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