Why Orthomolecular Psychiatry?

There was a 1962 discovery by Friedhoff & Van Winkle of a substance found only in schizophrenics. This was later confirmed in Britain by Pauline Ridges and others. Despite the fact that the discovery was made in New York City, it seems to have been completely ignored by Fountain House, who seemed oblivious to it. Unfortunately Van Winkle later had a breakdown, which she revealed on her website, and gave up medical research. She was hospitalized. Both Van Winkle and Friedhoff are deceased, unfortunately. Friedhoff gave up on the theory after criticism from Shulgin, a modern day Timothy Leary.

Shulgin invents new psychedelic drugs, supposedly for research puposes, and tries them on himself. Shulgin has published a cookbook on how to make psychedelic drugs. Amazingly, these drugs are very similar to DMPEA in chemical struture.

Neurology

A couple of diseases studied by neurologists have some similarities to schizophrenia. These include Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Alzheimer himself was a psychiatrist. Huntington's disease has been shown to be genetic.

New evidence using scientific techniques supports Pauling's theories on schizophrenia. In 1994 Maria Karayiorgou and her colleagues studied chromosome 22 in schizophrenia. She found 2 small deletions at chromosome 22q11 in a sample of 100 unrelated schizophrenics. No deletions were found in 200 healthy controls. This work was confirmed by Bassett and Chow. Two genes in this region are those for COMT and MAO, two enzymes critical for catecholamine metabolism. Another study, Pulver et al, done in 1994, shows a link between this region and OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).

Cowan and Kandel

In 2001 Cowan & Kandel suggested "a molecular neuropathology for schizophrenia". Thus two orthodox doctors now see things along similar lines to Pauling's theories. Cowan, however, favors a neuropathological approach, much like Alzheimer. Cowan & Kandel favor "the unification of psychiatry and neurology". They favor "clinical neuroscience". Kandel won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Parkinson's Disease

Fricker (1999) favors "human neural stem cells" as a possible treatment for Parkinson's disease. At the present time conservatives, including the Pope, want to ban this type of research. Barinaga (2000) favors "fetal neuron grafts" for "stem cell therapies".

Pauling

Linus Pauling was born in 1901. Ninety years later he was still going strong. At the end he lived in Menlo Park, California. Although Pauling is now deceased, unfortunately, his work is still being carried on by Dr. Abram Hoffer of Victoria, British Columbia, in Canada and by others. Osmond was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but he died, unfortunately. Richard Kunin is in San Francisco, California.

Amino Acids

In 1968 when Linus Pauling invented the term "orthomolecular", there was only a modest interest in amino acids. This was a mistake. Paper after paper coming out of Detroit implicated amino acids in schizophrenia. Frohman et al (1960)reported an unknown toxic factor in schizophrenia. The factor was a protein. It was quite labile. It had a pronounced effect onthe transport of amino acids into the cell. The most marked effect was with indoleamino acids (Frohman et al, 1969). Tryptophan and 5-hydroxytryptophan were taken up at an abnormal rate. A good factor that destroyed the bad factor was also identified.

Russian Work

Tikhonov, Lozovsky, and Glezer (1967) reported a study in which blood serum from schizophrenics was added to rat brain slices. They found swelling and fragmentation of the mitochondria. Lideman and associates reported extensive lesions in the myelin of a frog nerve when it was incubated with serum from schizophrenics. Romasenko found similar results when rats were injected with serum from patients. He used electron microscopy to find that the membranes of both cells and mitochondria deteriorated. This was observed in the cerebral cortex.

Thus there appears to be a membranolytic substance in the serum of patients with schizophrenia.

Scientology

I walked past the "church" of Scientology and saw a truck next to it. On the truck was the Scientology motto: "Something Can be Done about It". Although Scientology is bogus, the motto struck me as very good. The motto was probably written by L. Ron Hubbard, who was very critical of psychiatric abuses, shock treatment, and psychiatric drugs. The motto could also be applied to the psychiatric diseases themselves. Something can be done, but it isn't dianetics. I guess it is possible for a phoney religion to have a very good motto. Another oddity is that they use a cross in their symbol. Maybe the cross was used to make it look like a religion. Then again, maybe Hubbard believed in Jesus. Mary Baker Eddy believed in Jesus, but she led people down the wrong path when she told them not to go to doctors and hospitals. Hubbard and Eddy both did more harm than good.

Conclusions

It appears that certain amino acids, particularly tryptophan and alanine, are flooding the cells. They probably are causing the swelling in the mitochondria. It would appear that a diet low in amino acids should be tried. Such a diet was tried by Dr. Soheil Saleh of Canada. Saleh (1990) claimed success with such a diet. The diet is tricky because carbohydrates stimulate the production of insulin, which causes certain amino acids to be taken up into muscles. However, it is probably the brain that is the real problem. There may be too much tryptophan in the brain.

References

1. www.associatedcontent.com/article/696389/theories_of_orthomolecular_psychiatry.html

2. www.associatedcontent.com/article/693151/schizophrenia_is_organic.html

3. www.associatedcontent.com/article/692861/the_scientific_study_of_schizophrenia.html
4. www.associatedcontent.com/article/679899/the_molecular_and_cellular_pathology.html

5. www.associatedcontent.com/article/679607/world_research_on_schizophrenia.html

6. www.associatedcontent.com/article/671305/studying_schizophrenia_on_a_cellular.html