Alcoholism is a complex, multifactorial disorder that results from the interplay between genetic and environmental factors. The D(2) dopamine receptor (DRD(2)) has been associated with pleasure, and the DRD(2) A1 allele has been referred to as a reward gene. Evidence suggests that there is a tripartite interaction involving dopamine receptor deficiency, a propensity to abuse alcohol, and reduced sensitivity to rewards. This interaction relies heavily on genetic characteristics of the individual, with certain ethnic groups having a greater tendency toward alcoholism than others. The DRD(2) has been one of the most widely studied in neuropsychiatric disorders in general, and in alcoholism and other addictions in particular. The dopamine D2 (DRD2) gene, and especially its allele TaqI A1 allele and its receptor, also may be involved in comorbid antisocial personality disorder symptoms, high novelty seeking, and related traits. The mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic pathway system plays an especially important role in mediating reinforcement by abused drugs, and it may be a common denominator for addictions such as alcoholism. When the mesocorticolimbic dopamine reward system dysfunctions (perhaps caused by certain genetic variants), the end result is Reward Deficiency syndrome and subsequent drug-seeking behaviors. Reward Deficiency syndrome refers to the breakdown of the reward cascade, and resultant aberrant conduct, due to genetic and environmental influences. Alcohol and other drugs of abuse, as well as most positive reinforcers, cause activation and neuronal release of brain dopamine, which can decrease negative feelings and satisfy abnormal cravings. A deficiency or absence of DRD(2) receptors then predisposes individuals to a high risk for multiple addictive, impulsive, and compulsive behaviors. Although other neurotransmitters (e.g., glutamate, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), and serotonin) may be important in determining the rewarding and stimulating effects of ethanol, dopamine may be critical for initiating drug use and for reinstating drug use during protracted abstinence. This article contains supplementary material, which may be viewed at the American Journal of Medical Genetics website at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0148-7299:1/suppmat/index.html.
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
neurotransmitter deficiencies in alcoholics.
Many alcoholics are deficient in B vitamins, including vitamin B3. John Cleary, M.D., observed that some alcoholics spontaneously stopped drinking in association with taking niacin supplements (niacin is a form of vitamin B3). Cleary concluded that alcoholism might be a manifestation of niacin deficiency in some people and recommended that alcoholics consider supplementation with 500 mg of niacin per day. 4 Without specifying the amount of niacin used, Cleary's preliminary research findings suggested that niacin supplementation helped wean some alcoholics away from alcohol. 5 Activated vitamin B3 used intravenously has also helped alcoholics quit drinking. 6 Niacinamide-a safer form of the same vitamin-might have similar actions and has been reported to improve alcohol metabolism in animals. 7
Deficiencies of other B-complex vitamins are common with chronic alcohol use. 8 The situation is exacerbated by the fact that alcoholics have an increased need for B vitamins. 9 It is possible that successful treatment of B-complex vitamin deficiencies may actually reduce alcohol cravings, because animals crave alcohol when fed a B-complex-deficient diet. 10 Many doctors recommend 100 mg of B-complex vitamins per day.
Alcoholics may be deficient in a substance called prostaglandin E1 (PGE1) and in gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), a precursor to PGE1. 11 In a double-blind study of alcoholics who were in a detoxification program, supplementation with 4 grams per day of evening primrose oil (containing 360 mg of GLA) led to greater improvement than did placebo in some, but not all, parameters of liver function. 12
The daily combination of 3 grams of vitamin C, 3 grams of niacin, 600 mg of vitamin B6, and 600 IU of vitamin E has been used by researchers from the University of Mississippi Medical Center in an attempt to reduce anxiety and depression in alcoholics. 13 Although the effect of vitamin supplementation was no better than placebo in treating alcohol-associated depression, the vitamins did result in a significant drop in anxiety within three weeks of use. Because of possible side effects, anyone taking such high amounts of niacin and vitamin B6 must do so only under the care of a doctor.
Although the incidence of B-complex deficiencies is known to be high in alcoholics, the incidence of other vitamin deficiencies remains less clear. 14 Nonetheless, deficiencies of vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin C are seen in many alcoholics. While some reports have suggested it may be safer for alcoholics to supplement with beta-carotene instead of vitamin A, 15 potential problems accompany the use of either vitamin A or beta-carotene in correcting the deficiency induced by alcoholism. 16 These problems result in part because the combinations of alcohol and vitamin A or alcohol and beta-carotene appear to increase potential damage to the liver. Thus, vitamin A-depleted alcoholics require a doctor's intervention, including supplementation with vitamin A and beta-carotene accompanied by assessment of liver function. Supplementing with vitamin C, on the other hand, appears to help the body rid itself of alcohol. 17 Some doctors recommend 1 to 3 grams per day of vitamin C.
Kenneth Blum and researchers at the University of Texas have examined neurotransmitter deficiencies in alcoholics. Neurotransmitters are the chemicals the body makes to allow nerve cells to pass messages (of pain, touch, thought, etc.) from cell to cell. Amino acids are the precursors of these neurotransmitters. In double-blind research, a group of alcoholics were treated with 1.5 grams of D,L-phenylalanine (DLPA), 900 mg of L-tyrosine, 300 mg of L-glutamine, and 400 mg of L-tryptophan (now available only by prescription) per day, plus a multivitamin-mineral supplement. 18 This nutritional supplement regimen led to a significant reduction in withdrawal symptoms and decreased stress in alcoholics compared to the effects of placebo.
The amino acid, L-glutamine, has also been used as an isolated supplement. Animal research has shown that glutamine supplementation reduces alcohol intake, a finding that has been confirmed in double-blind human research. 19 In that trial, 1 gram of glutamine per day given in divided portions with meals decreased both the desire to drink and anxiety levels.
Saturday, 23 February 2013
10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies
Like eminent social psychologist Professor Philip Zimbardo (author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil), I'm also obsessed with why we do dumb or irrational things. The answer quite often is because of other people - something social psychologists have comprehensively shown.
Over the past few months I've been describing 10 of the most influential social psychology studies. Each one tells a unique, insightful story relevant to all our lives, every day.
» Read on about the halo effect -»
» Read on about cognitive dissonance -»
» Read on about Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment -»
» Read on about Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment -»
» Read on about Milgram's obedience studies -»
» Read on about the false consensus bias -»
» Read on about why groups and prejudices form so easily -»
» Read on about how communication and threats affect bargaining -»
» Read on about bystander apathy -»
» Read on about Asch's classic conformity study -»
reclassify salt as a “risky” food additive
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| Cheetos on a plate with a sandwich (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Karppanen’s presentation was met with applause, but one man in the crowd seemed particularly intrigued by the presentation, and as Karppanen left the stage, the man intercepted him and asked if they could talk more over dinner. Their conversation later that night was not at all what Karppanen was expecting. His host did indeed have an interest in salt, but from quite a different vantage point: the man’s name was Robert I-San Lin, and from 1974 to 1982, he worked as the chief scientist for Frito-Lay, the nearly $3-billion-a-year manufacturer of Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos and Fritos.
Lin’s time at Frito-Lay coincided with the first attacks by nutrition advocates on salty foods and the first calls for federal regulators to reclassify salt as a “risky” food additive, which could have subjected it to severe controls. No company took this threat more seriously — or more personally — than Frito-Lay, Lin explained to Karppanen over their dinner. Three years after he left Frito-Lay, he was still anguished over his inability to effectively change the company’s recipes and practices.
By chance, I ran across a letter that Lin sent to Karppanen three weeks after that dinner, buried in some files to which I had gained access. Attached to the letter was a memo written when Lin was at Frito-Lay, which detailed some of the company’s efforts in defending salt. I tracked Lin down in Irvine, Calif., where we spent several days going through the internal company memos, strategy papers and handwritten notes he had kept. The documents were evidence of the concern that Lin had for consumers and of the company’s intent on using science not to address the health concerns but to thwart them. While at Frito-Lay, Lin and other company scientists spoke openly about the country’s excessive consumption of sodium and the fact that, as Lin said to me on more than one occasion, “people get addicted to salt.”
Not much had changed by 1986, except Frito-Lay found itself on a rare cold streak. The company had introduced a series of high-profile products that failed miserably. Toppels, a cracker with cheese topping; Stuffers, a shell with a variety of fillings; Rumbles, a bite-size granola snack — they all came and went in a blink, and the company took a $52 million hit. Around that time, the marketing team was joined by Dwight Riskey, an expert on cravings who had been a fellow at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, where he was part of a team of scientists that found that people could beat their salt habits simply by refraining from salty foods long enough for their taste buds to return to a normal level of sensitivity. He had also done work on the bliss point, showing how a product’s allure is contextual, shaped partly by the other foods a person is eating, and that it changes as people age. This seemed to help explain why Frito-Lay was having so much trouble selling new snacks. The largest single block of customers, the baby boomers, had begun hitting middle age. According to the research, this suggested that their liking for salty snacks — both in the concentration of salt and how much they ate — would be tapering off. Along with the rest of the snack-food industry, Frito-Lay anticipated lower sales because of an aging population, and marketing plans were adjusted to focus even more intently on younger consumers.
Except that snack sales didn’t decline as everyone had projected, Frito-Lay’s doomed product launches notwithstanding. Poring over data one day in his home office, trying to understand just who was consuming all the snack food, Riskey realized that he and his colleagues had been misreading things all along. They had been measuring the snacking habits of different age groups and were seeing what they expected to see, that older consumers ate less than those in their 20s. But what they weren’t measuring, Riskey realized, is how those snacking habits of the boomers compared to themselves when they were in their 20s. When he called up a new set of sales data and performed what’s called a cohort study, following a single group over time, a far more encouraging picture — for Frito-Lay, anyway — emerged. The baby boomers were not eating fewer salty snacks as they aged. “In fact, as those people aged, their consumption of all those segments — the cookies, the crackers, the candy, the chips — was going up,” Riskey said. “They were not only eating what they ate when they were younger, they were eating more of it.” In fact, everyone in the country, on average, was eating more salty snacks than they used to. The rate of consumption was edging up about one-third of a pound every year, with the average intake of snacks like chips and cheese crackers pushing past 12 pounds a year.
Riskey had a theory about what caused this surge: Eating real meals had become a thing of the past. Baby boomers, especially, seemed to have greatly cut down on regular meals. They were skipping breakfast when they had early-morning meetings. They skipped lunch when they then needed to catch up on work because of those meetings. They skipped dinner when their kids stayed out late or grew up and moved out of the house. And when they skipped these meals, they replaced them with snacks. “We looked at this behavior, and said, ‘Oh, my gosh, people were skipping meals right and left,’ ” Riskey told me. “It was amazing.” This led to the next realization, that baby boomers did not represent “a category that is mature, with no growth. This is a category that has huge growth potential.”
The food technicians stopped worrying about inventing new products and instead embraced the industry’s most reliable method for getting consumers to buy more: the line extension. The classic Lay’s potato chips were joined by Salt & Vinegar, Salt & Pepper and Cheddar & Sour Cream. They put out Chili-Cheese-flavored Fritos, and Cheetos were transformed into 21 varieties. Frito-Lay had a formidable research complex near Dallas, where nearly 500 chemists, psychologists and technicians conducted research that cost up to $30 million a year, and the science corps focused intense amounts of resources on questions of crunch, mouth feel and aroma for each of these items. Their tools included a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.
To get a better feel for their work, I called on Steven Witherly, a food scientist who wrote a fascinating guide for industry insiders titled, “Why Humans Like Junk Food.” I brought him two shopping bags filled with a variety of chips to taste. He zeroed right in on the Cheetos. “This,” Witherly said, “is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.” He ticked off a dozen attributes of the Cheetos that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,” Witherly said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it . . . you can just keep eating it forever.”
As for their marketing troubles, in a March 2010 meeting, Frito-Lay executives hastened to tell their Wall Street investors that the 1.4 billion boomers worldwide weren’t being neglected; they were redoubling their efforts to understand exactly what it was that boomers most wanted in a snack chip. Which was basically everything: great taste, maximum bliss but minimal guilt about health and more maturity than puffs. “They snack a lot,” Frito-Lay’s chief marketing officer, Ann Mukherjee, told the investors. “But what they’re looking for is very different. They’re looking for new experiences, real food experiences.” Frito-Lay acquired Stacy’s Pita Chip Company, which was started by a Massachusetts couple who made food-cart sandwiches and started serving pita chips to their customers in the mid-1990s. In Frito-Lay’s hands, the pita chips averaged 270 milligrams of sodium — nearly one-fifth a whole day’s recommended maximum for most American adults — and were a huge hit among boomers.
The Frito-Lay executives also spoke of the company’s ongoing pursuit of a “designer sodium,” which they hoped, in the near future, would take their sodium loads down by 40 percent. No need to worry about lost sales there, the company’s C.E.O., Al Carey, assured their investors. The boomers would see less salt as the green light to snack like never before.
There’s a paradox at work here. On the one hand, reduction of sodium in snack foods is commendable. On the other, these changes may well result in consumers eating more. “The big thing that will happen here is removing the barriers for boomers and giving them permission to snack,” Carey said. The prospects for lower-salt snacks were so amazing, he added, that the company had set its sights on using the designer salt to conquer the toughest market of all for snacks: schools. He cited, for example, the school-food initiative championed by Bill Clinton and the American Heart Association, which is seeking to improve the nutrition of school food by limiting its load of salt, sugar and fat. “Imagine this,” Carey said. “A potato chip that tastes great and qualifies for the Clinton-A.H.A. alliance for schools . . . . We think we have ways to do all of this on a potato chip, and imagine getting that product into schools, where children can have this product and grow up with it and feel good about eating it.”
Carey’s quote reminded me of something I read in the early stages of my reporting, a 24-page report prepared for Frito-Lay in 1957 by a psychologist named Ernest Dichter. The company’s chips, he wrote, were not selling as well as they could for one simple reason: “While people like and enjoy potato chips, they feel guilty about liking them. . . . Unconsciously, people expect to be punished for ‘letting themselves go’ and enjoying them.” Dichter listed seven “fears and resistances” to the chips: “You can’t stop eating them; they’re fattening; they’re not good for you; they’re greasy and messy to eat; they’re too expensive; it’s hard to store the leftovers; and they’re bad for children.” He spent the rest of his memo laying out his prescriptions, which in time would become widely used not just by Frito-Lay but also by the entire industry. Dichter suggested that Frito-Lay avoid using the word “fried” in referring to its chips and adopt instead the more healthful-sounding term “toasted.” To counteract the “fear of letting oneself go,” he suggested repacking the chips into smaller bags. “The more-anxious consumers, the ones who have the deepest fears about their capacity to control their appetite, will tend to sense the function of the new pack and select it,” he said.
Dichter advised Frito-Lay to move its chips out of the realm of between-meals snacking and turn them into an ever-present item in the American diet. “The increased use of potato chips and other Lay’s products as a part of the regular fare served by restaurants and sandwich bars should be encouraged in a concentrated way,” Dichter said, citing a string of examples: “potato chips with soup, with fruit or vegetable juice appetizers; potato chips served as a vegetable on the main dish; potato chips with salad; potato chips with egg dishes for breakfast; potato chips with sandwich orders.”
In 2011, The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that shed new light on America’s weight gain. The subjects — 120,877 women and men — were all professionals in the health field, and were likely to be more conscious about nutrition, so the findings might well understate the overall trend. Using data back to 1986, the researchers monitored everything the participants ate, as well as their physical activity and smoking. They found that every four years, the participants exercised less, watched TV more and gained an average of 3.35 pounds. The researchers parsed the data by the caloric content of the foods being eaten, and found the top contributors to weight gain included red meat and processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages and potatoes, including mashed and French fries. But the largest weight-inducing food was the potato chip. The coating of salt, the fat content that rewards the brain with instant feelings of pleasure, the sugar that exists not as an additive but in the starch of the potato itself — all of this combines to make it the perfect addictive food. “The starch is readily absorbed,” Eric Rimm, an associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the study’s authors, told me. “More quickly even than a similar amount of sugar. The starch, in turn, causes the glucose levels in the blood to spike” — which can result in a craving for more.
If Americans snacked only occasionally, and in small amounts, this would not present the enormous problem that it does. But because so much money and effort has been invested over decades in engineering and then relentlessly selling these products, the effects are seemingly impossible to unwind. More than 30 years have passed since Robert Lin first tangled with Frito-Lay on the imperative of the company to deal with the formulation of its snacks, but as we sat at his dining-room table, sifting through his records, the feelings of regret still played on his face. In his view, three decades had been lost, time that he and a lot of other smart scientists could have spent searching for ways to ease the addiction to salt, sugar and fat. “I couldn’t do much about it,” he told me. “I feel so sorry for the public.”
Criticism is a part of life.
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| Rejection Therapy logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Illusion of Control and Are There Benefits to Being Self-Deluded?
Here's an example: you choose an apple which tastes delicious. You assume you are very skilled at choosing apples (when in fact the whole batch happens to be good today).
Another: you enter the lottery and win millions. You assume that this is (partly) a result of how good your lucky numbers are (in fact lotteries are totally random so you can't influence them with the numbers you choose. Although most of us know and accept this, we still harbour an inkling that maybe it does matter which numbers we choose).
Sometimes this illusion manifests as magical thinking. In one study participants watched another person try to shoot a miniature basketball through a hoop (Pronin et al., 2006). When participants willed the player to make the shot, and they did, they felt it was partly down to them, even though they couldn't possibly be having any effect.
It's like pedestrians in New York who still press the button to get the lights to change, despite the fact they do nothing. Since the late 80s all the traffic signals have been controlled by computer, but the city won't pay to have the buttons removed. It's probably just as well: they help boost people's illusion of control. We feel better when we can do something that feels like it might have an effect (even if it doesn't).
A beneficial illusion?
It's sometimes argued that the illusion of control is beneficial because it can encourage people to take responsibility. It's like when a person is diagnosed with an illness; they want to take control through starting medication or changing their diet or other aspect of their lifestyle.Similarly, studies find that hospital patients who are able to administer their own painkillers typically give themselves lower doses than those who have them prescribed by doctors, but they experience no more pain (Egan, 1990: What does it mean to a patient to be "in control").
Feeling in control can also urge us on to do things when the chances of success are low. Would you apply for that job if you knew how little control you had over the decision? No. But if you never apply for any jobs, you can't get them. So we pump ourselves up, polish our résumé and practice our interview technique.
But the illusion of control isn't all roses.
To return to the discussion of lotteries, we can see the illusion of control operating in the financial markets. Traders often feel they have more control over the market than they really do. Indeed one study has shown that the more traders think they are in control, the worse their actual performance (O'Creevy & Nicholson, 2010). A word of caution there for those who don't respect the forces of randomness.
More generally, some argue that the illusion of control stops us learning from our mistakes and makes us insensitive to feedback. When you feel you're in charge, you are more likely to ignore the warning signals from the environment that things are not under your control. Indeed an experiment has shown that the more power you feel, the stronger the illusion of control becomes (Fast et al., 2009).
Illusion of futility
So far, so orthodox. What's fascinating is the idea that the illusion of control itself may be an illusion, or at least only part of the story.What if the illusion of having control depends heavily on how much control we actually have? After all, we're not always totally out-of-the-loop like the experiments above suggest. Sometimes we have a lot of control over the outcomes in our life.
This has been recently tested out in a series of experiments by Gino et al. (2011). What they found was that the illusion of control flips around when control over a situation is really high. When participants in their studies actually had plenty of control, suddenly they were more likely to underestimate it.
This is a pretty serious challenge to the illusion of control. If backed up by other studies, it reverses the idea that the illusion of control is usually beneficial. Now we're in a world where sometimes the illusion is keeping us back.
For example, applying for more jobs increases the chance of getting one, exercise does make you more healthy, buying a new car does make you poorer. All these are areas in which we have high levels of control but which we may well be assuming we don't.
This effect will have to be renamed the illusion of futility. In other words: when you have high control, you underestimate how much what you do really matters.
Image credit: Jason Michael
Those who decide to walk away from an addiction are taking a monumental decision. I
Those who decide to walk away from an addiction are taking a monumental decision. If they follow through on this decision, and build a life away from an addiction, they will usually have to depend on a high degree of motivation and commitment. Change can be difficult, but those who have the spirit of a warrior will be able to take it in their stride. Once people realize that they have the ability to change their life for the good they will be able to continuously work for improvements going forward. The spirit of the dream warrior is the key to success in life.
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Mental Health Treatment That Works
This article may be reprinted free of charge provided 1) that there is clear attribution to the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, and 2) that both the OMNS free subscription linkhttp://orthomolecular.org/subscribe.html and also the OMNS archive link http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml are included.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, October 7, 2005
(OMNS) Doctors report that mental health problems including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD, anti-social and learning disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorders often have a common cause: insufficient nutrients in the brain. Nutritionally-oriented physicians assert that the cure for these problems is to give the body the extra nutrients it needs, especially when under abnormal stress.
Orthomolecular medical researchers say the future of psychiatry is in nutrition because nutrition has such a long, safe and effective history of correcting many mental problems. Nutrients such as the B-vitamins are most successful when taken regularly, taken in relatively high doses, and taken in conjunction with vitamin C, the essential fatty acids (EFA’s), and the minerals magnesium and selenium.
A summary of what has worked for many people follows below. The safety of vitamins and minerals is extraordinary, and the expense of trying them is much less than the cost of hazardous pharmaceutical drugs. These nutrients can be purchased in a discount or heath store.
Taking 1,000 mg of vitamin B-3 three times a day often cures mild to moderate depression. Dramatic results are often achieved within one week of beginning this nutritional program, especially in alcoholics. (1)
Sometimes a simple deficiency of vitamin D causes depression. 3,000 I.U./day from all sources can alleviate the problem. (2)
3,000 mg/day or more of niacin (vitamin B-3), along with the same quantity of vitamin C, taken in divided doses throughout the day can successfully treat both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. (3)
Vitamins B-3, B-6, C and the minerals magnesium and zinc frequently produce a good response in ADHD and autistic children. (4)
Vitamins B-6, folate, and B-12 taken together lower elevated homocysteine levels in the elderly while improving mental function. (5)
As pointed out by chemistry professor and vitamin discoverer Roger J. Williams, PhD (6), each individual has different nutritional needs and responds differently to nutrients. Are you tired of being depressed, suffering from anxiety, paying huge prescription drug bills for unsafe prescriptions that don’t solve the problem or produce undesirable side effects? Are you tired of the piece-meal trial and error approach to finding a solution to your mental or emotional problems? If so, adults should consider the following nutritional protocol, which will bathe your brain and nerves in natural nutrients and may well produce dramatic results. The cost of trying the program below is less than the cost of a typical doctor’s office visit. It is safe and convenient. All of these nutrients can be purchased at large discount stores.
After the morning meal take:
- A multivitamin tablet
- 1,000 mg of vitamin B-3 (as niacinamide or inositol hexanicotinate)
- One B-complex tablet
- 100 mg of vitamin B-6
- 1,200 mcg of vitamin B-9 (folate or folic acid)
- 1,000-2,000 IU of vitamin D (the lower number if you get sunshine, the higher number if you don't)
- 1,000 mg of vitamin C
- 200 mg of magnesium
- 50 mg of zinc
- 200 micrograms (mcg) of selenium
- 30 grams of soy protein powder and one tablespoon of lecithin granules mixed into a small glass of juice or milk A supplement of omega-3 fatty acids [eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosahexanoic acid (DHA) and alpha-linolenic acid (ALA)]
After the midday meal:
- 1,000 mg of vitamin B-3
- 1,200 mcg of vitamin folate
- 100 mg of vitamin B-6
- One B-complex tablet
- 1,000 mg of vitamin C
- 200 mg of magnesium
After the evening meal:
- A multivitamin tablet
- 1,000 mg of vitamin B-3
- 1,000 mg of vitamin C
- One B-complex tablet
- 100 mg of vitamin B-6
All of the above supplements are safe in the recommended amounts, as well as inexpensive and convenient. There is not even one death per year from vitamins. Pharmaceutical drugs, properly prescribed and taken as directed, kill over 100,000 Americans annually. Hospital errors kill still more.
Restoring health must be done nutritionally, not pharmacologically. All cells in all persons are made exclusively from what we drink and eat. Not one cell is made out of drugs.
The most common mistake made by people who take vitamins is they fail to take enough vitamins.
The reason one nutrient can cure so many different illnesses is because a deficiency of one nutrient can cause many different illnesses.
What is Orthomolecular Medicine?
Linus Pauling defined orthomolecular medicine as "the treatment of disease by the provision of the optimum molecular environment, especially the optimum concentrations of substances normally present in the human body." Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness. For more information: http://www.orthomolecular.org
Take the Orthomolecular Quiz at http://www.orthomolecular.org/quiz/index.shtml
The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is a non-profit and non-commercial informational resource.
Editorial Review Board:
Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
Harold D. Foster, Ph.D.
Bradford Weeks, M.D.
Carolyn Dean, M.D. N.D.
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Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.
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References for further reading:
1. Hoffer A. Vitamin B-3: Niacin and its amide. http://www.doctoryourself.com/hoffer_niacin.html Also: Cheraskin E, Ringsdorf WM and Brecher A. Psychodietetics. Bantam Books, 1974.
2. Vieth R, Kimball S, Hu A, Walfish PG. Randomized comparison of the effects of the vitamin D3 adequate intake versus 100 mcg (4000 IU) per day on biochemical responses and the wellbeing of patients. Nutr J. 2004 Jul 19;3:8.
3. Hoffer A. Healing schizophrenia: Complementary vitamin & drug treatments. Toronto: CCNM Press, 2004. Also: Hawkins D and Pauling L. Orthomolecular psychiatry, San Francisco: Freeman, 1973. Also: Hoffer A. Niacin therapy in psychiatry, Charles C. Thomas, 1962.
4. Hoffer A. Healing children's attention and behavior disorders: Complementary nutritional & psychological treatments. Toronto: CCNM Press, 2004. Also: Hoffer A. Dr. Hoffer's ABC of natural nutrition for children. Kingston, Ontario: Quarry Press, 1999.
5. Selhub J, Jacques PF, Wilson PWF, Rush D, Rosenberg IH. Vitamin status and intake as primary determinants of homocysteinemia in an elderly population. JAMA 1993. 270:2693-2698. Also: Verhoef P, Meleady R, Daly LE, Graham IM, Robinson K, Boers GHJ, et al. Homocysteine, vitamin status and risk of vascular disease. European Heart Journal 1999. 20:1234-1244.
6. http://neon.cm.utexas.edu/williams/
Sunday, 17 February 2013
Medication for mental illness can save lives and give people the stability they need to survive.
Every time new figures come out showing increases in prescriptions for these types of drugs, we get a flurry of calls from the media asking if we’re ‘concerned’ about the ‘shocking rise’ in the ‘antidepressant epidemic’.
What I find worrying, is the automatic assumption that a rise in prescriptions, or someone taking medication for a number of years, is necessarily A Bad Thing.
Medication for mental illness can save lives and give people the stability they need to survive. That may be for a few months, it may be years. While no one wants to be on any kind of medication unnecessarily, for some people, it’s the best option.
The language used in the media around this is very telling. There is a clear dividing line between those who simply ‘take’ medication, such as people with diabetes, and those who are ‘hooked’ on it - people with mental health problems.
Antidepressants in particular are often written about in the context of someone trying desperately to ‘give them up’ as if they’re some kind of bad habit.
The subtext to all this is that to take mental health medication is unnecessary, a sign of weakness and failure. I can’t help wondering if this stems from the deep seated suspicion, which is rarely voiced, but still surprisingly pervasive, that the vast majority of people with mental health problems aren’t really ill, they’re just a bit sad or being a bit difficult. If as a society, we can’t truly accept that people with depression are ill, then how can we accept that it’s ok for them to take medication for it?
These deep-seated beliefs are not only stigmatising, they have a very real impact on people living with mental illness every day. It’s bad enough to be diagnosed with a mental illness and accept that you may need to take medication, but to be made to feel guilty for doing so, is especially hard.
When speaking to members of my charity, I often detect a sense of guilt when people talk about medication, as if it is an admission of weakness. I’ve seen it in my personal life too. One of my best friends was prescribed antidepressants for a severe mental illness last year. She found it incredibly helpful, but as soon as she stabilized, her immediate concern was to get off it as soon as possible. While of course it’s a good idea to try and come off any kind of medication if it’s not necessary, talking to her about it, it was clear that the main driving force wasn’t her health, but the sense of shame and inadequacy she felt for needing it.
Would she feel this way if she was taking medication for high blood pressure? I very much doubt it.
Rethink Mental Illness, is neither ‘for’ or ‘against’ medication, what we’re interested in is people having a choice over their own treatment and finding what works for them. The real problem is that in the vast majority of cases, this isn’t happening. Far too often, due to squeezed NHS budgets, people are only offered drugs when they could benefit from talking therapies either instead of, or alongside it.
Dream Warrior Recovery is the first to point out what a scandal it is that antipsychotic medications haven’t vastly improved since the 1950s. We have long campaigned for improvements in drugs which come with a range of horrific side-effects and double your chances of dying from heart disease. Despite all this, for many people, taking this medication is still their preferred option, which says a lot about how devastating psychosis can be.
Many people manage their mental heath problems very successfully without any medication; others may need to take it for the rest of their lives, there is no right or wrong. What is wrong however, is that anyone should be made to feel inadequate for falling into the latter group.
The media plays such a powerful role in shaping our understanding of mental illness, it’s vital journalists start thinking twice before lazily throwing around words like ‘hooked’ when they write about this sensitive subject. I look forward to the day I can open a newspaper and see decisions over medication presented as a straightforward health issue, rather than a moral struggle to resist the ‘happy pills’.
Understanding the relationship between nutrition and alcoholism is a vital component for successful recovery.
Although many alcoholics develop malnutrition and it's very important to eat a nutritious diet in recovery, this issue is much deeper than that.
The role of nutrition and alcoholism is two pronged. On one hand, alcoholism causes nutritional deficiencies, while on the other hand nutritional deficiencies cause alcoholism. Alcoholism and nutrition have a reciprocal effect on one another that often pushes the alcoholic to relapse.
A poor diet that is high in sugar, refined foods and environmental toxins and lacking in vital nutrients, that the average person consumes these days, often results in nutritional deficiencies. Contrary to popular belief, vitamin and mineral deficiencies are quite common in our society and result in numerous uncomfortable and often debilitating symptoms.
Symptoms and Impact
Symptoms from a deficiency in vitamins and mineral may include depression, anxiety, hypoglycemia, fatigue, irritability, hyperactivity, insomnia, cognitive dysfunction, memory problems, learning disorders, personality disorders, hypertension, heart disease, cravings for sugar, caffeine, carbohydrates, nicotine, alcohol or drugs, headaches, agitation and many more. You'll note that many of these symptoms look extremely similar to the symptoms that an alcoholic in recovery experiences on a daily basis.
One of the most common deficiencies found in alcoholics and the most crucial to address is amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks for neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are chemicals used by the brain to relay messages within the brain and communicate with all other organ systems within the body. An imbalance or deficiency in neurotransmitters particularly dopamine, serotonin and GABA have been found to be at the root of what causes addiction and cravings for alcohol and/or drugs. You'll want to read understanding alcohol addiction to understand this concept completely.
When your diet is deficient in the proper nutrients it needs, then your brain is deficient or out of balance in neurotransmitters. Those crucial chemicals are responsible for making you feel happy, relaxed and normal and they are not present or working efficiently. Your sense of well-being is in disaccord. You feel depressed, sad, anxious, tired, compulsive, confused, hyperactive and can't think clearly. When neurotransmitters are not balanced or deficient, then we crave things like alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, sugar and caffeine to give us relief and provide the feelings we should have naturally.
Since most people are eating a diet that is toxic and lacking in nutrients, nutritional deficiencies are usually present in the alcoholic or addict prior to addiction. It is one of the things that lead to addiction. We don't have enough dopamine, serotonin, GABA or glutamate and our reward pathway doesn't work properly. Drinking or drugs, provides a temporary boost to those neurotransmitters, so it is actually giving us something we're missing. However, in the long run, the artificial stimulation of neurotransmitters only depletes them even further and leads to the much bigger problem of addiction.
To achieve successful recovery, neurotransmitters must be brought into balance. You can't have balanced neurotransmitters if you aren't getting adequate amino acids. Additionally, amino acids work in conjunction with numerous other vitamin and minerals to perform their functions adequately, so understanding the interrelationship between nutrition and alcoholism is critical for sobriety.
To make matters worse, once alcoholism is set into motion, then the consumption of alcohol on a regular basis itself leads to more deficiencies from an even less nutritious diet and poor absorption. Alcoholics often drink in place of a meal or eat very little, and alcohol damages the body's ability to absorb the nutrients it needs from the food you do eat.
Alcoholism causes vitamin and mineral deficiencies because alcohol is toxic to the liver, pancreas, stomach and digestive tract, which results in damage that prevents the alcoholic from being able to digest their food properly or to store, absorb, process, access or absorb crucial nutrients. Many alcoholics are severely malnourished.
Additionally, financial limits may cause an alcoholic to have to choose between food or alcohol and alcohol usually always win the vote. As alcoholism progresses and the alcoholic loses their ability to make good choices, they could care less about the issue of nutrition and alcoholism. Unfortunately, the body will run on alcohol alone because it gives a temporary boost to the system; however, this only deprives the body of even more nutrients and sets up another vicious cycle. Deficiencies create a variety of emotional and physical symptoms that make the alcoholic crave a drink in order to relieve the symptoms. Not only that, deficiencies themselves contribute to deterioration in the integrity of the digestive tract which results in more inability to absorb nutrients. The drink perpetuates the problem of deficiencies in a variety of ways.
Common Deficiencies
Regardless of which came first, some of the most common deficiencies found in alcoholics besides amino acids include: essential fatty acids, digestive enzymes, acetyl coenzyme A, niacin or B3, B6, B2, B12, folic acid, pyridoxal-5-phosphate or P5P, NAD, vitamins A, C, D, and K, magnesium, zinc, selenium and calcium, and have a profound impact on brain chemistry and mood. The lack of awareness around nutrition and alcoholism often results with alcoholic's in recovery who struggle to stay sober because of the need to find relief from the discomfort that deficiencies cause.
For example, vitamin B1 or thiamin is crucial for proper functioning of the brain and nerves, essential for the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) bioenergy in all body cells and the production of acetylcholine, the brains major neurotransmitter. A lack of adequate acetylcholine is found in disorders such as Alzheimer's. A deficiency in vitamin B1 leads to the syndrome often found in chronic alcoholics called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and is distinguished by poor memory, impaired neuromuscular coordination, visual disturbances, apathy and mental confusion. Even a mild deficiency in this vitamin can result in impaired brain function and be exhibited in symptoms such as fatigue, emotional instability, confusion, indifference or lack of interest, headaches, depression, irritability, feelings of impending doom and insomnia.
NAD is critical for burning sugar and fat into energy for the cells, and it functions as a catalyst in the production of many of the major brain neurotransmitters like serotonin.
The most severe form of niacin (also known as B3) deficiency results in the disease known as pellagra, however, even a mild deficiency will produce a host of psychological symptoms including an inability to concentrate, excessive worry, headaches, irrational or unfounded fear and suspicion, apprehension, gloomy angry or depressed perception, agitation and disruption of sleep patterns.
Acetyl coenzyme A is probably the most crucial biochemical involved in cellular biochemistry, because it's needed to power the Krebs cycle, which is what produces 90 percent of all energy needed for every cell in the brain and the body. It's also needed to produce acetylcholine, the brain's major neurotransmitter that is critical for memory, learning and concentration.
A deficiency in P5P is significant because it is the primary coenzyme essential to produce all the chief brain neurotransmitters. It's crucial to many different conversion processes in amino acids, essential fatty acids and other important vitamins like B3 or niacin and helps regulate the entry of magnesium into our cells.
All this biochemistry talk about nutrition and alcoholism can get a little technical and difficult to understand, but the bottom line is this: Nutritional deficiencies, regardless of when they originated, result in a malfunctioning brain and body that gets exhibited in a variety of undesirable and even dangerous psychological and physical symptoms. When we look over the list of symptoms that are the result of nutritional deficiencies, we see the typical profile of an alcoholic. When the recovering alcoholic understands the importance of alcoholism and nutrition and addresses their nutritional deficiencies, they can alleviate the cravings to drink or drunk and the psychological symptoms that so often lead to relapse.
Bill W., The co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous wrote three papers about the biochemical aspects of Alcoholism in the last ten years of his life.
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| Ball-and-stick model of the niacin molecule, also known as Vitamin B 3 and nicotinic acid, an essential human nutrient. Colour code (click to show) : Black: Carbon, C : White: Hydrogen, H : Red: Oxygen, O : Blue: Nitrogen, N (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
After meeting Hoffer and Osmond Bill began taking vitamin B-3 (Niacin). Bill found such a great release from his depression that he set out to advance this second vocation for the remaining years of his life.
Bill Wilson gave his all to promote, finance and help this area of research into the field of alcoholism. He wrote, edited and distributed three pamphlets which he sent to doctors and many friends both in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Shorty before his death, Bill was asked what one thing he would like to be most remembered for in the history books; He said that it would be for his promotion of the B-3 Therapy, not the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous.
