Aspects of Mental Illness ARE Often Nutrition-Based!
They can also be cured by those same nutrients.
Let's look at just what vitamins can do:
- A lack of vitamins D or B can induce depression.
- Exhaustion or lethargy can also derive from deficient iron and other vitamins.
- High-strung or stressed-out behavior can result from a lack of calcium, a mineral which has a calming effect.
True story:
A friend of mine showed me a bottle of calcium she’d obtained the week before.
“Do you think they added sedatives to the tablets?” she asked me.
“No,” I said. “Definitely not. This is just calcium, no sedatives.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because I’ve been feeling so calm.”
She said it as if it was an unpleasant thing.
In fact, she stopped taking the calcium after that.
But what I found interesting was that she had no idea calcium produces a natural calming effect.
So there was no placebo effect going on, nor subconscious suggestion.
She perceived the calming effect of calcium because it's very real.
Yet do doctors ever check calcium levels when dealing with a patient complaining of anxiety?
Other common psychiatric problems can be treated effectively with proper nutrition:
- Many ADHD children show marked improvement when gluten and artificial food colors are removed from their diet.
(I have personally seen this in both adults and children, and heard these observations described by others.)
- Food allergies can also affect one’s emotional state.
Yet even though they are doctors, how often do psychiatrists ever order blood tests to check their patient’s vitamin levels?
They don't.
This is even more shocking when you consider that everybody knows that a deficiency of B12 or vitamin D causes tiredness and depression and that iron deficiency causes tiredness and lethargy. So why don’t they at least check for deficiencies before prescribing antidepressants?
It's very bizarre.
Just to illustrate using an opposite example:
I know that if I go to the doctor and tell her that I’m feeling very tired (especially if I am pregnant), she immediately orders tests to see if I have a vitamin deficiency.
Can you imagine if tired women were automatically prescribed, say, Adderall or caffeine pills, without even a test of their hemoglobin levels (or a pregnancy test, for those who could be pregnant but don't know it yet)?
Wouldn't everyone consider that horribly irresponsible medicine, especially if it was later discovered that the woman was in the early stages of pregnancy or suffering from low iron?
Even worse, antidepressants & many other medications actually deplete the body of vitamin B and other nutrients, making the sufferer's emotional state even worse, which leads the doctor to simply increase the dose and continues a harmful cycle.
So should doctors just prescribe caffeine pills to people suffering from anemia, even if those pills would deplete the patient's iron levels even more?
Whether you think all mental illness needs medication or whether you are totally against conventional medical treatment for mental illness, I think any rational person can still see the need to test for basic vitamin deficiency before prescribing brain-altering medication.
(Personally, I find this lack of responsibility on the part of many psychiatrists absolutely appalling.)
Interestingly, there is the MTHFR gene mutation, which affects 40% of the population and is the culprit behind a whole lot of issues: autism, ADHD, depression, brain fog, irritability, lethargy, miscarriage, diseases, and much more.
And this mutation even shows up on an official medical test!
Again, mental illness does NOT show up on laboratory tests. There is no chemical marker for any mental illness. Yet the MTHFR gene mutation is scientifically diagnosable.
So why isn't that one of the first things a psychiatrist tests for?
MTHFR is also treatable through diet, supplementation, and lifestyle. And for the reasons explained above, conventional medications often make MTHFR worse.
(You can obtain a very helpful and clear pamphlet from Miriam Adahan by emailing her at [email protected])
Some people, who see that they fit the list of symptoms, simply bypass the testing and just follow the treatment plan because it is extremely healthy and they genuinely feel and behave better doing so.
(But it's better to be tested, if possible.)
Playing "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" with Mental Illness
This is why, for example, you meet people who have been diagnosed with a bunch of different illnesses.
They’ll tell you, “The doctors weren’t sure whether it was bipolar disorder or OCD.”
Or, “One doctor told me it was schizophrenia, then another said that it was schizotypal personality disorder, but another said it was probably Asperger's.”
Sorry to repeat this point, but I really want to drive it home:
When prescribing mind-altering drugs with potentially serious side effects (including death), most psychiatrists rely solely on a questionnaire regarding the patient's emotional symptoms as subjectively observed by the patient or the patient’s parents or teachers.
Yet for diagnosable causes, like the MTHFR gene mutation or vitamin deficiency (which could easily be behind the mentally ill behavior and possess non-medical solutions), psychiatrists DON’T test for them!
Who's acting crazy and irrational now?
Back to Part 2 | Continue on to Part 4 |