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:
For more info on these books, see http://www.boragebooks.com
NAMI/ Lane County/ Spring 2013 Newsletter
NAMI/ Lane County/ Spring 2013 Newsletter
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