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Nutrition Articles by Richard Kunin, MD

Something clicked in my mind this week, an insight that I have resisted for many years.  There is a bit of the contrarian in me, I must admit; but I do hold back, I fight the urge to find fault.  I do respect authority and I dread anarchy.  But I don’t believe in blind obedience in politics--and certainly not in questions of science.

However the fact is that our health bureaucracy, which is political, regulates medical research, products and commerce in most areas of vital personal interest, e.g. Food, Drugs and Health products and services in general.  The FDA is the only agency of our government with censorship powers that can abridge constitutional freedoms, such as freedom of speech and freedom of the press. 

Fatigue is one of the most frequent symptoms that brings a patient to the doctor. The causes are numerous and, in fact, it can accompany almost any illness. The presence of fatigue is, however, an important indicator of serious disease. In 1979 Dr. Cuyler Hammond's report on the 20 year long Cancer Prevention Study, which surveyed over a million Americans, found that a positive answer to the question "do you fatigue easily?" was predictive of a higher death rate from disease, including cancer, than any other question!

C = CANCER

In 1975 Dean Burk, former head of research at National Cancer Institute, and John Yiamouyiannis, a biochemist and fluoride expert, reported their analysis of fluoridation effects. After reviewing official public health statistics on 180 million Americans they found a significant increase in death from cancer in fluoridated cities. They limited their study to the ten largest fluoridated cities compared to the ten largest unfluoridated cities in America over a twenty-year period, from 1950 to 1970.

It is a relief and a pleasure when a complex case turns out to be easy.  An orthomolecular physician in Upstate New York sent me a fax regarding a 32 year old woman he is treating for shoulder pain following a motor vehicle accident.  Injections of cortisone (triamcinolone) had been dramatically beneficial: her pain disappeared, good sleep returned, energy level and mood improved, and her skin "acne" cleared.  All symptoms relapsed when the effects of the shot wore off.  In addition she reported additional symptoms: abdominal bloat, thinning hair and green finger nails.  Cortisone taken by mouth did not work, so she had already had 3 injections.   The doctor wondered if she might have a genetic problem.  He was specifically intrigued by the possibility of phenylketonuria because she claimed that diet Coke relieved her symptoms!  He had heard one of my lectures on ADD-Autism and thought I might be able to answer this for him.

I was honored to be an invited panelist at the Defeat Autism Now! (DAN) Conference convened by the Autism Research Institute in 1995.  Dr. Bernard Rimland called the conference to bring together 30 of the most knowledgeable people in the field and he wisely included the orthomolecular voice in an otherwise academic chorus, which focused on peptides and immune disorders.  One thing we all had in common, however, was the awareness that autism has changed since Leo Kanner's landmark paper describing a handful of cases in 1943.  The most noticeable event has occurred in the past decade, which has witnessed an alarming increase in the number of children with language delay and attention deficit.  The more severe language delay cases usually are given a diagnosis of autism at age 3 to 4; those who develop sufficient speech to communicate are usually spared the stigma of diagnosis until their attention deficit becomes more disabling, usually upon entrance to Kindergarten.

For the past 60 years coronary artery disease has been like a plague on Western Nations taking its toll in the form of pain, disability and death. Literally half of all American deaths in that time are related to this disease. Such an epidemic of heart attacks has never-before occurred in all human history. To assuage our anxiety in the face of this mysterious disease that loomed especially large over the life of almost every male between age 40 and 70 and every female over age 60, our government has had to wage a crusade. And that requires an enemy. That public enemy has been identified as a molecule, a fatty alcohol, a normal part of every cell membrane in the human body and a source of the steroid hormones that regulate sex, stress, calcium and electrolytes—the major activities of mammalian biology. Yes, it is cholesterol that has taken the rap. Cholesterol and the surgeon general have been to the second half of the 20th Century what sex and Freud were to the first half—an obsession. And this obsession is supported by our health bureaucracy, who would have us join their crusade to accept a low fat, low cholesterol diet as our salvation. And if that should fail, we can sing ‘hallelujah’ as we submit to coronary angiography, angioplasty and coronary artery by-bass grafts.


In 1970 Linus Pauling wrote about vitamin C as a treatment against viral disease. This was not really new or original work because Pauling owed a huge debt to Dr. Irwin Stone, who had appreciated the antioxidant nature of the vitamin and patented its use as a food preservative over 30 years before--before the second World War. And Stone also appreciated the enormous health benefits of vitamin C and presented a catalog of documented medical applications in his 1972 book: “The Healing Factor.” In this book he paid due homage to the maverick medical genius, Dr. Fred Klenner, who had used vitamin C as a mainstay in his general medical practice for over 30 years. He actually performed basic clinical research with vitamin C, proving its safety and efficacy for infections, snake-bite, and in support of the healing process in almost every known disease. But it was not until Dr. Pauling injected his great prestige and incisive writing style into the controversy over vitamins and viruses, that vitamin C became a hot issue and a cause celebre in its time.

A series of brilliant research achievements in the past 30 years has confirmed the importance of homocysteine as a PREVENTABLE and TREATABLE factor in blood vessel disease. In fact over 200 research studies already provide a consensus that identifies this molecule as THE strategic factor in heart attacks and strokes, far more powerful than cholesterol and fat. In the first place, cholesterol has vital structural functions in every cell membrane in your body and very low toxicity; whereas homocysteine is a transitory metabolic intermediate. If the chemical pathways to its useful end-products are impaired, homocysteine build-up causes more mischief than any other physiologic "ortho"molecule.

  1. How To Be Old & Healthy
  2. Iron Deficiency: More Than Tired Blood
  3. Is Nutrition a Gamble?
  4. Is Vitamin C Dangerous?
  5. Journalistic Quackery
  6. Linus Pauling's Medicine
  7. Low Fat – High Fatigue
  8. Megadose B12 Therapy
  9. Mercury Misery
  10. Multiple Sclerosis: a Case History
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