severe iodine deficiency causes cretinism and goiter, most people are unaware that moderate iodine deficiency can cause breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers.
3. The nutritional needs of different people are very different: Because humans are so biochemically different, each person has a different nutritional requirement. Hence food consumed by a family may provide all the nutrition for some members while leaving others deficient. Hence the optimum dose of any nutrient will lie in a range, and a single number such as an RDA makes little sense. See The World Within You by Roger Williams, the person who discovered Vitamin B5, for an excellent exposition of this point.
4. Nutrients work together:  A crude analogy for nutrients are the tyres of a car. A car moves smoothly only if all tyres have the right pressure. Any single tyre with low pressure is no good. Similarly, ALL nutrients must be consumed in optimal amounts because they work together in the body.
5. Certain nutrients are very difficult to find even in whole foods:  Nutrients such as Iodine and Vitamin E are not present in amounts close to the optimal needed even in whole foods. Iodine is present in good amounts in seaweed, but seaweed is not part of most diets.

Vitamin poppers are only trying to bridge the gap between their optimum and actual nutrient intake by taking supplements. Erring on the higher side is better than erring on the lower side.

So how does one find out what are the optimum levels of nutrients for one's body? Here are some ways to approach the problem.

1. For every particular nutrient, consult its expert: I define an expert as someone (i) who has done research on a particular nutrient (as reflected by peer-reviewed publications), (ii) is aware of the large body of nutritional research conducted since the early 20th century (or even 19th century) on that nutrient, (iii) has successfully treated people for diseases using that nutrient. Examples are Linus Pauling for Vitamin C, Abram Hoffer for Vitamin B3, and Guy Abraham for Iodine. Fred Klenner was one of the first multi-nutrient expert. In my opinion, being a great doctor, or famous nutritionist does not automatically make one an expert on all nutrients.
2. Titrate to cure ill health: Experts will give you a range in which an optimal dose for a nutrient is likely to lie in. The range does not tell you exactly what your optimal dose is. One can find out the optimal amount for some nutrients via titration. Titration involves starting from a low dose of medicine and increasing it till some form of ill health disappears. This ill health need not be a full-blown disease, and can include things such as unnatural fatigue, a foggy brain etc. So if nutrient X is known to cure disease Y, one can start with a low dose of X and gradually increase it till Y shown signs of getting cured. This increase can  happen over several days or even during a single day in some cases. See the article How to Determine a Therapeutic Dose of Vitamin C by Robert Cathcart for how to determine one's optimal Vitamin C dose.

Below are some suggested daily doses of nutrients for a normal healthy person. Note that sick people may need higher doses of some nutrients to cure certain diseases.

Nutrient	Linus Pauling	IVSRP	Miscel.	RDA	Remarks
Vitamin A	20,000-40,000IU			3,000 IU	See Vitamin A Saga by the Weston Price Foundation to learn how Vitamin A has been "attacked" since the mid-1990s.
Vitamin B1	50-100mg	25mg		1.2mg
Vitamin B2	50-100mg	25mg		1.3mg
Vitamin B3	300-600mg	300mg		16mg
Vitamin B5	100-200mg			5mg
Vitamin B6	50-100mg	25mg		1.3mg
Folic Acid	400-800mcg	2,000mcg		400mcg
Vitamin B12	100-200mcg	500mcg		2.4mcg
Vitamin C	6,000-18,000mg	2,000 mg		90mg	80-90% of the bowel tolerance level is considered optimal. This level varies from person to person and also over time. For intravenous use of Vitamin C  see Dr. Fred Klenner's Vitamin C paper
Vitamin D3	800 IU	1,500 IU	5,000 IU (Vitamin D council)	600 IU	Considerable Vitamin D research has been performed after Pauling's death which explains why his recommendation is lower than the Vitamin D council's recommendation.
Vitamin E	800 IU	200 IU		33 IU
Vitamin K	-			120 IU	Vitamin K2 is important for heart, dental, bone, and brain health. It is the elusive Activator-X identified by Dr. Weston Price.
Zinc	-	25mg		11mg
Magnesium	-	500mg		400mg
Selenium	-	200mcg		55mcg
Chromium	-	200mcg		35mcg
Iodine	-	-	12.5-37.5 mg (Dr. Guy Abraham)	150mcg	The importance of Iodine has been rediscovered only from 2005 onwards by Dr. Guy Abraham and others. Iodine present in seaweed consumed in Japan may indeed explain the longevity of the Japanese. See David Brownstein's Iodine : Why You Need It, Why You Can't Live Without It

Remarks:

• IVSRP stands for the Independent Vitamin Safety Review Panel comprising of well-known orthomolecular physicians.
• mcg stands for microgram, and mg for milligram
• IU stands for International Unit
• RDA stands for Recommended Dietary Allowances set by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences

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