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If no one minds, I'd like to create and maintain this thread to compile articles, book excerpts, studies, quotes, etc. on orthomolecular approaches to treating/managing and reversing neuro-psychiatric illnesses, HPPD being one (if it's a problem, no worries, it can be deleted or whatever). When I first started getting HPPD symptoms (which were much less severe than now), I started looking into things like organic foods (I definitely recommend the documentary Genetic Roulette, as well as the book Seeds of Deception, for more information), followed by alternative and naturopathic medicine. Nowadays, I'm open to anything, including the traditional, Western allopathic model to medicine. Nonetheless, personally, I believe the orthomolecular approach holds the greatest promise as it is (1) science based (unlike some other models), and (2) contains potentially hundreds of thousands of cases of people being cured of their ailments, which, interestingly include ailments such as psychosis and Schizophrenia.

 

To begin this, I'd like to share some excerpts from an article on the thyroid (hormone)/oxidative metabolism-"insanity" connection written by Dr. Ray Peat; though I'm a fan of Dr. Peat, there are many others that have fantastic information, such as (but not limited to): Dr. Abram Hoffer, Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgi, Dr. Linus Pauling, and Dr. Roger J. Williams.

 

Thyroid, insomnia, and the insanities: Commonalities in diseas

SOME FACTORS IN STRESS, INSOMNIA AND THE BRAIN SYNDROMES:

 

"Everyone is familiar with the problem of defining insanity, in the case of people who plead innocent by reason of insanity. The official definition of insanity in criminal law is “the inability to tell right from wrong.” Obviously, that can’t be generalized to everyday life, because any sane person realizes that certainty is impossible, and that most situations, including elections, offer you at best the choice of “the lesser of two evils,” or the opportunity to “do the right thing,” and to “throw your vote away.” People who persist in doing what they know is really right are “eccentric,” in the sense that they don’t adapt to society’s norms. In a society that chooses to destroy ecosystems, rather than adapting to them, the question of sanity should be an everyday political issue."

 

"Looking for general physiological problems behind the various symptoms is very different from the practice of classifying the insanities according to their symptoms and the hypothetical “brain chemicals” that are believed to “cause the symptoms.” The fact that some patients hallucinate caused many psychiatrists to believe that hallucinogenic chemicals, interfering with nerve transmitter substances such as dopamine or serotonin, were going to provide insight into psychotic states. The dopamine excess (or serotonin deficiency) theories developed at a time when only a few “transmitter substances” were known, and when they were thought to act as very specific on/off nerve switches, rather than as links in metabolic networks. The drug industry helps to keep those ideas alive."

 

"A particular drug has many effects other than those that are commonly recognized as its “mechanism of action,” but when an “antidepressant” or a “tranquilizer” or a “serotonin reuptake inhibitor” alleviates a particular condition, some people argue that the condition must have been caused by the “specific chemistry” that the drug is thought to affect. Because of the computer metaphor for the brain, these effects are commonly thought to be primarily in the synapses, the membranes, and the transmitter chemicals."

 

"The brain, just like any organ or tissue, is an energy-producing metabolic system, and its oxidative metabolism is extremely intense, and it is more dependent on oxygen for continuous normal functioning than any other organ. Without oxygen, its characteristic functioning (consciousness) stops instantly (when blood flow stops, blindness begins in about three seconds, and other responses stop after a few more seconds). The concentration of ATP, which is called the cellular energy molecule, doesn’t decrease immediately. Nothing detectable happens to the “neurotransmitters, synapses, or membrane structures” in this short period; consciousness is a metabolic process that, in the computer metaphor, would be the flow of electrons itself, under the influence of an electromotive force, a complex but continuous sort of electromagnetic field. The computer metaphor would seem to have little to offer for understanding the brain."

 

"Although it is common to speak of sleep and hibernation as variations on the theme of economizing on energy expenditure, I suspect that nocturnal sleep has the special function of minimizing the stress of darkness itself, and that it has subsidiary functions, including its now well confirmed role in the consolidation and organization of memory. This view of sleep is consistent with observations that disturbed sleep is associated with obesity, and that the torpor-hibernation chemical, serotonin, powerfully interferes with learning.

Babies spend most of their time sleeping, and during life the amount of time spent sleeping decreases, with nightly sleeping time decreasing by about half an hour per decade after middle age. Babies have an extremely high metabolic rate and a stable temperature. With age the metabolic rate progressively declines, and as a result the ability to maintain an adequate body temperature tends to decrease with aging.

(The simple fact that body temperature regulates all organic functions, including brain waves, is habitually overlooked. The actions of a drug on brain waves, for example, may be mediated by its effects on body temperature, but this wouldn’t be very interesting to pharmacologists looking for “transmitter-specific” drugs.)

Torpor is the opposite of restful sleep, and with aging, depression, hypothyroidism, and a variety of brain syndromes, sleep tends toward the hypothermic torpor.

An individual cell behaves analogously to the whole person. A baby’s “high energy resting state” is paralleled by the stable condition of a cell that is abundantly charged with energy; ATP and carbon dioxide are at high levels in these cells. Progesterone’s effects on nerve cells include favoring the high energy resting state, and this is closely involved in progesterone’s “thermogenic” effect, in which it raises the temperature set-point.

The basal metabolic rate, which is mainly governed by thyroid, roughly corresponds to the average body temperature. However, in hypothyroidism, there is an adaptive increase in the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, producing more adrenalin, which helps to maintain body temperature by causing vasoconstriction in the skin. In aging, menopause, and various stressful conditions, the increased adrenalin (and the increased cortisol production which is produced by excess adrenalin) causes a tendency to wake more easily, and to have less restful sleep.

While the early morning body temperature will sometimes be low in hypothyroidism, I have found many exceptions to this. In protein deficiency, sodium deficiency, in menopause with flushing symptoms, and in both phases of the manic depression cycle, and in some schizophrenics, the morning temperature is high, corresponding to very high levels of adrenalin and cortisol. Taking the temperature before and after breakfast will show a reduction of temperature, the opposite of what occurs in simple hypothyroidism, because raising the blood sugar permits the adrenalin and cortisol to fall."

 

"Therapies that have been successful in treating “schizophrenia” include penicillin, sleep therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, carbon dioxide therapy, thyroid, acetazolamide, lithium and vitamins. These all make fundamental contributions to the restoration of biological energy. Antibiotics, for example, lower endotoxin formation in the intestine, protect against the induction by endotoxin of serotonin, histamine, estrogen, and cortisol. Acetazolamide causes the tissues to retain carbon dioxide, and increased carbon dioxide acidifies cells, preventing serotonin secretion."

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Some related studies to the above:

 

Acetazolamide and thiamine: An ancillary therapy for chronic mental illness

Vitamin B6 Treatment in Acute Neuroleptic-Induced Akathisia: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study.

 

Vitamin B6 Treatment for Tardive Dyskinesia: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Crossover Study.

 

 

Antidepressive therapy by modifying sleep

 

Schizophrenia is a diabetic brain state: an elucidation of impaired neurometabolism.

 

Frontality, Laterality, and Cortical-Subcortical Gradient of Cerebral Blood Flow in Schizophrenia: Relationship to Symptoms and Neuropsychological Functions

Effect of attention on frontal distribution of delta activity and cerebral metabolic rate in schizophrenia. "15 patients with schizophrenia and nine normal volunteers had 32 channel topographic EEG recorded for spectral analysis during the uptake of 18-F-deoxyglucose (FDG) for positron emission tomography (PET). Both patients and controls performed the Continuous Performance Test, a visual vigilance task, during FDG uptake. EEG was also obtained during an initial pre-FDG resting period. Each EEG epoch was individually inspected for eye movement artifacts. Analysis confirmed increased delta activity in the frontal region of patients with schizophrenia in comparison to normal controls, and a significant correlation between increased frontal delta and relative reduction in frontal lobe metabolism among patients with schizophrenia. This finding of increased delta is consistent with PET, blood flow and topographic EEG studies of schizophrenia, suggesting reduced frontal activity."
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Well, I didn't want to really add studies, but the ones I added were directly related to the article above them. I figured this would be more relevant to an actual orthomolecular theory of treatments for HPPD and essentially any other neuro-psychiatric disease. If you'd like (or anyone else for that matter) I can just copy this over to that thread and close this one, but I figured this would serve as a good place to actually discuss theories of psychiatric diseases in depth, in terms of their biophysical etiologies rather than just posting a study on say, ALCAR or ALCAR-arginate and how it increases "this or that" neurotransmitter or growth factor at what dose. 

 

I have found over a dozen articles that get extremely in depth on the actual causes of psychiatric illnesses, and I figured it would largely distract from the specific studies on different supplements/drugs/etc. 

 

But again, I'm open to just closing this thread and putting it in the HPPD Stack thread, but it may get rather bogged down in theoretical/hypothetical jibber jabber, lol.

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It's entirely up to you. I consider the HPPD Stack thread as largely an orthomolecular approach. The idea of that thread is to explore non-pharmacuticals, starting with nutritional supplements and working up to suitable nootropics. I suppose what you are saying is that you see this thread as being more of a discussion of theories. But surely it's all the same in the end - we discuss theories and whatnot, presumably with one thing in mind; treatment prospects. So, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to defer theoretical discussion from the HPPD Stack thread, and also I do not see how this thread would end up without treatment prospects being considered after drawing conclusions i.e surely they are one and the same? IMO, it would be helpful collate information from around the board to make it more accessible, concise and in one place; because there are lots of 'what supplements...' threads that have no organisation or description behind them. Another thread like this kind of confuses things further, I think.. 

To iterate, the HPPD Stack thread is intended to have a quick-fire, concise set of ideas that people can give a try immediately, with anecdotes in the second post. It is absolutely fine if we have discussions pages later, but the idea is to end up with some actual suggestions for treatments in the first post. The point being, things you can buy, do, utilise yourself.. whilst you are waiting for a doc/if your doc isn't helping etc.

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