Schizophrenia

After thinking about how I start this blog, what disease I should write about, I decided to started from the very disease that started my interest in the subject of medicine, schizophrenia. A devastating disease that effects too many people to be ignored. It ruins not only lives of those who have it, but those close the the people effected by it.

For many years I wanted to become a psychiatrist so I could better understand it and perhaps be able to help those facing this dreadful disease. One day I realized that traditional medicine doesn't have an answer, so I quit it. This is how I started studying alternative medicine and this was perhaps my main goal in studying it, I wanted to find a cure for schizophrenia.

Now, in order to understand what schizophrenia is, let's look at what research has shown. Research has shown that it's not this and not that, but is some of this and a little of that. Basically scientists don't know what it is other then it physically effects the brain. From my experience in the medical field I can conclude only one thing from it all, schizophrenia is not a disease itself, it's a symptom of many disorders. It's basically like headache, just much more harmful. There are many reasons why people get headaches, same way as there are many reasons as to why people get schizophrenia. In many cases it's caused by a combination of factors. Today I will tell you about one of them, one very simple reason that causes problems not only in the brain, but in the whole body, vitamin deficiency.

It has long been known that lack of certain B vitamins can cause similar symptoms as are present in people with schizophrenia. These include: difficulty in concentration, hallucination, agitation, manic and paranoid behavior, poor memory, depression, lassitude, panic, confusion, and insomnia. In fact these symptoms so closely resemble schizophrenia that in 1966 Dr. Abram Hoffer suggested that deficiency of these vitamins is in fact the very cause of the disease. It was found that patients suffering from schizophrenia were excreting a high toxic pyrrole known as kryptopyrrole (KP) which reacts with vitamin B6 forming a complex that binds with zinc. This causes deficiency in both, vitamin B6 and in zinc. Supplementing B6 and zinc in these patients showed good results.

Hoffer was not the only one who noticed importance of nutrition in patients with schizophrenia. Dr. Carl Pfeiffer was another one. He recognized two subgroups depending on blood histamine level.

Low histamine group included symptoms like thought disorder, grandiosity, paranoia, over-arousal, hallucinations, hypomania, and mania. This group is associated with low zinc, and folate levels and high serum copper. Treatment for this group included supplementing folic acid, vitamin B12, niacin(B3), vitamin C, with zinc and manganese taken to reduce copper levels.

High histamine group is less frequent and is characterized by little fat, long fingers and toes, severe depression, compulsion and phobias. It was found that folic acid aggravated these symptoms causing more severe depression.

Treatment of schizophrenia using vitamins has started even before these studies were done. In 1939 nineteen schizophrenic patients were successfully treated with vitamin B3 (niacin). In 1949 a study showed 29 patients cured with niacin. A double blind study of niacin in 1962 sowed a 75% success rate in people with scizophrenia with no rehospitalization compared to 31% of the control group not receiving niacin therapy. And these are just few studies, there were more. There are other nutrients too that showed to be helpful.

I must say, when I first read the overwhelming amount of studies showing successful treatment of schizophrenia with something as simple as vitamins I was angry, angry because it's not commonly used in the medical field. Angry because this information is not a common knowledge as it should be. Angry because I didn't know about it before. I am happy to share it with you in hopes that it might help some of you. This information should be out there, it should be known. I found it by accident looking through yet another book on alternative medicine (which I have tons of). I couldn't find it in any other book and was very happy I finally found such important information. If you wish to read the book, it's BETTER HEALTH THROUGH NATURAL HEALING How to Get Well Without Drugs or Surgery by Dr Ross Trattler N.D., D.O. With assistance of Dr Adrian Jones N.D.