Linus Carl Pauling

Widely regarded as the premier chemist of the 20th Century, Linus Carl Pauling was a quantum chemist and biochemist. A two-time winner of the Nobel Prize, he was also the grandfather of the discipline of orthomolecular medicine.

Orthomolecular medicine, or optimum nutrition, “describes the practice of preventing and treating disease by providing the body with optimal amounts of substances which are natural to the body.” Its general tenants maintain that diet and nutrition are the leading contributors to preserving the health of any individual. It further stresses the need to optimize naturally occurring organic molecules, such as vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, amino acids, essential fatty acids, and dietary fibre. Furthermore, because water is necessary for the digestion and absorption of food, supplying oxygen and nutrients to the cells and ridding the body of wastes, it is a very important element in the organic chemistry of all biological systems.

Linus Pauling began his career studying the atom and ended it having helped to codify the emerging science of molecular biology. In 1949, his hypothesis and subsequent proof regarding the nature of sickle cell anemia as caused by abnormalities in the hemoglobin molecule heralded the era of molecular medicine. Often molecular diseases arise from abnormalities in the amounts or the structure of enzymes. Based on these discoveries, it was a natural progression to then develop a theory that explained the molecular basis of vitamin therapy.

Pauling defined orthomolecular medicine as “the preservation of good health and the treatment of disease by varying the concentration in the human body of substances that are normally present in the body”. For him, maintaining health was a matter ensuring that an individual ingests the right molecules in the right concentration. These include the nutrients we consume in our diets, the vitamins that we use to supplement, the herbs that we ingest to cure and the quality of water that we drink, which is both courier and catalyst for the complex reactions that occur within our bodies at the molecular level.
By adhering to his own code of optimum nutrition, Linus Carl Pauling lived productively for 93 years.