The Psycho-Nutritional Approach to "mental illness".

[jurplesman]

I am somewhat surprised that there is no section dealing with psycho-nutritional therapy. Nutritional therapy covers a wide field in alternative medicine, dealing with a host of diseases, prevalent in modern Western societies, especially those dealing with treatment resistant illnesses like arthritis, and various cardiovascular diseases. They generally fall under the heading of degenerative diseases. Psycho-nutritional therapy is a sub-branch of nutritional medicine.

It is evidence-based alternative medicine centring around the fact that most if not all our neurotransmitters- such as serotonin and dopamine, which play crucial roles in our mental well-being - are derived from food sources. For instance, it is well recognized that serotonin - our feel good neurotransmitter - is manufactured in our body from a nutritional forerunner - Tryptophan - an amino acid found in high protein foods. This biochemical conversion is a complex matter requiring a host of other nutrients to complete its task. If one of the nutrients is missing, or its requirement is high in individuals because of genetics, the body may fail to manufacture the neurotransmitter. Hence nutritional therapy needs to be individualized.

This means that we can put forward a hypothesis that "mental" illness is really not what the expressed words suggest it to be.

"Mental" is an adjective of the"mind" and neurolinguistically implies that "mental illness" means a disease of the mind. This implies that the "mind" has become the focus of conventional treatment modalities, ignoring the fact that the "mind" may be simply the victim of an underlying biochemical imbalance. A whole industry has been created in the last century and continuing in this century , starting with Sigmund Freud and his followers, that sees "mental illness" as a "psychological" problem. The major assumption is that thoughts and environmental experiences can create emotional experiences and that by changing the thoughts we can control our emotions.

This is epitomized in one of the more popular psychotherapeutic models of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), where the assumption is made that beliefs and learned attitudes can create undesirable and uncontrollable emotions. The technique is to subject the undesirable emotion to logical scrutiny, thereby enabling the patient to reconstruct his illogical feelings resulting from more "logical" thinking. Thus the accepted assumption is that emotional disorders can be changed by willing them away with the help of a logical mind.

This notion is in direct conflict with an other branch of conventional therapy, namely that emotions can be altered by the administration of pharmaceutical drugs.

Thus strangely enough, we see "psychotherapy" (talk-therapy) working hand in hand with drug therapy, to the benefit of both industries.

If "mental illness" is a matter of chemical imbalances, treatable by drugs, then why use "talk therapy"? If "mental illness is a "psychological problem", then why use drug therapy?

The reality is that both branches of mental health therapy have a dismal failure rate as is testified by psychiatrists themselves, see:

Beyond Efficacy: The STAR*D Trial, Am J Psychiatry 163:5-7, January 2006 by Insel, TR (2006),

and many other studies.

An alternative is to see "mental illness" as meaning "the mind being a victim of an underlying biochemical disorder", where drug therapy merely masks the symptoms without addressing the biochemical causes of, let us say: "serotonin deficiency".

Evidence shows that drugs seldom "cure" the causes of mood disorders: they are simply palliatives allowing in most cases the underlying biochemical abnormality to fester on and worsen as time goes on.

I hope this discussion board will help inform the public, the sufferers of mental illness, and health practitioners to adopt a more scientific approach in the treatment of mood disorders.

References:
Depression is a Nutritional Disorder

Conquering Anxiety, Depression and Fatigue Without Drugs - The Role of Hypoglycemia byProfessor J H Levitt

Treatments for Depression

[anonymous]

Hi jurplesman,

Do you think doing strenuous exercise to produce endorphins could help people coping with hypoglycemia?


What about meditation or relaxation exercises to induce the relaxation response to counter stress hormones?


Can you suggest foods that might be high in B vitamins etc. for people who want to try the hypoglycemic diet but do not have access to suppliments?


Thanks,

[jurplesman]

Originally Posted by anonymous

Do you think doing strenuous exercise to produce endorphins could help people coping with hypoglycemia?

Strenuous exercise will indeed help reduce the withdrawal symptoms in cases of addiction and from sugar. But the real treatment for hypoglycemia is the adoption of the Hypoglycemic Diet.

What about meditation or relaxation exercises to induce the relaxation response to counter stress hormones?

These are good management techniques, but if anxiety is caused by hypoglycemia (insulin resistance) there is only one way of dealing with this and this is treating hypoglycemia with the adoption of the hypoglycemic diet.

We should not confuse "management techniques" with treatment. Management techniques aim at reducing symptoms, without necessarily "curing" the cause. For instance taking anti-depressant medication is a good "management technique" for reducing symptoms, but drugs do nothing to address the underlying biochemical causes of depression. Please search or web site for "management technique". For instance in anxiety attacks we can reduce the symptoms temporarily by "breathing exercises", but these do not "cure" anxiety attacks.

The same applies when using specific supplements and remedies, which may not target the real causes of the symptoms.

See:

Hit or Miss Supplements for Depression

Assumptions in Psychotherapy

For natural sources of vitamin B and other nutrients please go to:

Rich Sources of Nutrients