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BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS AND MENTAL DISEASES
DR. ROBERT ATKINS
Alcoholism is so tied in with carbohydrate metabolism that it is fair to say they are genetically superimposable. I have seen families in which half of the members were alcoholics and the other half were sugarholics. And you could switch them over. You could probably make alcoholics of the people that were addicted to sugar, and it is well known that if alcoholics just go through a psychologically based program, and not a biochemically based program, they will become sugar addicts. The number of ex-alcoholics that don't become sugar addicts is equivalent to the number of people who are clued in that you had better stay away from both: very small. Unless people get the clue that there is a connection between alcoholism and sugar addiction, they will just go from one to another and not feel any better. The phrase "dry drunks" refers to what happens to alcoholics that start switching to sugar instead of getting on a diet in which all the simple sugars are eliminated.
Of course, nutritional support is also important. Minerals, such as chromium, zinc, and manganese, are all very important in regulating this sort of problem.
DR. ABRAM HOFFER
The general regimen that orthomolecular medicine uses for depression, alcohol addiction, schizophrenia, and some of the other mental disorders, is to pay careful attention to nutrition and the use of the right supplements.
The first order of business is to make sure that the diet is optimal. We do that by trying to take away most of the additives in food. It is impossible to get them all out, but we try to do the best we can. One of the best simple rules is to put the patient on a sugar-free diet, because almost all foods that contain sugar contain a large variety of other chemicals. So by avoiding sugar, you will cut out most of the additives, by about 80 or 90 percent. Since we are all individuals, and many of us have food allergies and can't tolerate large quantities of carbohydrates or protein, each one of us has to develop a diet that is optimal for ourselves.
Second, we add in the supplements that are right for a particular individual. Many of us have been so deprived of these proper supplements over our lifetime that, even with a very good diet, we cannot regain our health. That's why we need supplements. This is where the treatment differs markedly, depending upon whether someone is being treated for depression, alcoholism, or schizophrenia. So the dietary regimen is the same for all: Avoid sugar and those foods that make you sick; the supplements are determined on a case-by-case basis.
For alcoholism the basic treatment starts with Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill W., the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, first showed that when you added niacin to the treatment of alcoholism, you got a major response that you did not see before. Today, there are a large number of very good alcoholism treatment programs in the United States, where they depend primarily on a combination of the type of nutrition that I have just referred to, the use of the right supplements, and the use of AA and other social aids to help these patients get well.
RECOVERED ALCOHOLIC
I am a recovered alcoholic. It's been about seven years since I've been off the alcohol. I used to eat a lot of sugars and cakes and things like that. One of the emotional-mental components of my behavior was that I always had a very difficult time getting started in the morning. The first thing I would think about when I got up was what I was going to eat, which usually included cereal and sugar, pastry, and caffeine. There has been a slow, progressive bettering of my diet, but there has still always been the sugar craving. Sometimes I would be able to get away from it for a week or two weeks, but it would always creep back in.
Recently, I completed a seven-day fast and a colonic cleansing and I found that after the cleansing process, the craving pretty much disappeared. Also, I wake up in the morning feeling rather alert, and I don't have this compulsion to fill my need for sugar. I think that because I am staying away from sugar, I generally am having better days psychologically.
DR. PHILLIP HODES
In treating Alzheimer's patients, the following are some of the approaches I've found helpful.
1. Eliminate any sources of aluminum exposure: cookware, utensils, foil, underarm deodorants, drinking water, and any juices and drinks packaged in aluminum-lined cartons. Cut out those vitamins as well as bottled water packaged in bottles with aluminum across the top.
2. Undergo a brain and body detoxification program, which should include a supervised fast. Now don't attempt to detoxify on your own. You must have holistic physicians or practitioners who are knowledgeable, competent, and experienced in these practices because if you attempt it on your own, you may come up with some upsetting surprises.
Raw juice therapy helps flush out the toxins and brings an enzyme to the raw nutrients. Colonic irrigation will help clean out the colon of years of accumulated material and help the body function properly. Drinking distilled water, at least in the beginning or for part of the treatment, is also beneficial, along with the use of herbal noncaffeinated teas.
3. Have all of your silver, mercury amalgam dental fillings removed from your teeth. Tom Warren, who wrote Beating Alzheimer's, emphasized the importance of this procedure.
4. Bio-oxidative therapies are very effective in bringing oxygen into the brain to make it able to think. These include oxygen chamber therapy, ozone therapy, and hydrogen peroxide, among others. Also, vitamin E, aerobic exercising, and deep breathing in a relatively pure environment can be helpful. The herb gingko biloba is very beneficial.
5. The antioxidants, which work on the brain, are beneficial: vitamin A, thiamine hydrochloride, riboflavin, niacinamide, pantothenic acid, pyrodoxine, B12, folic acid, parameicbenzoic acid, biotin, choline and inositol, vitamin E, vitamin C, vitamin P bioflavinoids (such as quercetin and pignogenol), the sulfur-containing amino acids L-cysteine and L-methionine, and the enzymes such as co-enzyme Q10.
6. EDTA chelation therapy, done intravenously, is very good for removing the heavy toxic metals, which include lead, cadmium, arsenic, nickel, copper, iron, mercury, and aluminum. Despherioximine works well, specifically as an aluminum-chelating agent.
7. Homeopathic remedies will also remove aluminum from the body and the brain. Then you have to take orthomolecular nutritional therapy, intravenously or with intramuscular shots, along with oral supplements of all the nutrients.
8. The clinical ecologists have made a major contribution to treating people with Alzhleimer's disease by recommending that you have a food-rotation diet--in which you eat a variety of foods and no one food more than once or twice a week--thus eliminating the food allergens to which you are generally addicted. You should also eliminate alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, sugar, and foods that are refined, processed, or filled with chemicals and artificial color dyes, and replace them with natural, organically grown wholesome and whole foods.
9. Biomagnetic and electromagnetic pulse therapies are also helpful. Biofeedback, acupuncture, electro-acupuncture, and ear or auricular therapy can also be tried.
10. There are other nutrient substances that help the brain: An Israeli lecithin substance, AL721, which was originally used to give energy and reduce cholesterol in elderly people, and also was used to combat HIV and AIDS, also helps the brain. You might try Dr. Ana Aslan's treatment called Gerovital (GH3) and live cell therapy, which is illegal in America, but there are places outside that use this therapy. Also take super-triple-phosphotidycholine.
There are supplement companies that manufacture brain formulas, which are composed of various amino acids, enzymes, vitamins, and minerals. Niacin is helpful because it opens up the blood vessels and brings nutrients, blood, and oxygen to the brain. Mineral baths, consisting of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, which get in through the pores of the skin, are also helpful.
11. Herbal remedies are also helpful: cell salts, Bach flower remedies, and homeopathic remedies.
12. Finally, since the brain of an Alzheimer's patient shrinks, we have to rehydrate it with pure water, daily; it takes about six months to compensate for the shrinkage.
I recommend several books: Dr. Michael Weiner's Reducing the Risks of Alzheimer's (Stein and Day, 1987); Dr. Abram Hoffer and Dr. Morton Walker's Nutrients to Age Without Senility (Connecticut: Keat's Publishing, 1980); Ross Pelton's Mind Food and Smart Pills, Nutrients and Drugs that Increase Intelligence and Prevent Brain Aging (San Diego: T&R Publishers, 1986); and Tom Warren's Beating Alzheimer's: The Case for Unlocking Brain Disease, Alzheimer's to Schizophrenia and Other Chronic Diseases (Washington: 1988).
DR. MICHAEL SCHACHTER
In the case of dementia, my approach is to see whether there are some nutrients that the person may need. Some people have improved quite a bit on a program in which they received injectable B vitamins and magnesium. Some of these elderly people have difficulty absorbing vitamins and minerals simply because of long-term chronic deficiencies, so an injectable program becomes very, very helpful.
One of the first things I do is give them a trial of some vitamins and minerals by injection and often that will be very helpful. In addition, I have been using EDTA chelation therapy because by using disodium EDTA with magnesium, we find that we're able to reverse some of the aging processes by removing calcium from soft tissues, where it doesn't belong, and trying to get it back into the bone, where it does belong. The chelation process, which is an intravenous treatment, will help with soft tissue decalcification, in addition to removing heavy metals.
There is some research relating aluminum toxicity Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Krapper McCloughlin has done some work in Canada, and we have been doing some work recently too, with patients who suffer from dementia, using another chelating agent called Dephoroximine or Desphoral, which is primarily useful in removing iron and aluminum--and not calcium--from the body. Usually, dementia is a one-way street; people tend to get worse and worse. using this chelation process, some patients have at least had their dementia process stopped. Some patients have even improved a little using a combination program of supplements, a good diet, and the removal of some of these heavy metals with chelating agents.
DR. PHILLIP HODES
Orthomolecular medicine and psychiatry--nutrition and psychology--are now over a quarter of a century old. In 1968, Dr. Linus Pauling published an article called "Orthomolecular Psychiatry" in Science Magazine. "Orthomolecular" means the right amount of the right nutrients. Thanks to Dr. Roger Williams's concept of biochemical individuality and Dr. Bernard Rimley's concept of toxi-molecular brains, we found that many people with so-called mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, autism, depression, and mood swings, can be helped, in a majority of cases, if they clean the toxins out of the brain and then provide the brain with the right amounts of the right nutrients.
Each person is biochemically individual, so that the government standards for the minimum daily requirements of various nutrients actually have no application to any particular human being. What seems to be a mega-amount for one person is the precise amount necessary to keep another person healthy and sane.
In the field of schizophrenia, in the 1950s there were three pioneers in orthomolecular psychiatry: Dr. Abram Hoffer, Dr. Humphrey Osmond, and Dr. John Smithies, who used large amounts of niacinamide, vitamin C, and some of the other B vitamins, to help their schizophrenic patients recover. In the 1970s, Dr. Alan Cott went to Russia and brought back the practice of fasting, and helped to detoxify many of the brains of schizophrenics who had not responded to any other kind of treatment. He helped them clear their brains so that they became rational and normal.
Today we live in a state of environmental pollution. There are over 100,000 chemicals in the environment that we ingest through what we eat, drink, and breathe. Contaminants are in the soil, water, air, and food supply. The particles that are toxic in time penetrate and leak through the blood brain barrier and get into the brain. This process also happens with several of the heavy toxic metals, such as lead, copper, and aluminum. These chemicals and heavy metals, by affecting brain chemistry, affect the mind and behavior, so they must be removed. They need to be chelated out.
In the Science Section of The New York Times, on April 27, 1993, an article says, "New suspect in bacterial resistance, amalgam. The mercury in dental fillings may spur resistance to antibiotics." Dr. Hal Huggins has shown that the silver mercury dental amalgams are very harmful; when you chew, the mercury is released, causing your brain to be poisoned. Many of the people that have developed so-called "mental illnesses" are suffering from things like mercury, lead, copper, iron, and aluminum poisonings. These heavy toxic metals affect one's thinking and behavior. People can develop bizarre behavior and distorted thinking, along with warped perceptions, as a result of these heavy toxic metals. Add to this toxic stew all the insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides that we ingest daily.
The orthomolecular approach to schizophrenics is to detoxify them, change their diets, and remove foods that are chemically treated, or that contain a lot of sugar and refined carbohydrates, or that have been laced with pesticides. Then these patients are placed on the optimal doses of nutrients for their individual bodies. The nutrients used include vitamin B complex--especially thiamine, niacin, vitamin B6, and B12.
Dr. Hank Nubold showed that many of his schizophrenic psychiatric patients were suffering from a vitamin B12 deficiency and that they needed large amounts to feel well and sane again. Then as the years went by, orthomolecular doctors discovered that the essential minerals--macro minerals such as calcium and magnesium, as well as the trace elements zinc, manganese, chromium, and selenium--also helped balance schizophrenics. Dr. Patricia Schleagal published her research in a book, Up From Depression, showing the important role of amino acids in the brain, and in the treatment of schizophrenics.
You also have to look at the water supply. Many water supplies contain chemicals, such as iron, silicone, aluminum, fluoride, and chlorine. We ingest all of these things and once they hit the blood stream, they are rushed to all of the 64 to 67 trillion cells in the body. These toxins block out the opportunity for the vital nutrients to be absorbed.
The human body is composed of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals, oxygen, enzymes, nucleic acids, water, and electro- and biomagnetic energy forms. If any of these are missing, and there are nutritional deficiencies, different conditions and diseases show up. Our diet is not really a healthy diet: the soil our food is grown in has been overworked; there have been artificial fertilizers put in; and the foods are refined, processed, and sprayed with all kinds of chemicals and inundated with all kinds of food coloring and dyes. When we eat these foods we become both malnourished and toxic. In answer to the group that says, "Oh, you don't need vitamins. Just eat a well-balanced diet": You can't get a well-balanced diet and you do need extra nutrients to help stave off the deleterious effects of all the chemical pollutants in the environment that we come in contact with. With orthomolecular therapy, many people feel a lot better when they get more nutrients than their diet gives them.
DR. ABRAM HOFFER
The orthomolecular treatment of schizophrenia was started in Saskatchewan in 1951 when we ran the first double-blind controlled experiments in North American medicine and also the first in worldwide psychiatry. On the basis of these experiments, where we compared the effect of vitamin B3 against a placebo, we found that the addition of the vitamin to the standard treatment of that day, which was only electroconvulsant therapy, doubled the two-year recovery rate from 35 percent to 70 percent. That was the beginning.
After that we ran another three double-blind controlled experiments. Since that time we have accumulated massive clinical experience; I myself have seen many thousands of schizophrenic patients.
The treatment for the schizophrenic patient is really relatively simple. It's a combination of the best of modern psychiatry, which includes the proper use of either tranquilizers or antidepressants or other drugs, with proper attention to diet and the use of nutrients.
The main nutrient is vitamin B3, which has to be given in large quantities. It's not enough to give the tiny amount present in food. One will have to give many thousands of times as much in the standard dose. For the patients I work with, I give 3000 mg per day of either nicotinic acid or nicotinamide, which are both forms of vitamin B3.
I also use vitamin C at the same dose level and sometimes a lot more because vitamin C is a very good water-soluble antioxidant. It is considered the foremost, the most active water-soluble antioxidant present in the human body. That's extremely important.
In many cases we use vitamin B6 as well for a particular group of schizophrenic patients. This is combined with an overall nutritional approach that may also include the use of a very important mineral, zinc. Zinc and B6 function together and are extremely important.
Finally we use manganese to protect our patients against developing tardive dyskinesia. This is a condition which afflicts chronic schizophrenic patients who are placed upon large quantities of tranquilizers. According to Dr. Richard Kunyon from San Francisco, when you take tranquilizers for a long period of time you take manganese out of the body, which is the reason patients develop tardive dyskinesia. When you give them back the manganese this condition goes away in most cases.
I put them on a diet that is junk-free. I exclude any of the prepared foods that contain additives, including sugar. I also pay attention to patients' allergies, because 50 or 60 percent of all schizophrenics have major food allergies. If these are not detected and eliminated, the patients are not going to get any better.
This is essentially the treatment for schizophrenia, although there is one more important variable--the patients. You have to take a lot of time dealing with schizophrenic patients. I will just briefly review what I have done recently. I have re-examined 27 of my chronic schizophrenic patients who have been working with me for at least ten years. They had been sick an average of seven years before they came to see me. They had all failed to respond to any of the standard treatments--drugs, tranquilizers, or shock treatments. They had not been given any vitamins.
I did a survey of what happened to them after being with me for ten years. Of the 27 really chronic patients, 17 today are normal. They really are well. They're paying taxes. As an example, one man from eastern Canada was very paranoid schizophrenic. He was in and out of the Ontario mental hospital system. He was so sick that his wife divorced him and his family disowned him. He moved out west to Victoria and was one of the street people for awhile.
He came under my care and remained on the vitamins, to my surprise. Three or four years ago he got his degree at the local university here and the last time I saw him he was looking for a job. I think this is quite an accomplishment for this very sick patient.
Another patient was a woman who, in a psychotic frenzy, burned down her house. She now runs her own business and supervises 12 people. These are examples of some of the recoveries we've had.
The other ten are not well yet. Some may never be well because they've been sick for too long, but they're certainly an awful lot better. They're now comfortable. They're able to live with any hallucinations or delusions they still have.
This is a very chronic group of patients, the kind that normally don't respond. The important thing--going back to the view that you have to be patient--is that it took five to seven years of continuous treatment before they reached this stage of improvement.
Acute patients, patients who have only been sick for a year, do a lot better of course. I fully suspect that if I see 100 schizophrenic patients who have been sick a year or two or less, after two years of this kind of treatment 95 percent of them will be well. In fact, I know personally 17 young men and women who became schizophrenic in their teens. They were placed upon vitamin treatment in various parts of Canada and the United States and made complete recoveries.
These 17 young men and women all went into medicine. Today they are practicing psychiatry. One went to Harvard Medical School and is now a doctor in Boston. One became a president of a major psychiatric association in North America. The other members did not know that he had a history of having been psychotic at one time. That's a pretty good record.
I would guess that about 10 percent of all schizophrenic patients are also alcoholic. It's not a big figure if you remember that 10 percent of all adults in North America are probably alcoholic. In other words, the same proportion is present in schizophrenics. If you start the other way, a proportion of alcoholics are, in fact, also schizophrenic. There is an overlap.
It has been acknowledged for many years that this particular group that have both problems is very tough to treat. The first person to really show that you can help them was Dr. David Hawkins, who was then practicing on Long Island. He found that when he placed his alcoholic schizophrenic patients on the proper vitamin treatment, including mostly niacin and vitamin C, he began to see a fantastic number of recoveries.
I have seen some of them, but not as many as he has. I can attest to the fact that patients do a lot better if they are treated for both conditions. This treatment includes niacin or niacinic acid and the other vitamins that I use for the treatment of these conditions.
I think that whether or not they are alcoholic they have to be treated the same way. If they're alcoholic it's vital that they stop drinking. The best way to achieve that is to try to get them to join Alcoholics Anonymous.
DR. GARY VICKER
I have patients who have been diagnosed as having schizophrenia, and while I don't argue with the diagnosis, it hasn't captured the whole essence of what is going on with that patient. I prefer to see it as an incomplete diagnosis, rather than as a misdiagnosis. Very often the goal, in the schizophrenic diagnosis, is just to subdue behavior. When people are in such states of distress that their behavior is inappropriate, or agitated, or out of control, the goal is primarily to treat that behavior. I think that there is more we can do. We have to try to understand why they are doing what they are doing--not necessarily psychologically, but in some way biochemically.
We don't know what the ultimate causes of schizophrenia are. Each new drug that comes along throws the current theory into such disarray that it doesn't apply anymore, because the new drug doesn't work that way. So I don't think that anybody knows the causes, but there is one thing that we are sure of: We can make a big difference in how a schizophrenic is doing by applying two basic principles, as Dr. Hoffer has indicated--good sound nutrition and vitamins.
These are not synonymous. Nutrition has to be the floor upon which the treatment is built. Then, after that, you have to start looking at other factors--whether it be smoking, co-existing alcohol-related problems, dietary disturbances, or absorption difficulties. Also, the patient may not be doing well because what they have been given is, in fact, creating more problems. So we have to be sensitive to such reactions and modify the treatment all the way along. I think that schizophrenia is not so much a missed diagnosis as it is an incomplete one.
KEN: A PATIENT OF DR. VICKER
My illness started around 1977, when I developed a persecution complex and delusions of grandeur. I was seeing about three different psychiatrists and they were unable to help me. One psychiatrist thought I was manic-depressive. I wasn't being treated for schizophrenia, which is what I have.
Dr. Vicker, with the orthomolecular approach, made me well again, and I really owe him a lot. Now I am on a regimen of vitamins and antipsychotic drugs. The vitamins, I am told, enhance the good effects of the drugs so that I don't have to take high doses of them in order to remain normal or stable. Before I got on this regimen I had not been taking any vitamins. Using the orthomolecular approach to help treat my schizophrenia, I basically feel normal and have my life back again.
DR. GARY VICKER
Around 15 years ago there was a massive report that showed those physicians in orthomolecular psychiatry who were using vitamins did not have any patients with tardive dyskenesia. We tried to analyze what the factor was that prevented the emergence of TD. At one point, most of us thought that the addition of B6 might be the factor, and subsequent research has shown that it is probably vitamin E with its antioxidant capacity.