The Fisher King and Adrenochrome

What really causes Schizophrenia?
A good work-up to determine any underlying physical illnesses is key.
http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/diamond.htm
The 29 causes of Schizophrenia are listed here

http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/causesofschizophrenia.htm

One cause is too much of an adrenal secretion - Adrenochrome. The best thing may be no caffeine for the fictional Perry of the film THE FISHER KING. Add Zinc to his diet, as well as Vitamin C and Niacin (B3), and his pesky Red Knight may be gone forever.

What Really Causes Schizophrenia

by Harold D. Foster

Trafford Publishing, Suite 6E, 2333 Government St., Victoria, BC V8T 4P4, Canada; 250-383-6864; www.trafford.com

Softbound; [c]2003; 257 pp.; $30; available as a free download at http://web.archive.org/web/20070105213900/www.hdfoster.com/Foster_Schizophrenia.pdf

What Really Causes Schizophrenia, written by Canadian geomorphologist and professor of medical geography Harold D. Foster, explains the adrenochrome hypothesis. This hypothesis was first published by Drs. Abram Hoffer, H. Osmond, and J. Smythies in 1954. It asserts that excess adrenochrome, not excess dopamine, produces the symptoms of schizophrenia. Conventional drug treatments for schizophrenia aim to lower dopamine levels. These drugs reduce symptoms by "15 to 20 percent," according to Dr. Foster; and they also have serious adverse effects over the long term, including parkinsonian involuntary movement. Adrenochrome, a neurotoxic metabolite of the catecholamine adrenaline, apparently disrupts major biochemical systems in people with a genetic predisposition to developing schizophrenia. Anxiety, rapid mood swings, thought disorders, fatigue, and sensory illusions and hallucinations characterize this increasingly common mental disorder.

Unlike the dopamine hypothesis, the adrenochrome hypothesis accounts for many biochemical patterns common among schizophrenic patients. For example, chronic schizophrenics tend to have damaged thyroid glands. Adrenochrome and the hormone triiodothyronine are antagonists. Adrenochrome is known to damage the thyroid. Also, adrenochrome, a highly reactive compound, generates free radicals that need to be neutralized by antioxidants. Cornerstones of the body's antioxidant defenses--glutathione peroxidase, superoxide dismutase, and catalase--are deficient in schizophrenic patients. Doctors have long recognized that diverse factors can trigger schizophrenia in susceptible persons. Each of these factors--which include various kinds of stress, excess sugar consumption, and exposure to allergic reactions--"either stimulates the body's production of adrenaline or promotes its metabolism to adrenochrome and its derivatives."

Orthomolecular psychiatrist Abram Hoffer identified adrenochrome as a possible factor in schizophrenia when he developed paranoia after ingesting the substance. He and coworkers hypothesized that giving people with schizophrenia high doses of the methyl acceptor niacin would slow noradrenalin's conversion to adrenaline, thereby producing less adrenochrome. Niacin, a nutrient deficient in people with schizophrenia, competes with the methyl acceptor noradrenalin and has become one of the mainstays of orthomolecular psychiatric treatment. (Orthomolecular medicine employs high doses of supplemental nutrients.)

In addition to examining what is known about the biochemistry of people with schizophrenia, What Really Causes Schizophrenia discusses five unconventional but effective therapies for schizophrenia: controlled fasting, histamine therapy, thyroid hormone therapy, biochemist Dr. Carl C. Pfeiffer's protocols, and Hoffer's protocol. Fasting and restrictive diets (monitored by a doctor) have normalized urine catecholamines, histamine, and serotonin levels in schizophrenic patients. Restrictive diets also help identify food sensitivities that stress the body, causing increased production of adrenaline. Milk and grains are the most common contributors to schizophrenic conditions. Histamine abnormalities, elevated homocysteine, and high levels of kryptopyrrole in the urine are other biochemical patterns commonly found in schizophrenic people. Pfeiffer developed five orthomolecular protocols to address the various subtypes.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070105213900/www.hdfoster.com/Foster_Schizophrenia.pdf

Schizophrenia, neuroleptic medication and mortality

Schizophrenic patients given neuroleptic medication die at an alarming rate.

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/188/2/122

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/reprint/188/2/122

http://www.springerlink.com/content/v87mlpbdv096lf0v/

http://www.gims.tcu.edu.tw/981%A4%BD%BD%C3%B1M%B0Q/1103%B6%C0%A6%B6%A7%C2.pdf

That's too high a price for the patients, their families and society to pay.
Patients need and deserve proper medical workups.

Unethical Psychiatrists Misrepresent What is Known About Schizophrenia

by Al Siebert, Ph.D.
Abstract: Prominent psychiatrists are stating that schizophrenia is a brain disease like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or multiple sclerosis. These statements are disconfirmed by scientific facts: no neurologist can independently confirm the presence or absence of schizophrenia with laboratory tests because the large majority of people diagnosed with schizophrenia show no neuropathological or biochemical abnormalities and a few people without any symptoms of schizophrenia have the same biophysiological abnormalities. People with schizophrenia do not usually progressively deteriorate: most improve over time. Psychotherapy and milieu therapy, without medications, have led even the most severely disturbed individuals with schizophrenia to full recovery and beyond. Many people diagnosed with schizophrenia have recovered on their own without any treatment, something never accomplished by a person with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or multiple sclerosis. Link


This junk science diagram speaks volumes about this kind of scholarship.
From http://stahlonline.cambridge.org/content/ep/images/85702c09_fig43.jpg

Read our entry about the mother of Prince Philip, who made a complete recovery from schizophrenia:
Link

The 29 verifiable, correctable causes of schizophrenia are listed
here.

Did caffeine in cola lead to schizophrenia and murder?

GEORGIA MENTAL HEALTH
Unstable mental patients freed by flawed system
By Alan Judd
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Chris Pak pleaded with doctors and nurses at the state psychiatric hospital. His sister, Na Yong Pak, was still psychotic, he said. If they let her go home, he was afraid she would kill herself or someone else – their mother, most likely, the frequent target of her schizophrenia-fueled rage.

Two weeks earlier, Georgia officials had pledged to use caution in discharging patients from its psychiatric facilities. Federal investigators had sharply criticized the state for releasing patients to homeless shelters and bus stops, street corners and abandoned buildings, with little hope for continuing treatment or, in some cases, survival.

Now, on a Friday evening in January at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta, Na Yong angrily refused to sign her discharge papers. She cursed the nurse and swore she would not take her antipsychotic medication.

The doctor and nurse sent Na Yong home, anyway.

“That,” her brother would say later, “is when I knew hell was going to break loose again.”

Twelve days later, after she left Georgia Regional, authorities say, Na Yong doused her mother with gasoline, struck a match, and watched her burn. Myong Hui Pak, 58, died 10 hours later.

Na Yong, 32, is in the Gwinnett County Jail, charged with murder. Her case illustrates the deficiencies that plague Georgia’s mental health system and challenges the state faces in making corrections mandated after a federal civil-rights investigation of hospital conditions.
-snip-
"Her depression gradually turned darker. She yelled at people no one else could see. She would drink only Coca-Cola, but often threw nearly full cans on the floor and against the walls. She accused her mother of poisoning her food."
Link

Since 1953, we have known that adrenochrome malfunction - sometimes related to caffeine - can trigger schizophrenia. See research by Abram Hoffer here and here, as well as an in-depth investigation of caffeine and mental health in our previous post here.
Many young people have a break with reality under the stresses of establishing themselves as adults - while consuming empty calories or toxic foods. But with proper nutrition, vulnerable people's stories do not have to end in tragedy. Link

We would like to see an investigation into caffeine/cola as factors in this murder, though we wonder if the city that is the center of cola manufacturing would permit it.

NAMI Busted - a long way from Mayberry

Did you know that American mathematician John Nash, played by Russell Crowe in the film A BEAUTIFUL MIND, got well on his own and never took drugs for schizophrenia?
Link -NAMISCC
His wife Sylvia Nasar thought Nash's refusal to take drugs "may have been fortunate," since their side effects "would have made his gentle re-entry into the world of mathematics a near impossibility". But worse, if he had, he might not have survived - almost certainly not to become an octogenarian.


Lying about mental health for profit is wrong. NAMI - and Ron Howard - sure are a long way from the simple truths and decency of Mayberry.

Bruce Levine follows this pharma money trail at Huffington Post.

If you have dislosures to make about NAMI's ties to Pharma, please contact Senator Grassley's office.

Is the Schizophrenia Mortality Study in The Lancet CREDIBLE?

Is the Schizophrenia Mortality Study in The Lancet CREDIBLE?
Friday, 17 July 2009
Unless the overall treatment and services provided to schizophrenia patients in Finland is unique and especially protective—which the authors do not suggest—their claimed findings of lowered mortality rates for antipsychotic drug users are belied by a consistent body of evidence.

A study purporting to analyze mortality rates of 66, 881 schizophrenia patients in Finland (1973 to 2005) was published in the prestigious journal, The Lancet. [Abstract below]

The study has received much media attention because the authors claim—contrary to well documented previous reports about spiraling mortality rates among schizophrenia patients treated between the 1970s and 2000 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]—that the use of the second generation antipsychotic drugs in Finland was associated with lower mortality rate compared to no drug treatment.

What’s more, the authors claim that Clozaril (clozapine) among all antipsychotics was associated with the lowest number of deaths, and its restricted use should therefore be reassessed for use a first-line treatment. Unless the overall treatment and services provided to schizophrenia patients in Finland is unique and especially protective—which the authors do not suggest—their claimed findings are belied by a consistent body of evidence.

To whit, an eight year study of FDA MedWatch adverse drug reports (between 1998 to 2005) found that Clozapine was linked to 3,277 deaths, making it the third most dangerous prescribed drug in the U.S. Clozapine was also linked to over 4,300 adverse drug events that led to disability or required serious medical intervention. [7]

A critical analysis by psychiatrist, Grace Jackson, MD (below), identifies fatal flaws in the study design and numerous methodological artifacts that introduced bias which minimized the detection of drug-related mortality.
AHRP Link

Cats - and E. Fuller Torrey

Do cats cause schizophrenia? - an interview with E. Fuller Torrey

Pet Theory
Do Cats Cause Schizophrenia?
by Stephen Mihm
The New York Times Magazine on the Web
"I THINK CATS ARE GREAT," says E. Fuller Torrey. His office decor would seem to confirm this statement: A cat poster hangs on one wall; a cat calendar sits on his desk; and a framed picture of a friend's cat leans against the windowsill. He even admits to having a "cat library" at home. But Torrey's interest in felines is a bit different from that of your typical cat lover. That's because Torrey, a psychiatry professor at the Uniformed Services University of Health Science and the enfant terrible of mental health research, believes that Felis domestica may carry infectious diseases that could cause schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. "My wife thinks I'm going to be assassinated by cat owners," says Torrey with a sigh. "In fact, I like cats. Unfortunately, if we are correct that they transmit infections..." Here his voice trails off, and he pensively fingers his closely cropped beard.

Torrey often speaks in a self-deprecating manner of his "delusional" notions, but he's dead serious about the cat connection. He thinks "typhoid tabbies" are passing along Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that causes brain lesions and, if Torrey is right, schizophrenia. Torrey first made the argument nearly thirty years ago. "It was considered psychotic," he admits. But since then, his ideas, though still outside the mainstream, have attracted converts, most notably the Johns Hopkins virologist Robert Yolken, with whom he now collaborates. Together, they're trying to prove that toxoplasmosis is but one of several infectious diseases that cause most cases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It helps their case that previous explanations -- bad mothering, bad genes -- have proven deficient to varying degrees. But Torrey and Yolken have also uncovered some hard evidence to support their claims, and they are about to put their theory to the test with clinical trials of drugs that are new to the psychopharmacological arsenal: antibiotics and antivirals similar to those used by AIDS patients. If the duo finds that such drugs alter the course of schizophrenia, Yolken observes, their results "would represent a major advance in the treatment of this devastating disease as well as in understanding its basic etiology."

"SCHIZOPHRENIA is a cruel disease," Torrey has written, with considerable understatement. Although it affects only 1 percent of the population, schizophrenia is among the most debilitating forms of mental illness. Trapped in a world of private delusions, a schizophrenic might cling, for example, to the belief that he is Jesus Christ, or that the government has implanted a monitoring device in his mouth during a routine dental procedure. Visual and auditory hallucinations can range from the terrifying to the merely strange: gigantic spiders, voices that insult or instruct. Some schizophrenics withdraw, becoming mute or catatonic; others remain communicative but incoherent, jumping from one topic to another without logical connections."

Link
More on Torrey here:
from Washingtonian
Parasite mind control
Torrey bio with legal center links
Treatment Advocacy Center (Psychlaws)
Treatment Advocacy Center Blog

Wikipedia on Torrey
PDF - Biederman deposition includes information on the Stanley Foundation, source of Torrey's funding
Link
Torrey, Stanley Institute linked to illegal theft, resale of 99 brains
Link

Treating the 29 KNOWN and PROVEN causes of schizophrenia instead of chasing a theory would help a lot of sick people.
It wouldn't fund research, help keep jobs or sell drugs. But a theory that cats are behind madness apparently does... and to quote Torrey, though in a different context, "that is a definition of insanity".

Orthomolecular Nutrition to the Rescue!

Feeding Minds, Feeding Bodies
Written by Rosalie Moscoe
Monday, 29 December 2008


Orthomolecular Nutrition to the Rescue!

My husband and I waved goodbye as we watched our son John (not his real name) board the plane, happily joking with his buddies. The year was 1989. John was 19, and headed for what we expected to be a wonderful youth tour overseas; indeed, for the first few weeks he called home to say what a good time he was having. But after the fourth week, we received a shocking phone call. The trip organizers were sending him home. John had become paranoid and delusional; he had been taken to a hospital after fainting at the top of a mountain.
We left on the next plane and returned with a young man who not only looked physically ill and emaciated but also was totally psychotic. We were devastated.
John was hospitalized for a short time and was released with antipsychotic medication. The doctor told us it was “psychosis”. His personality changed. Our outgoing, friendly, affectionate boy and talented musician now spent hours in his room, asleep. Awake, he suffered Parkinson-like tremors and tardive dyskinesia, a side effect of his medication.
His progress was negligible and within a year, he was hospitalized with symptoms of schizophrenia. Upon his release, John was marginally better. Schizophrenia prognosis was dim. What was to become of him?
Frantically I searched for answers. Traditional texts left me feeling hopeless. By sheer luck, I came across a book by psychiatrist, Dr. Abram Hoffer, M.D. PhD., psychiatrist, and a scholar of bio-chemistry. The book (now renamed Healing Schizophrenia) discussed diets with healthy nutrients, free of allergens that could help his condition. (Hoffer is the author of 31 books and 500 research papers.)
Also emphasized were nutrition health benefits of nutrients in supplement form such as Vitamin B3 (niacin) and Vitamin C – both natural and essential to the human body for restoring health along with other nutrients.
Orthomolecular medicine is the practice of optimizing health and treating disease by providing correct amounts of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, essential fatty acids and other substances which are natural to the body’s environment. In other words, find out what’s missing in the body and brain and give it what it needs and wants. Orthomolecular treatments are also safe to use along with medication.

Link

A Royal Recovery from Schizophrenia

"Authorities" may try to tell you that schizophrenia is incurable and is a life-long disease. It isn't so!
Prince Philip's mother, Alice of Battenburg (at left) had a diagnosis of schizophrenia, but became well again and went on to do great things; read about her here. Living in a developed country decreases the chances of recovery from schizophrenia; read an excerpt from Whitaker's MAD IN AMERICA on those facts here.
This page contains links to explore for healing schizophrenia - some remedies are as simple as discontinuing foods to which the patient is allergic.

"New" "Improved" Antipsychotics Hype

New Schizophrenia drugs no better than the old ones: Reuters
Here you can read about correct diagnosis
and, here, about mental health and vitamins.

Shown: Steven Carter and Abram Hoffer of the International Society of Orthomolecular Medicine

NAMI speaker displays a brain at TED

It's hard to say what is most disturbing in this TED presentation by Jill Bolte Taylor: the disrespectful and manipulative way this NAMI speaker handles and displays a human brain as a prop; the patronizing and stigmatizing use of her brother in her presentation; her ignorance of the 29 physiological reasons why a patient may present as schizophrenic; or her claim that the hemispheres of the brain are completely separate from each other - only briefly mentioning the Corpus Callossum and ignoring the Medulla, Pons, Midbrain, Thalamus and Hypothalamus.
Visit the Harvard Brain Project here.
NAMI associates have been implicated in more than one case of brain theft.
We hope that Dr. Bolte will stop singing long enough to read about the 29 causes of schizophrenia here and here, and we wish appropriate diagnosis, good medical treatment and speedy recovery to her brother.