Nutrition Articles by Richard Kunin, MD

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is the most common childhood psychiatric disorder. It is so common that some argue that it is a normal part of childhood. Don’t believe it. Anyone who has faced the daunting task of caring for an ADD child knows that it is a bigger-than-life problem! The child may be pleasant and well-intentioned on the surface, but inability to focus and organize tasks and settle into everyday home and social situations means that adult authority is constantly tested. Parents know that their ADD children are unable to play, study and learn independently, and the increased risk of accident and injury to themselves and friends, means that family life is fraught with stress for everyone.

Read more: ADD and Ritalin...Is There an Alternative?

The primary prevention and treatment of coronary artery disease is not limited to low cholesterol, low salt, low fat diets.  Nutrients reverse atherosclerosis: they should be ranked first, ahead of all other treatments for coronary atherosclerosis, which is responsible for at least half of all deaths in our time.

Orthomolecular therapy, putting nutrients first, i.e. antioxidants, anticoagulants, and trace minerals, especially copper.  But so entrenched has the cholesterol theory become in the public mind, that Americans are still in the dark as to the real power of nutrition and nutrient therapy against perils coronary artery disease.  In part this is due to a smoke screen of propaganda.  The Public Health Service, a government agency, has been allocated several billions of dollars to educate the American public about the virtues of a low fat, low cholesterol diet to prevent coronary artery disease--even though there is no proof that this actually rewards us with a drop in over-all mortality.  Heart attacks do drop but at the expense of depression, suicide and accidents--and possibly cancer and stroke as well.

Read more: Antioxidants And Your Heart

Classic autism, once mystifying and attributed to the "refrigerator mother," i.e. failure of maternal-neonatal relationship, is now identified with injury to the developing brain. The diagnosis is based on: 1) lack of language development; 2) lack of social interaction; 3) stereotyped and repetitive behaviors. The language impairment ranges from total lack of words to spotty use of words and phrases. These children often respond when spoken to but are unable to organize their thoughts well enough to answer back. Recovered autistics have described the experience as one of confusion. The social impairment presents as lack of eye contact, lack of facial expression, lack of ability to play, and inability to interact meaningfully with others. Stereotyped behaviors include rituals, hand flapping, body movements, head banging and bizarre and selective preoccupation with objects.

Read more: Autism: Children Who Can't Speak

Boron is a word that calls up images of grease-dirty hands, 20 mule teams, Death Valley, old Western movies. In my mind. Borax, is still linked to the twenty mule team and images of Wallace Beery in Western movies, hauling borax in wagons. Until recently there was nothing much medical or nutritional about it; Boron was just a powdery cleaner, something to get out the dirt—a not very tidy cleaning agent. Boric acid has a bit more medical history as it has uses as an antibiotic, and a cleansing agent for mucous membranes and the eyes. More recently it has gained popularity as a bug-killer. Just dust the boric acid or borax powder in the insect runways and cracks in your house and they die—even cockroaches go away and it is safer than the other commercial pesticides.

Read more: BORON: An Ortho-Mineral

Mona K. was 59 years old when she consulted me about breast cancer 8 years ago. After 30 years as an operating room nurse she felt there might be a connection to halothane, a commonly used anesthetic gas. Except for chronic allergic rhinitis and sinusitis she had always enjoyed good health. She was also quite obese, which led to periods of nutrient deficiency after crash diets; but she considered herself in good health until a mammogram revealed the cancer in 1988. She accepted mastectomy, and all of 30 lymph nodes that were removed tested positive for metastatic cancer. Her oncologist was not optimistic, offering a less than 3 in 10 chance at 5-year survival. She opted for nutrient support as an adjunct to her three-month-long course of chemotherapy with tamoxifen, cytoxan, methotrexate and fluorouracil.

Read more: Cancer Teaches Us Lessons

Carnitine is a meta-vitamin: ie. a food substance required for life but also made within the human body to a limited extent and therefore not a vitamin. A true vitamin is a substance ESSENTIAL FOR LIFE that must be gotten from food--or by pills or injection thanks to modern science. Because carnitine can be produced within our own body it is not considered medically important except in rare cases of genetic defects, in which babies die because of their inability to perform the synthesis of this substance. In everyday practice, health professionals are unlikely to think of carnitine at all. This is a dangerous oversight because deficiency of this essential molecule can be disastrous. As this case report illustrates, symptoms of weakness, muscle pain and mental impairment are almost certainly commonplace due to the frequency with which all of us face conditions of inadequate diet, illness and chemical or medication exposures. It is only in the past two years that case reports are beginning to appear in line with this prediction, especially in epileptic patients on long-term medication.

Read more: Carnitine Deficiency

There is no doubt that we are caught up in an epidemic of childhood brain disease. There are hundreds of thousands of autistic children in the late 1990s where only a decade ago there were seemingly only a few thousand. And there are millions of milder cases, which carry a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder, with or without hyperactivity, therefore ADD or ADHD for short. The ADD children often have delays in speech development and selective impairment of school learning and social behavior. In their areas of interest they are often very intelligent and accomplished; but as a group, ADD kids run into increasing trouble in their adolescent years as they struggle with school, conflict with family, experiment and get hung up on drugs, and run afoul of the law.

Read more: Causes of Epidemic Autism (and ADD)