Nutrition & Supplements in Major Mental Illnesses

This book does not advise or recommend or reject any treatment, nor this book is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any illness. It imparts information. It does not provide nutritional supplements recommendations as substitute for psychological or medical/psychiatric treatments. Hopefully some patients and their relatives will find this information useful to arrive at intelligent decisions in their life.

Notes: (1) The word "Doctor" in this book, unless otherwise indicated, will stand for allopathic doctor and/or a psychiatrist.

(2) Whereas no gender bias is intended in this book with the use of masculine expressions like "he" or "his", their use will be solely for convenience and brevity of expression and will be intended to represent both the genders. As a quick rescue to the reader, we will like to tell the reader to skip large chunks of chapters and go to the last few paragraphs of the mental illness chapters in which he is interested, to find the nutritional approach for that mental illness. Thus, the last few paragraphs of the chapters three, four, five and six will be of use. But the reader, who is not sure which of these chapters to look into, will be better placed if he reads the entire book.

This book is not meant to convey the message that one treatment, one vitamin or a group of vitamins in specific dose will benefit everybody. First, we all have "biochemical individuality", to quote Linus Pauling (1986). What does it mean? It means we all have to experiment to determine what vitamin combination in what dose works, for us. In this book, guidelines are provided to start the experiments on own self. The guidelines hold true for most of us but not for all.

Second, the nutrients work synergistically, helping each other. They work the best when taken together. This is strikingly true for the B group of vitamins. The few exceptions that are there will be specifically mentioned as such in this book. For example some amino acids have to be taken as stand-alone, otherwise they compete with other amino acids for absorption into the brain.

What is the need of yet another book when there are excellent books in countries like USA, Canada and UK on this topic? The need is that those books often mention nutritional supplements that are either available in food stores of the developed countries only or the names of the nutritional supplements are not familiar in developing countries. This book addresses these drawbacks by giving local names of the supplements. Where certain supplements are not available in the developing country like India, either an alternative is mentioned or addresses are given in the foreign country from where the nutritional supplement can be purchased. Authors are no way connected or profiting from those foreign companies. The only intention is to inform the reader from where the nutritional supplement can be obtained.

Behavioral and Psychological treatments:

#1. This is a huge area and growing. Sometimes behavioral interventions can act just as effectively as a chemical medicine. An example is the effect of 40-minute exercise (e.g., walking) on serotonin level in the brain to fight off depression.

#2. All sort of methods and nutritional news are mushrooming. Our yardstick has been to ask if the method has been published in a technical, refereed journal or not? The following behavioral interventions should be accepted because they are scientific in methodology: Token economy, physical exercise in depression and in Hippocampus neuron regeneration, graded physical exercise in depression, Expressed Emotion and excessive contact's role in relapse prevention in schizophrenia, biofeedback training of GSR and SMR (sensory motor rhythm) for schizophrenia and epilepsy respectively.

This book however cannot cover in detail the behavioral and psychological methods as it is primarily concerned with the nutritional approach to major (functional) mental illnesses. The behavioral approach would need a separate book by itself. In general, it must be remembered that behavioral and psychological treatments are primarily for neuroses and psychosomatic disorders; drug treatments are primarily for psychoses.

#3. We have followed the Eysenck-Wolpean divide between neuroses and psychoses. According to this "divide", neurosis and psychosis are quite different from each other. In other words, extreme of neurosis is not the start of psychosis. In this context therefore it should be kept in mind that this book. is only about psychoses, not neuroses-and; for that matter only about functional psychoses, not even organic psychoses like alcoholic psychoses and addictions etc. As such, this book does not cover the nutritional treatment of alcoholism, personality disorders (anger, negativity), neuroses such as anxiety, phobias and obsession and compulsions and psychosomatic disorders.

# 4. This is not a book on psychiatry or mental illness. So, only brief portions are included on mental illnesses to set context for their nutritional treatments. For example, theories of various mental illnesses and details of symptomatology and psychopathology will be omitted. But basic distinctions. among mental illnesses will be mentioned.

This book covers the nutritional treatment of major mental illnesses, namely, the thought disorder schizophrenia and the affective or mood disorder.

To avoid turning this book into a technical jargon and a classroom textbook on nutrition, we have confined ourselves only. to the main trend in the nutritional treatment about which there is consensus. The finer points for this reason have been ignored or mentioned in brief. As example of the finer points, for example: One authority believes there are two type of persons; those who feel good on excess of vitamin A against those who feel good on excess of vitamin C; meaning that if vitamin C is given in excess to the former, then they will feel unwell. In fact, in the old days when the lab tests of tuberculosis were not available, physicians would use high dose of vitamin C to clear the diagnosis in the sense that vitamin C would bring out the hidden tuberculosis in potential carrier (Fredericks 1974). Another authority (Holford 2003) is talking in the same way for methyl factor and histamine factor. But some other authorities don't give them as much of an importance. Similar is the stand of authorities for trace elements and minerals in the diet.

Allergy is an important factor to be considered. There is a theory that mental illness is brain's allergic reaction to certain toxic substances that have crossed the blood brain barrier. Common allergens are in this ascending order: milk, grain and sugar. Phil Bate (His web site is: www.ADHD-biofeedback.com) has contributed much in this area. This book being on nutrients rather than allergy, does deal with allergy but only briefly in relation to mental illness. Phil Bate's case histories in his electronic book are stunning indeed in this context of brain allergy and mental illness.

There is a classic study from the early fifties, published in 1959 called the Hollingshead and Redlich 1959 study based on 240,000 people in the New Haven, Connecticut, USA. The researchers studied those in the psychiatric care but believed that their sample represented the community as a whole. They divided the community in five strata similar to the US Registrar General's five social class divisions in USA. The social class I and II were economically and educationally better than the social class IV and V who were the poorest. Among the several findings from this study, two findings are of relevance to us. First, the prevalence of mental illness was the most in the social classes IV and V. Second, the type of mental illness, namely, psychoses such as schizophrenia, organic psychoses and addictions were more common in the social classes IV and V whereas psychoneuroses were more common among the social classes I and II.

In these findings, what is obvious is that, apart from the social and cultural factors responsible for these differences in the trend of mental illnesses, the role of nutrition is obvious in as much as the nutritional awareness and practices are not of high quality in the social class IV and V compared with that in the social class I and II, implying thereby that the psychoses are due to poor nutrition but neuroses are due to other factors.

Important Caution:

All physical illnesses have a psychological component both as cause and effect. For example, depression and even suicidal ideation can be the effect of any chronic physical illness, not only cancer but diabetes, allergies and even repetitive flu. Therefore, in addition to nutritional treatment of the mental or psychological symptoms, a physician should check up the patient physically. Common culprits to look out for, in the case of depression, are thyroid disorders (low functioning, malfunctioning) and adrenal malfunction. Common culprits in the case of anxiety symptoms are hyper-thyroidism and hypertension. In such cases, the nutritional supplements should be in addition to the drug treatment of the physical illness. Preferably, if possible, the physical illness should be treated first before launching upon the nutritional program of psychological or mental symptoms.

Also, if the patient is already on neuroleptic or anti depressant drug treatment, then the treating physician should be informed what high dose of amino acid supplement is being started.

The nutritional supplements, unlike "medicines" are available without a prescription.

#1. The nutritional supplements are found in food items. Unlike drugs, they are not man-made. As such, drug companies cannot patent them. By contrast, drugs are patented such that a competitor drug company cannot manufacture chemically exact similar drug. Because of this monopoly due to patent, the drug company makes huge profit. But, in the case of nutrients free of "patenting", drug companies cannot make huge profit. So, drug companies are not generally much interested in nutrients.

#2. The nutritional supplements are without toxic side effects because they are found in food items and are found naturally in our body. Our body extracts them from the food we eat. Our body does not make medicines or drugs that are prescribed by doctors. If some nutrients by food intake gets in the body in excess than needed, then the body washes them out or stores them for later use without any side effects. The toxicity level, if any at all, of these supplements is so high that rarely we a ever reach that level and, in any case, our body will signal us to stop taking the supplement by giving us diarrhea or nausea and vomiting.

It is these considerations and ease of availability that patients and relatives should be attracted to the nutritional supplements.

Unfortunately this is not the case. The senior author, Ratan Singh (RS), has found that laziness or lack of initiative found in some psychotics holds them back from taking vitamins. Many times they forget to take them. One draw back with nutritional supplements is that too many of them have to be taken rather than just one pill of the drug. Relatives have to constantly remind the patient to take the vitamins. RS, who is a fan of the nutritional approach to keep healthy, keeps for himself the fish oil capsule bottle and other vitamins near the food on the dining table before starting to eat his food. The sight of the vitamin and fish oil bottle on the table near the food items reminds him to take the vitamins. Without such a cuing strategy, even RS forgets to take his nutritional supplements.

Can a major mental illness be treated solely by nutritional supplements?

Authorities believe that it is possible. But when our near and dear gets the "schizophrenic" symptoms, we do not want to take chances. We rush him to a psychiatrist. But, at the same time, we can start the nutritional supplements. The result many times is that the patient needs to take the minimum dose of the anti-psychotic drug and for less time.

What if the patient is already taking the psychiatric drugs?

(1) Psychiatric drugs should not be stopped if the patient is already on such drugs. The nutritional supplements should be an "add on" to the regime of psychiatric drugs. A bipolar (manic depressive patient) case came to RS. The patient had been on antidepressant, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) under supervision of a psychiatrist past 10 years. The patient denied when asked if there was a discontinuation of the psychiatric drug but said the reason for coming to RS was that there was little improvement in him even after 10 years of uninterrupted treatment. At that stage it was decided NOT to stop or reduce the ongoing antidepressant drug but to add the nutritional supplements.

Careful monitoring of the symptoms should be done especially if the patient is feeling like crying (weeping) or has suicidal ideas. The only emergency in psychiatry is of patient's suicide. There are sensitive psychological questionnaires to help us in this regard such as the Beck Depression Inventory or the Hamilton Depression Scale. If the patient's condition improves, then the psychiatrist or a physician should supervise slow withdrawal of the psychiatric drugs. Meanwhile, the nutritional supplements can be introduced.

(2) In any case, the psychiatric drug/s should not be stopped abruptly. The psychiatric drugs can produce dangerous "Withdrawal reaction" if stopped suddenly.

It seems odd to write about "My good friend" Ratan Singh, as we have never bowed to each other, grasped hands, clasped each other or even seen each other - we are reduced to out images on our websites. We are e-friends, but not, for all that, mere "virtual" friends.

In the several years since we began exchanging questions and answers about neurotherapy and nutrition I have had a wonderful student, and Dr. Singh has had a grumpy task master, demanding more and better work, which, of course, is as it should be.

Today I have the pleasure of introducing a masterwork by Ratan Singh and his colleague Ms Hundia. He has learned well my own trick of having competent women to work with him and to help him avoid masculine sloppiness and tedious errors. The Jews have a wonderful expression, Mazel Tov, for "congratulation", but those who understand Hebrew know that the literal translation of the expression is "It's a good thing to see". Yes, Mazel Tov to Dr. Singh, this book is a good things to see.

Nutritional therapy rejoices in the name of "orthomolecular" medicine. Literally, orthomolecular means "the right molecule" which Linus Pauling meant to contrast to toximolecular, the habit of poisoning patients. Medicines are almost always poisons. Orthomolecular medicine uses the "right molecule" is contrast to heteromolecular, the strange molecule". Singh is preoccupied with assisting his fellow practitioners to use "the right molecules". He is not interested is using small doses of toxins to poison the body into health; he is interested in "right behavior" and "right nutrition".

I believe that I was the first (and perhaps still, the only) person to apply orthomolecular nutrition to all the students of a school, and also to all the patients of a hospital (beginning in 1964). So it was with great pleasure I began to answer the flood of questions arising from this doctor in far away India. The connection sort of completed my links around the world, for I was writing to folk in the Georgian Republic, and in Thailand and Australia, but I had this enormous gap between Georgia and Thailand. Now the gap is snugly filled by a most satisfactory student, Jaipur's Ratan Singh.

Ratan Singh has Lucidly explained the learnt nature of the neuroses which all of us suffer to some degree and that psychosis, the craziness of patients who fill mental hospitals, is not just a very bad neurosis, but is a disease. Mental disease is almost always a vitamin dependency disease.

Any parent who has wrestled with schizophrenia in any of its forms will appreciate the thoughtfulness of this book, and may be filled with hope that the method of the "right molecule" may bring to the restoration of life to acute schizophrenics.

Dr. Singh also correctly outlines the allergies which range from the mildness of low grade Allergic Tension-Fatigue Syndrome through fulminating psychoses. The knowledge of how to relieve the symptoms of celiac disease alone is worth the effort of reading the book. In my own career more than half the celiac patients brought to me were diagnosed as schizophrenics. Most of the psychotic patients I have seen were either frankly a scorbutic, that is, suffering from scurvy, or suffering toxic states.

Surely the subcontinent is home to more vegetarians than any other place in the world, and Singh has thrown light on the special problems strict vegetarians face, and the simple solutions to these problems; solutions which are faithful to the spiritual principles of those who refuse to eat meat. One might have all this sterling information and still have it jumbled and complexified in an unreadable drone. My old student has clarified, organized and written cleverly, succinctly, lucidly and with power. You may enjoy learning how to be healthy by putting the ortho-food into your own mouth and body.

"A Plus", Dr. Singh, excellent assistance Mrs. Hundia, and a good read to you dear reader.

**Contents and Sample Pages**