mental health and nutrition Accordingly the use of ‘megadoses’ of niacin was first tried by Drs Humphrey Osmond and Abram Hoffer in impressed were they with the results in acute schizophrenics that, in 1953, they ran the first ‘doubleblind’ therapeutic trials in the history of psychiatry.

They also found that chronic schizophrenics, not firsttime sufferers but longterm inpatients, showed little improvement.

Their first two trials showed significant improvement giving at least 3gs a day, compared to placebos. I know that the results of six double blind controlled trials showed that the natural recovery rate was doubled. BIt is connected with the abnormal production of a number of chemicals called ‘pyrroles’. Since they rob the body of these essential nutrients, b6 and zinc than usual increasing a person’s requirements to stay healthy. With that said, this deficiency is no ordinary deficiency. Possibly amidst the most significant ‘undiscovered’ discoveries in the nutritional treatment of mental illness is that many mentally ill people are deficient in vitamin B6 and zinc.

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Methylation is a critical process in the brain that helps maintain the right chemical balance.

Many people with schizophrenia, especially young males, tend to have a high amount of homocysteine, despite no obvious dietary lack of these vitamins. Therefore the body makes homocysteine from dietary protein and, provided you are getting enough of certain vitamins1, especially folic acid, B12 and B6, homocysteine levels decrease. Now pay attention please. Therefore an indicator of faulty methylation is having a high extent of a toxic amino acid in the blood called homocysteine. For example, high levels of homocysteine and low blood levels of folic acid are reported by many research groups. These unusually high levels don’t appear to relate to diet or lifestyle factors, similar to smoking. Just 5 years ago, the idea of nutritional psychiatry barely registered a blip on the health care radar. As a result, there had been a few studies examining how certain supplements might balance mood. As a result, other telltale signs include pale skin, whitish marks on the nails and, in extreme cases, poor hair growth and loss of hair colour. You see, if they have mental health problems, So it’s normal to remember dreams, and many people, report better dream recall once they start supplementing optimal amounts of vitamin B6 and zinc.

Niacin, through its flushing action improves oxygen supply to the brain.

Niacin is also needed for the brain to employ essential fats.

The ‘happy’ neurotransmitter serotonin also needs niacin. Of course only in the presence of enough niacin, serotonin is created from the amino acid tryptophan. Of course, diabetes Care. Also, hyperglycemia and diabetes in patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders. These results have since been confirmed by other doubleblind ‘placebocontrolled’ trials. Results showed that allergies alone, not placebos, were able to produce the following symptoms. While using a placebo controlled trial, as to whether individual food allergies could really produce mental symptoms in these individuals, in one, published in the Journal of Biological Psychiatry, 30 patients suffering from anxiety, depression, confusion or difficulty in concentration were tested. Test for pyroluria is remarkably simple and very inexpensive.

It will turn mauve if for the most part there’re krytpopyrroles present, when you add a chemical known as Erhlich’s reagant to urine.

Whenever inducing deficiency, dr Carl Pfeiffer and Dr Arthur hler at Princeton’s Brain Bio Center worked out that these abnormal chemicals would bind to B6 and zinc.

Dubbed ‘mauve factor’ in the 1960s, with that said, this was found in 11 per cent of normal people, 24 per cent of disturbed children, 42 per cent of psychiatric patients and 52 per cent of schizophrenics. Actually, applebaum J et al J Psychiatr Res. It’s a well regland B et al J Neural Transm. Also, lewis SJ et al Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet. Carney and Sheffield, ‘Serum folic acid and B12 in 272 psychiatric in patients’, Psychol Med, Vol 8, 1978. Seriously. Godfrey et al, ‘Enhancement of recovery from psychiatric illness by methylfolate’, Lancet, Vol 336, 1990.

Regland et al, ‘Homocysteinemia and schizophrenia as a case of methylation deficiency’, J Neural Transm Gen Sect, Vol 98, 1994.

Dis Nerv Syst, Vol 26, 1965.

Reilly et al, ‘The mauve factor. Bender, ‘Childhood schizophrenia’, Psychiatric Quarterly, Vol 27, 1953. Notice, graff and Handford, ‘Celiac syndrome in the case history of five schizophrenics’, Psychiatric Quarterly, Vol 35, 1961. Although, dohan et al, ‘Relapsed schizophrenics. With all that said… Brit J Psychiat, Vol 115, 1969. Now let me ask you something. King, ‘Can allergic exposure provoke psychological symptoms?

Biol Psychiatry, Vol 16, 1981.

West J, Logan RF, Hubbard RB, Card TR.

Risk of schizophrenia in people with coeliac disease, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Aliment Pharmacol Ther. She was tested for vitamin C status and found to be very deficient. Notice, vitamin C deficiency is also much more common than realised in people with mental health problems, often being that they don’t look after themselves properly and eat poorly. Her speech improved and she became more motivated and sociable, after being given vitamin C she had fewer hallucinations. While having physical symptoms, professor Derri Shtasel from the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine in Philadelphia described a case of a woman who was confused and hearing voices.

Many individuals with mental health problems are sensitive to gluten, especially wheat gluten, that can bring on all sorts of symptoms of mental illness.

When Dr Lauretta Bender noted that schizophrenic children frequently had coeliac disease, that said, this has been known since the 1950s.

By 1966 she had recorded 20 such cases from among around 2000 schizophrenic children. Read on for more information on Schizophrenia/psychosis and how it can be influenced by nutrition. This is the case. Recent studies have shown the risk of depression increases about 80 when you compare teens with the lowestquality diet, or what we call the Western diet, to those who eat a ‘higher quality’, ‘wholefoods’ diet. For sure we are all vitamin dependent, we call this ‘vitamin dependency’. Sometimes as much as 2000mg or 100 times the RDA, I’d say in case you have these symptoms you may need a lot more niacin than the basic RDA. Oftentimes just how niacin works is still Therefore a bit of athat is 75 times the RDA! Folic acid By the way, the cause of schizophrenia possibility of allergy to other foods may be worth investigating, especially if allergic symptoms, including eczema, asthma, digestive problems, ear infections, sinusitis or rhinitis are also present. More recent research hasn’t found that coeliacs disease in more prevalent among those with schizophrenia or vice versa.

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