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

 

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