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Psychosis, Schizophrenia, and Nutritional Therapy |
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Psychosis, Schizophrenia, and Nutritional Psychiatry |
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Jim had been
unmanageable, of course. He threatened his parents' lives on a daily
basis and was punching holes in the walls. He slept one hour per night,
and roamed the city streets the other seven or eight. Jim is one of the
premier reasons to not be out too late yourself. His
face was scaly and severely broken out with acne. His dietary and digestive
habits were appalling, and he was, to quote Far Side cartoonist Gary
Larson, just plain nuts. I faced this
unhappy trio and felt helpless. The good part of it all was that they'd
caught Jim on a good day (as far as I could see) and he wasn't going to tear
up the place. From somewhere I recalled the three D's of pellagra, that
"extinct" niacin deficiency disease: dermatitis, dementia, and
diarrhea. It was a reasonably close textbook match to the walking,
talking Jim in front of me. I was also aware of the work of But three feet away
from me was a psycho with two terrified parents. Medical science had not
helped him, and had, ironically, discharged him in the face of its own
impotence. I told them about
Dr. Hoffer's approach. "We'll try
anything," the father said, and the mother nodded energetically. "Jim, how
about you?" I asked. "Yeah, I'll
take the stuff," Jim said. "I'll settle
for that. Dr. Hoffer would have you take about, oh, three thousand
milligrams of niacin a day, and you'll want to take about 10,000 milligrams
of vitamin C daily as well." "Why?"
everybody asked at once. "Niacin
deficiency actually causes psychosis, as well as the skin and GI problems
that Jim happens to be experiencing. He may just need more niacin than the
average person. Probably a lot more. At really large doses, niacin has a
profound calming, sedating effect. Yet it is not a drug, but a nutrient. The safety margin is
huge. Hoffer has prescribed as much as 20,000 milligrams a day. He
says that something in the vicinity of 40,000
to 200,000 milligrams a day is toxic. 3,000 milligrams is actually not a
particularly high dose... to Dr. Hoffer." "And the
vitamin C?" the father asked. "Niacin's side
effects, such as possible elevation in liver enzyme test numbers, are minimized when
you take at least the same gram amount as the niacin," I answered.
"As an added precaution, I think you should take even more C than that.
Linus Pauling, Ph.D. thinks that 10,000 milligrams for a man is just an
everyday dose. Per human body weight, it is the same amount that a goat, cow,
mouse, dog or cat would make each day. Why would nature have these
animals make that much for nothing? I think we should copy their
example. These vitamins, at worst, are much less risky than any of the
prescriptions Jim's ever tried, at their best." "But none of
those drugs helped him at all," said his mother. "All the more
reason to give this a try," the father answered, beating me to the
reply. "It can't be worse than it is now." Jim was silent and
looked at his sneakers. "How will we
know if that's enough niacin?" his mother asked. "If he behaves
better, it's enough" I said. "If he takes too much niacin,
he'll flush. That means his skin will get pink, or even red, especially
the face, ears and forearms. Sort of like a half-hour hot flash. You'll feel like you have a sunburn, Jim." "That's OK
with me. I like to be out on the beach or something," Jim said. They left, and I
wondered how they managed to get this far. About two weeks later, Jim's father
called for a follow up conference. "Let me tell
you what happened," he began. "You know Jim only sleeps maybe
an hour a night? Well, the first night on the niacin, he slept 18
hours. He's been sleeping about 7 hours a night since." "That's
terrific," I said. "That's not
all," he said. "Last Friday morning, for the first time in I
don't know how many years, Jim came down for breakfast. He walked into the
dining room and said 'Good morning, Dad.'" Even on the phone I
could hear the tears in the man's voice. It was wonderful. And niacin is cheap,
non-prescription and easy to monitor: if you flush, you took too much. No
flush and no psychosis means you did it right. How can this
be? The therapy is too simple. And cheap. And 65 years old. There's more.
Weeks later, Jim came in alone for an appointment. We sat down, and he
told me that the niacin had worked, and that he'd stopped taking it. "But
why?" I asked. "It was helping you!" "Yeah. Yeah.
But I sort of like my sickness," Jim said. I tried not to show
my shock. This was over 30 years ago, and I hadn't yet learned that
some psychotics simply prefer the psychotic state. As they get well, they may
back away from the cure in favor of the disease. Jim continued:
"Whenever I get too far gone, though, I, uh, soak in a hot bath for a
while and down a bottle of niacin. Then I feel fine." A whole bottle of
niacin? I thought. That is literally what he said; I remember the line
like it was this morning. But it did work. Here's the
footnote: when a raving, dangerous patient can manage his illness and
actually select the degree of psychosis he wants in his life, you have
something unlike your standard idea of "cure." You have
educated and empowered a person to take responsibility for his life. And
with the freedom that includes, you can get odd results. So how many
psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? It must be weird to
look down from heaven at a mankind that has free will. It would be like
watching a slot machine play itself. Shrinks are breaking ranks. Some
are continuing to say that the emotionally ill just need someone to talk to,
to understand them and reason with them. Others want to drug patients
into oblivion. In general, modern psychiatry has moved away from the
Freudian couch and closer to Huxley's Brave New World. Prozac, Paxil, Thorazine, and what have
you are our non-fictional "soma," the mind-settling, mood-elevating
wonder drugs that make psychoanalysis seem like the slow boat to The fundamental
bias in both medicine and dietetics rises darkly from the swamp when you even
hint of a therapeutic validity for megavitamin doses. Doctors and
dietitians are far more likely to agree that patients should sit under a pine
tree with their backs against the trunk, a Native American anti-depressant
technique that does in fact work. Mention megavitamin dosages of
vitamins for treating mental disorders, though, and you'd think you'd asked
for NIH money to reanimate roadkill. Why such resistance
to such a useful nutritional tool? Perhaps because niacin therapy is
really, really cheap? Niacin,
or vitamin B-3 has three common, over-the-counter forms: niacin, inositol hexaniacinate, and niacinamide. All three are water
soluble and stable, white powders. Your body may obtain niacin from
metabolizing the essential amino acid tryptophan, found in protein. (60
milligrams of tryptophan yields about 1 mg niacin). Tryptophan and
niacin are therefore somewhat interchangeable, as a sleep aid, for instance
and also as a sedative. "Pellagra"
is the classic niacin deficiency disease. It was once common in the
rural South where the poor had little else to eat except tryptophan-poor
foods like milled corn. The symptoms are the "Three
D's": diarrhea, dermatitis, and dementia. More specific
pellagra symptoms include weakness, anorexia, lassitude, indigestion, skin
eruptions, skin scaling, neuritis, nervous system destruction, confusion,
apathy, disorientation, and insanity. Does this sound a
bit like schizophrenia to you? A few physicians
thought so, too. In studying mental illness, tryptophan and niacin
deficits, and pellagra, some doctors noticed that psychotics and other
mentally ill persons frequently have assorted pellagra-like symptoms in
addition to their nervous problems. From about 1900 to the mid 1930's,
perhaps up to half of persons in psychiatric hospitals had pellagra. It makes
one wonder: could many forms of mental illness actually be caused by a
deficiency of niacin? In the 1950's, an
insightful young psychiatrist named Abram Hoffer began clinical trials to
find out. He used very high doses of niacin, with very good
results. But the success, convenience and relentless advertising of
later (c. 1960) "wonder drugs" diminished niacin's
popularity. Then, the American Psychiatric Association unscientifically
trashed megavitamin therapy in the early 1970's. So now we have growing
legions of nutritionally challenged,
mentally-malnourished Americans who don't know, or care, that they are...
because they are happily (and legally, and profitably) drugged into
mood-altered la-la land! It is disquieting to see the Rolling Stones as
prophets, yet an arsenal of "Mother's
Little Helper" psychotropic pharmaceuticals are used by millions daily,
even while doctors and dieticians condemn megavitamin therapeutics. The many negative
side effects and dangers of these drugs are now restoring interest in
niacin. Even the new somas du jour, Paxil and Prozac, have serious failings. A quick
read in the Physicians' Desk Reference (or PDR, available at
any library) will illustrate this. Some additional and
interesting therapeutic uses of niacin include Meniere's syndrome (ringing in
the ears plus nausea) and high-tone deafness. In long term therapy,
improvement was obtained with only 150-250 mg daily (Bicknell and Prescott, The
Vitamins in Medicine, 3rd ed., p 379).
Resistance to X-radiation
was greatly improved at around 500-600 mg daily. Nausea was also
reduced. Supplemental niacin could therefore be of
much value for cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy.
Even healing after surgical shock and other trauma including burns,
hemorrhage and infection is more rapid with niacin administration. Niacin toxicity
does exist, but is rare. Dr. Hoffer found that even 40,000 mg daily is
not toxic but estimated that over 200,000 mg/day is fatal. The most
psychotic person you are ever likely to meet could probably not hold more
than 10,000 mg/day, and most of us would never exceed 1,000 mg daily. Medical
physicians frequently give patients 2,000 to 5,000 milligrams of niacin to
lower serum cholesterol. The safety margin is large. There is not
even one death from niacin per year. Check CDC or Dr. Hoffer has said that what side effects
there may be with really high doses of niacin are largely offset by taking
large doses of vitamin C. Hoffer has his patients take at least as much
C as niacin. I have found that more C works even better. Side
effects tend to be a significant problem primarily in people with a history
of alcohol abuse. It is a lack of
niacin that is the real public health problem. The US RDA is less than 20
mg, and bodily need for niacin varies with activity, body size and illness. About half of all Americans will not get even that much from their
diets. Niacin's special importance is indicated in that the US RDA for
niacin is twenty or more times higher than the RDA for other B-vitamins, and
that's just for everyday, healthy people.
Dr. Hoffer gave far
higher doses, and it worked. I copied him with Jim, and that worked as much
as Jim wanted it to. Two very important
books to continue your knowledge of niacin therapy are Dr. Hoffer's Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone,
and Dr. Hoffer's final book, Niacin: The Real Story. I would go so far as to advise reading
everything Dr. Hoffer has ever written. You can start right now, for free,
with a site search for "Hoffer" from the home page of this
website.
Andrew Saul is the author
of the books FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! How to be
Independently Healthy (reader reviews at http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
)
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