Schizophrenia: Vitamins work! But take Time and Fine-Tuning.

Patience

Drugs, when they work, usually create relatively rapid improvement, until tolerance develops and side effects set in.
Nutrients are usually slow, so that at first it may not be obvious that they are working at all. Usually, improvement is subtle, almost unnoticeable day-to-day. Much subtler than drugs.
But effectiveness compounds with time. Multiple nutrients have a multiplicative effect. And, tailored appropriately to the individual, virtually no significant side effects (except enhanced general health). After all, nutrients nourish and are essential to health by definition.

Degree of Improvement

The clinical outcomes of Doctors Pfeiffer, Walsh and Hoffer, over tens of thousands of patients with schizophrenia, suggest that approximately 75-85% get better. To start, improvement may be almost unnoticeable, but progresses -- especially when treated relatively soon -- to a remarkable extent, as compared to meds. Many people can go back to school, pursue previous career goals, take up where they left off. They get their lives back. Nutrients work!

Education critical

But nutrient treatment does have to be tailored to individual requirements. In some cases repeated fine-tuning is needed and patience is essential. Education is critical for everyone involved. The more the individual, the physician and the family know about what each nutrient does, the role of biotypes, and the influence of other health factors (allergies, metals and toxins, thyroid and adrenal function, blood sugar, Candida, neurological issues, etc.), the more the long-term outcome is likely to improve.

Hence, my book, Natural Healing for Schizophrenia, so doctor and patient can work together to solve the riddles of this illness.
Available here.
Note: If you buy from Borage Books, you get a free educational consult with the author. 

Warning: If already taking medication, please do not make changes without consulting with a knowledgeable doctor. Changes in medication can trigger episodes which are worse than the initial illness. If the individual is taking meds, orthomolecular doctors usually just add nutrients to the drug regimen. They then reduce meds in gradual steps (often 10% at a time), each stage only when enough improvement on the nutrients allows it. 
This information is presented for educational purposes only, and is not intended for diagnostic or treatment purposes. If you need treatment for schizophrenia, or any other medical condition, please consult a knowledgeable physician.

The Power of Nutrients in Schizophrenia

How important can nutrients be? Can they really do much for severe mental health symptoms? Two old illnesses, whose vitamin cures have been used by modern medicine for the past hundred years, will serve to provide an intuitive glimpse into the potency of nutrients in brain function.

Vitamin C and Scurvy

 

Consider first, scurvy, the disease of the ancient pirates, a prolific killer of olden-day sailors on long sea voyages. Symptoms included easy bruising, internal bleeding, roughening skin, and wounds which would not heal. Teeth would loosen and fall out. As if that was not enough, scurvy also caused profound anxiety and depression, overwhelming fatigue, insomnia and, eventually, in some cases, psychosis. Late stage scurvy often resolves into fever, convulsions, and death.

Scurvy has been known for at least 2000 years, and periodically, people have tried various fresh food cures, only to lose that knowledge in subsequent generations. In the twentieth century, treatment with sources of vitamin C caught on more universally. Sufficient C not only stems the physical changes, but also reverses the often-severe mental symptoms.

Note again: Vitamin C, all by itself reverses the psychosis and mood changes of scurvy! Interestingly, many institutionalized psychiatric patients have vitamin C levels close to that found in people with scurvy.

Vitamin B3 (Niacin) and Pellagra 

Secondly, let us look at pellagra, an illness characterized classically by the 4Ds: Dermatitis, Diarrhea, Dementia and Death. That is: various skin and gastrointestinal symptoms, along with increasing weakness and depression, mood instability, aggression, insomnia, confusion eventually resolving into dementia and, in some cases, a schizophrenia-like psychosis.

In the early 1900s, liver, and then, its active ingredient, niacin, was found to cure pellagra. A few hundred mg. of vitamin B3, over several weeks, reversed the unstable mood, the irritability and violent disposition, and the pellagren psychosis.

Since then, orthomolecular psychiatrists have found niacin helpful in many cases of schizophrenia and depression, and critical in up to 90% of cases of paranoid schizophrenia.

If such nutrients can cure the severe mental symptoms of scurvy and pellagra, then perhaps they also have the power to address those same symptoms in psychiatric disorders. Come to my talk April 23rd [LCMH, 6:00] to hear more.

About the author

Eva Edelman is a health researcher and the author of two widely-acclaimed compendiums:

Natural Healing for Bipolar Disorder: A Compendium of Nutritional Approaches

Natural Healing for Schizophrenia and Other Common Mental Disorders

For more info on these books, see http://www.boragebooks.com

NAMI/ Lane County/ Spring 2013 Newsletter 

My review of Nutrient Power by Dr. William J Walsh, PhD

NUTRIENT POWER  Heal Your Biochemistry and Heal Your Brain by Dr. William J. Walsh

Nutrient Power by Dr. William J Walsh grants us a privileged look at the results of 35 years of research by a scientist who never stops pushing the envelope. Research, bolstered  by a scientific database of 25,000 patients and a million assays of chemical factors in blood, urine, and tissue;

This breakthrough book is a bridge from epigenetics and molecular biology to a biochemical psychiatry based on nutrients. It guides us through the brain’s rich biochemical tapestry and healing capacity. We learn about nutrients in terms of:

(1) Treatments for behavior and conduct disorders in youth, promising both a more humane and more effective approach.
(2) The role of metal metabolism, methylation and oxidative stress in autism.
(3) A review of approaches for Alzheimer’s, plus a new nutrient-based therapy.
(4) New theoretical underpinnings for niacin/ folic acid treatment of schizophrenia.
(5) Biotypes underlying ADHD, depression, schizophrenia.

And more. We move, from the methylation and acetylation of DNA histones to neurotransmitter transporters and regulators and synaptic reuptake. From metallothioneins and pyrrole disorders to the repercussions of oxidative stress...

And through it all, we see how nutrients, being intrinsic to how the the brain operates and thrives, directly target errant brain chemistry, while supporting natural brain processes. How nutrients fit intricately with the subtleties and plasticity of brain/body chemistry, as the most accurate biochemical key to neurotransmitter balance, synaptic activity, neuron viability, and genetic manifestation. Nutrients, the natural match for our internal chemistry and structure, created to sustain, build, activate, moderate, repair, and support healthy brain and body function.

The lesson is truly nutrient power!
All packed into one concise gem of a book.
A must-read for anyone who ponders the power of nutrients in mental function.

Review by Eva Edelman, author,
Natural Healing for Bipolar Disorder: A Compendium of Nutritional Approaches
Natural Healing for Schizophrenia and Other Common Mental Disorders