Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great book for doctor's office and for fireplace reading
Comment: This book is under the banner of the famed Linus Pauling Institute (Oregon State University) has it has a great foreword by Bruce Ames. Linus Pauling was one of the best thinkers of the last century and he recommended much higher than RDA / Daily Value intakes from a multi-vitamin as well as some other supplements in order to help procure optimal health.There is no science yet to suggest that Pauling was wrong about such high dose supplementation --for example to lower blood-toxin homocysteine, the most likely cause of most heart disease, some cancers and Alzheimer's disease. However, the medical world is slow embracing the evidence supporting this approach but that is changing.
This book is an important and tightly edited work that will help practicing physicians and interested lay people with factual data, pointers and references and even the most knowledgeable person will surely pick up important health information they would otherwise have missed.
This is a well organized handbook with 27 chapters for the individual vitamins and minerals and their effects, sources and therapeutic indications and drug interactions.
This book has "Tolerable Upper Levels" tables to satisfy even the most conservative physician but it must be said that this heading represents a level that prevents the most uncommon or even trivial interactions, and a level that may well be much below "Optimal Levels" as suggested by Pauling, and which are likely to promote health in the great majority of people.
The book would benefit from a "Pauling Proposed Probable Optimal Levels in Most" table and from the inclusion of chapters for what used to be named vitamin F, with the F from "Fat", i.e. the essential omega-3 and omega-6 oils, think of them as vitamins F-3 and F-6. Present intakes of omega-3s are well below adequate levels while omega-6 (linoleic acid from most vegetable oils) may well represent our most common "vitamin overdose".
The challenge of the new nutrition is figuring out the "Long-Latency Deficiency Diseases", LLDD's if you wish, caused by the insufficient intakes over time of one or several nutrients, from vitamin D and calcium for bone health, to the homocysteine-lowering trio of folic acid, B6 and B12 for heart and other diseases.
This book builds a solid foundation with what is known, it is without technical errors and it is clearly presented. Vital in a doctor's office and much recommended for the interested lay person. .....
