Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia has taken on an abundance of sub-classes over the years. A person with any of these diagnoses, including bipolar types, most likely has been given antipsychotic tranquilizers. These drugs have strong debilitating side effects, and often leave a person feeling drugged.

In most cases, a detailed history about the person’s diet will reveal poor nutritional choices. Often, sugar consumption will play a large role in a vitamin deficiency that has been proven on grand scales to make a person psychotic. White flour (as in breads, pastas and donuts), white rice, and refined cereals have the same effects. All of these sugars and white flours are simple carbohydrates, which require vitamins to metabolize. And those vitamins your body needs have been stripped out in the refining process that makes the flour and sugar. So when you drink a soda, those sugars draw vitamins out of your body.

In the early part of the last century, 100,000 people were released from Southern mental institutions when it was found that the reason for their insanity was a diet lacking in Niacin1.

In the 1950’s, America’s first double blind study of schizophrenia was conducted by Abram Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond. They used niacin and showed improvements in 82% of the participants. More than half of the participants in this study were 5 years cures, and many more of the remaining half were 3 and 4 year cures that would have certainly become 5 year cures had the study continued.

One theory for the cause of schizophrenia is that it is the result of a local avitaminosis. This means that certain parts of the brain are deficient in vitamin content. It has also been demonstrated that Vitamin C, Zinc, Manganese, Niacin, folic acid, B6 and B12 help remedy this deficiency, even if it is the result of genetics. A diet high in protein can often also help provide stability due to protein’s ability to stabilize blood sugar.

With specific supplements and a diet high in protein, with no refined sugar or flour, it is most often found that antipsychotic medication becomes unnecessary. We use blood tests and other tests to determine the specific amounts of supplements needed for each individual client, and monitor their body chemistry and brain chemistry to reduce their medications at an optimal rate.

It is a real privilege to see clients make the transition from scared and medicated, to clear headed and confident that they will remain that way.

1 Dr. Lesser, Brain Chemistry Diet, p 10.