Food for Thought

[Guest guest]

http://www.theecologist.org/article.html?article=379%20

Food for Thought

 

How sharp is your mind? How balanced is your mood? How consistent are your

energy levels? How happy are you? And what, if anything, does all this have to

do with what you eat? Patrick Holford thinks he has the answers.

 

Last year at the Institute of Optimum Nutrition we surveyed 22,000 UK citizens.

Most were urban dwellers aged between 20 and 30. We found that:

o 76 per cent of people are often tired

o 58 per cent suffer from mood swings

o 52 per cent feel apathetic and unmotivated

o 50 per cent suffer from anxiety

o 47 per cent have difficulty sleeping

o 43 per cent have poor memories or

struggle to concentrate

o 42 per cent suffer from depression.

Welcome to the 21st century. Despite immense improvements in standards of living

modern man is not so much a naked ape, but a knackered ape.

 

WHAT’S GOING WRONG

The answer to these problems is clearly not a lack of pharmaceutical drugs,

although this is often touted as the solution. In the US anti-depressants are

now the top selling drug, and in Britain we consume a staggering 823 million of

them per year.

 

Two of the most frequently prescribed anti-depressants are the selective

serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) Prozac and Seroxat. A number of clinical

trials have found clear evidence that these two drugs cause agitation leading to

potential aggressive and suicidal behaviour in as many as a quarter of patients.

 

In the US there have been 90 legal actions concerning the two drugs, with one

recent successful plaintiff being awarded $6.4 million.

 

Dr David Healy, of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine in

Bangor, says: ‘I estimate that about one person a day has committed suicide as a

direct result of taking Prozac since it was introduced.’ For years now Dr Healy

has been petitioning the UK government’s Medicine Control Agency to take action

to warn users about Seroxat’s potential adverse reactions. To date, these

reactions translate in the UK to about 1,000 suicides and 10,000 suicide

attempts.1

 

SSRI anti-depressants are also hard to kick. There is now considerable evidence

that some 50 per cent of those who try to quit get alarming withdrawal effects.

One study testing withdrawal showed that as many as 85 per cent of the

volunteers – people with no previous hint of depression – suffered agitation,

abnormal dreams, insomnia and other adverse effects.2

 

Even worse are the 532 million tranquillisers and 463 million sleeping pills

popped each year. They are as addictive as heroin, and dependence on them can

occur within two weeks of use.3 Doctors are specifically instructed not to

prescribe more than a four-week supply of tranquillisers and sleeping pills. Yet

a 1980s Mori poll found that 35 per cent of people prescribed benzodiazepines

(minor tranquillisers) had been on them, not for four weeks, but for over four

months. The poll estimated that 1.5 million people in Britain are addicted to

tranquillisers.

 

KID-LIFE CRISIS

What about our children, who seem to be facing their own ‘kid-life’ crisis? In

the US there are now 10 million children on the hyperactivity drug Ritalin. We

are heading that way in the UK, with close to 300,000 prescriptions last year.

Structurally and pharmacologically close to cocaine, Ritalin has a similar

dependency profile and may be even more potent. Researchers have found that it

is chosen over cocaine in self-administered preference studies involving

non-human primates. Using brain imaging, Dr Nora Volkow of the Brookhaven

National Laboratory in Upton, New York, has shown that Ritalin occupies more of

the neural transporters responsible for the high experienced by addicts than

smoked or injected cocaine. The only reason Ritalin has not produced an army of

addicted schoolchildren, Volkow concludes, is because it takes about an hour for

its pill form to raise dopamine levels in the brain. Smoked or injected cocaine

does this in seconds.4 There are now growing reports of teenagers (and others)

abusing Ritalin by snorting or injecting it to get a faster rush.

 

But it doesn’t end there. Dr Joan Baizer, professor of physiology and biophysics

at the University of Buffalo in New York, has shown how Ritalin (which

physicians considered to have only short-term effects) may initiate changes in

brain structure and function that remain long after the drug’s therapeutic

effects have dissipated.5 This can, in turn, lead to a greater susceptibility to

drug dependence in later life.

 

THE off-licence as pharmacy

Tired? Then help yourself to some caffeine, sugar or

a cigarette. We drink 1.5 billion caffeinated drinks a week in Britain,

including tea, coffee and cola. We eat 6 million kilograms of sugar and 2

million kilograms of chocolate every week. In the same time we also smoke 1.5

billion cigarettes. Anxious or depressed? Then have a drink. We consume 120

million alcoholic drinks a week, and smoke 10 million cannabis joints.

 

Little do we realise the extent to which these substances deplete the brain.

Caffeine, for example, depresses melatonin (the brain’s sleep chemical) for up

to 12 hours. Anything more than a cup of coffee a day is likely to increase

stress and worsen performance. And alcohol leaches every known nutrient out of

the body. Anything more than a small glass of wine or half a pint of beer a day

is bad news – especially, given the increased risk of breast cancer, for women.

 

EVOLUTIONARY GROWING PAINS

These are exceptionally challenging times for homo sapiens. Our minds and bodies

have been shaped over millions of years of evolution. It takes time to adapt.

 

Not only have we invented some 10 million new chemicals (thousands of which are

added to our food, are found in common household products, are in the water we

drink and the air we breathe), but our psychological environment has changed

even faster. Concepts of who we are, who we’re with and what we do. Memories of

times and places. Thoughts

and feelings. All these make up the fabric of our psychological world. You can’t

see it or touch it, but it is no less real. You want to speak to a friend?

 

Pick up your cell phone. You want to send a letter? Write an email and get a

reply in 10 minutes. You want to go somewhere? Jump on a plane. We no longer

live in towns and cities; we live in the world. Every culture is exposed to

every other culture.

 

This ‘cross-culturalisation’ is placing untold strains on us. Putting the

squeeze on time and space isn’t making us happy.

 

An epidemic of mental illness

Some of us are rising to this challenge, but most of us are struggling to keep

up and are living with tiredness, anxiety, stress and sleeping problems. Too

many people are suffering from mental health problems that range from attention

deficit disorder to Alzheimer’s, and depression to schizophrenia.

 

In fact, the world over, there’s been a massive rise in the incidence of mental

health problems – especially among young people. Suicide, violence and

depression are all on the increase. According to the World Health Organisation,

mental health problems are fast becoming the number one health issue of the 21st

century, with one in 10 people suffering at any point in time and one in four

suffering at some point in their lives.6

 

Any intelligent person can recognise that, along with our environment, our diets

have also changed radically in the last 100 years. When you consider that the

body and brain are entirely made from molecules derived from food, air and

water, and that simple molecules like alcohol can fundamentally affect the

brain, isn’t it likely that changes in diet and the environment will have had

some effect on our mental health? The evidence is there if you look for it. You

can change how you think and feel by changing what you put into your mouth. With

mental health problems rising at such a pace, we need a new way of thinking

about the state of our minds.

 

As Marcel Proust said: ‘The real act of discovery consists, not in finding new

lands, but in seeing with new eyes.’ We need to wake up to the fact that changes

in nutrition and chemical imbalances probably underlie the majority of mental

health problems.

 

You can’t just psychoanalyse away deficiencies in essential fats, vitamins,

minerals and other key brain nutrients. We must wake up to the fact that the

body’s chemistry – and that means what we eat – affects your mind and that it

can transform how you think and feel.

 

OPTIMUM NUTRITION FOR THE MIND

Most people who complain of being always tired eat sugar and refined

carbohydrates and are addicted to stimulants like tea, coffee, caffeinated

drinks or cigarettes. This is a recipe for disaster. Such diets are also usually

low in energy-giving substances such as vitamins B and C and the mineral

chromium.

 

The statement ‘you get all the vitamins you need in a well balanced diet’ is the

greatest lie in nutrition today. Most of us fall a long way short of the basic

recommended daily allowance (RDA) levels of vitamins and minerals. Moreover, RDA

levels never took into account what you actually need to stay happy and alert in

the stress of the 21st century.

 

Many depressed people, for example, are deficient in the amino acid tryptophan,

from which the body makes the mood-controlling brain chemical serotonin. Women

are especially prone to this. Researchers at Oxford University’s Department of

Psychiatry have found that when they take recovered depressed patients and

deprive them of tryptophan, their depression returns.7 Women with a history of

depression were divided into two groups and given a diet excluding or including

tryptophan under double-blind conditions (that is, neither the subjects nor the

researchers knew who received which diet).

 

At the end of the experiment, 10 out of 15 women on the tryptophan-free diet

were significantly depressed; none of the women on the tryptophan diet had any

problem at all. When the women in the deprived group were given diets containing

tryptophan, their depression lifted.

 

Giving patients 200 milligram supplements of 5-HTP (5-hydroxytrypto-phan is the

amino acid from which the brain can directly make sufficient serotonin) is even

more effective. It has been shown, in five controlled trials, to out-perform

SSRI anti-depressant drugs – and that with a fraction of the side-effects.16

 

The 5-HTP supplement is often very helpful for those who have difficulty getting

to sleep or who wake up too early. Many such people are also deficient in

magnesium, which calms the mind and relaxes the body. Eating more greens

(especially dark green leafy vegetables) and all fruit, nuts and seeds provides

magnesium. I also recommend supplementing 300 milligrams of magnesium in the

evening if you have difficulty unwinding.

 

Un-methylated spirits

Of tremendous importance, especially in those with severe depression and

schizophrenia, are the ‘methyl movers’. The brain turns one chemical (such as

adrenalin) into another (such as noradrenalin) by adding on and taking away

chemical compounds called ‘methyl groups’. This process is known as methylation.

 

There is now overwhelming evidence that many people with severe mental health

problems have methylation problems. The solution is a cocktail of vitamins that

controls all the methylating enzymes.

 

This cocktail includes vitamins B3, B6, B12 and folic acid, plus the minerals

zinc and magnesium. On their own these nutrients are effective in combating

major depression and schizohrenia.9 In combination they can, as I have seen for

myself, make so-called schizophrenics become lucid within days.

 

Possibly most important of all to mental health, however, are the essential fats

– especially the omega-3 fats. Supplementing fish oils, the richest source of

the omega-3 fats EPA and DHA, has been proven to help dyslexia, hyperactivity,

depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and bipolar disorder. In fact, a recent

study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry confirmed that patients

already on anti-depressant medication who still have pronounced symptoms of

depression experience major improvements in as little as three weeks when given

daily supplements of omega-3 fats.1o The fish oils were more effective than the

drugs.

 

So why does the medical establishment ignore all this? First, despite all the

advances in nutritional science, an average doctor training to be a GP gets a

total of just six hours of nutrition tuition. This is barely enough to explore

the basics, let alone learn how to identify and correct nutritional imbalances

that affect mental health.

 

Of course, behind this atrocious lack of education there is a lack of profit.

Nutrients, because they cannot be patented, are not profitable. Hence, no drug

companies are interested in researching or promoting the benefits of nutrition.

 

Most of the large-scale studies into nutrition that are carried out compare

nutrients with drugs, are funded by drug companies, are flawed in design and end

up erroneously showing that drugs work better.

 

In reality, the combination of optimum nutrition (which means diet and dietary

supplements together) and psychotherapy works wonders for a wide variety of

mental health problems – from depression to schizophrenia. It works much better

than drugs. Furthermore, most of the psychiatrists I work with find that while

drugs can be life-saving in the short-term they become unnecessary with the

right combination of nutrients and psychological support.

 

 

Achieving Our Potential: The Evidence

 

Most of us are not achieving our full potential for mental health, happiness,

alertness and clarity because we are not achieving optimum nutrition for the

mind.

 

Consider the following experiments.

o The Institute for Optimum Nutrition’s Gwillym Roberts measured the IQ scores

of 90 schoolchildren and then gave 30 of them a high-dose multi-vitamin, 30 a

dummy pill and 30 nothing. After eight months the children’s IQ scores were

re-evaluated. Uniquely, those on the vitamins had a staggering increase in

non-verbal IQ of more than 10 points.11 Since the study’s publication over a

decade ago, 15 other studies have confirmed supplements boost children’s IQ.

o Thomas Crook from the Memory Assessment Clinic in Maryland in the US gave 149

people with age-related memory impairment a daily dose of 300 milligrams of a

nutrient called phosphatidyl serine. The latter is found in eggs and is an

essential building block of the brain’s neurons. When they were tested after 12

weeks, the patients’ memories had improved to a level appropriate for people 12

years their junior.12

 

o Californian researcher Bernard Rimland compared the results of 1,591

hyperactive children treated with drugs to those of 191 hyperactive children

given nutritional supplements. The nutritional approach was 18 times more

effective. Yet, drug prescriptions for children are almost doubling every year.

o Carl Birmingham from the Eating Disorders Clinic in Vancouver, Canada, gave

people with anorexia either a zinc supplement or a placebo. Those taking zinc

increased their body weight twice as rapidly as those given the dummy pills.13

o Also in Canada, Abram Hoffer has treated 5,000 people diagnosed with

schizophrenia with high-dose multi-nutrients – especially large doses of

vitamins B3 and C. His published 40-year follow-up reports reveal a 90 per cent

cure rate – defined as free of symptoms, able to socialise with family and

friends and paying income tax.14,15 Despite this lifetime of research and

results, Hoffer’s approach to schizophrenia has been largely sidelined.

o Dr W Poldinger and colleagues at Basel University in Switzerland gave

depressed patients either a state-of-the-art SSRI anti-depressant or the 5-HTP

nutrient. The nutrient outperformed the drug on every measure, and resulted in

greater improvements in the patients’ depression, anxiety and insomnia with no

side effects.16 This is in sharp contrast to the estimated one suicide every day

caused directly by adverse reactions to SSRI anti-depressants.

o Bernard Gesch, director of the charity Natural Justice, gave one group of

prison inmates supplements of vitamins, minerals and essential fats, and another

a placebo. A dramatic 35 per cent decrease in aggressive acts occurred,

uniquely, among those taking the supplements.17

 

 

Gettingwell- / Vitamins, Herbs, Aminos, etc.

 

To , e-mail to: Gettingwell-

Or, go to our group site: Gettingwell

 

 

 

The New Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.