Review of Dr. Abram Hoffer's Vitamin B-3 and Schizophrenia

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Review of Dr. Abram Hoffer's Vitamin B-3 and Schizophrenia

 

http://www.doctoryourself.com/review_hoffer_B3.html

 

Vitamin B-3 and Schizophrenia: Discovery, Recovery, Controversy

by Abram Hoffer, MD

Quarry Press, Kingston, Ontario Canada (1998) ISBN 1-55082-079-6

Softcover, 150 pages plus bibliography and two appendices.

 

Review by Andrew Saul, PhD

The United States Patent Office delayed issuing a patent on the Wright brothers’

airplane for five years because it broke accepted scientific principles. This is

actually true. And so is this: Vitamin B-3, niacin, is scientifically proven to

be effective against psychosis, and yet the medical profession has delayed

endorsing it. Not for five years, but for fifty.

In 1952, Abram Hoffer, PhD, MD, had just completed his psychiatry residency.

What’s more, he had proven, with the very first double-blind, placebo-controlled

studies in the history of psychiatry, that vitamin B-3 could cure schizophrenia.

You would think that psychiatrists everywhere would have beaten down a path to

Saskatchewan to replicate the findings of this young Director of Psychiatric

Research and his colleague, Humphrey Osmond, MD.

You’d think so.

In modern psychiatry, niacin and schizophrenia are both terms that have been

closeted away out of sight. And patients, tranquilized into submission or

Prozac-ed into La-La Land, are often idly at home or wandering the streets,

where either way it is highly doubtful that they will get much in the way of a

daily vitamin intake. Those in institutions fare little better nutritionally.

For everyone “knows” that vitamins do not cure “real” diseases.

But Dr Hoffer dissents. For half a century Dr Hoffer has dissented. His

central point has been this: Illness, including mental illness, is not caused by

drug deficiency. But much illness, especially mental illness, may be seen to be

caused by a vitamin deficiency. This makes sense, and has stood up to clinical

trial again and again. If you do not believe this, Vitamin B-3 and

Schizophrenia will provide you with the references to prove it. And remember

that it was Dr. Hoffer who started off those clinical studies in the first

place. In 1952.

I personally should have first became aware of a food-brain connection during

those all-night, cookie-fired mah-jongg marathons I all-too-regularly indulged

in while attending Australian National University. Though arguably somewhat

less than psychotic, my mind was nevertheless pretty whacked out on sugar, junk

food and adrenalin by 3 am. My mood was destroyed; my mind agitated; unable to

sleep, sit still, or smile. Of course, I never entertained even the thought of a

nutrition connection. For we’ve all been carefully taught that drugs cure

illness, not diet.

And certainly not vitamin supplements!

But the truth will out eventually. Three years later, I first saw niacin work

on somebody else. He was a bona-fide, properly-diagnosed, utterly-incurable,

State-hospitalized schizophrenic patient. I did not see niacin work in the

hospital, of course; the only vitamins given there are what you can filter out

of your Jell-O and your Tang. No, the patient was a fellow whose parents were

desperate enough try anything, even nutrition. Perhaps this was because their

son was so unmanageably violent that he was kicked out of the asylum and sent to

live with them. On a good day, his Mom and Dad somehow got him to take 3,000

milligrams of niacin and 10,000 mg of vitamin C. Formally a hyperactive

insomniac, he responded by sleeping for 18 hours the first night and becoming

surprisingly normal within days. I’d seen him before, and I saw him after. I’d

talked to his parents during the whole process. It was an astounding

improvement.

 

Sometime afterward, I tried niacin to see if it would help my own touch of

sleeplessness. I found it worked nicely, and it only took a little to do so,

perhaps 100 milligrams at most. Any more and I would experience a warm “flush.”

But then I found that when I ate junk food or sugar in quantity, I could hold

500 mg or more without flushing a bit. And when I took all that niacin, instead

of flipping out, I was calm. In Vitamin B-3 and Schizophrenia, Dr. Hoffer

explains why this is so:

1) As a rule, the more ill you are, the more niacin you can hold without

flushing. In other words, if you need it, you physiologically soak up a lot of

niacin. Where does it all go? Well, a good bit of it goes into making

nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. NAD is just about the most important

coenzyme in your body. It is made from niacin, as its name implies.

2) Niacin is also works in your body as an antihistamine. Many persons showing

psychotic behavior suffer from cerebral allergies. They need more niacin in

order to cope with eating inappropriate foods. They also need to stop eating

those inappropriate foods, chief among which are the ones they may crave the

most: junk food and sugar.

3) There is a chemical found in quantity in the bodies of schizophrenic persons.

It is an indole called adrenochrome. Adrenochrome (which is oxidized adrenalin)

has an almost LSD-like effect on the body. That might well explain their

behavior. Niacin serves to reduce the body’s production of this toxic material.

That Dr. Hoffer can compress a lifetime of research experience into one readable

and surprisingly short book is a tribute to how clearly he teaches both layman

and physician the essentials of niacin treatment. I have taught nutritional

biochemistry to high school, undergraduate, and chiropractic students. To most,

it is not an especially gripping subject. But when even a basic working

knowledge of niacin chemistry can profoundly change psychotic patients for the

better, it becomes very interesting very quickly.

Dr. Hoffer has treated thousands and thousands of such patients for nearly half

a century. At 83, he still is in actively practicing orthomolecular

(megavitamin) psychiatry. He has seen medical fads come and go. What he sees

now is what he’s always seen: that very sick people get well on vitamin B-3.

Review copyright c 2000 by Andrew Saul, Number 8 Van Buren Street, Holley, New

York 14470 USA Telephone (716) 638-5357

 

 

 

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