abstract:Orthomolecular medicine is a form of complementary and alternative medicine aimed at maintaining health through nutritional supplementation and based on the assertion that there is an optimum nutritional environment in the body and that diseases reflect deficiencies in this environment. Treatment for disease, according to this view, calls for the "correcting of imbalances or deficiencies based on individual biochemistry" by use of substances natural to the body, such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, trace elements and fatty acids.