scientists unlock secret behind schizophrenia

The Independent reports;

Thursday, 2 July 2009

A colour enhanced MRI image of the brain shows one of the theories into what may be the chemical basis for Schizophrenia. Researchers have found reduced receptors for dopamine in the brain (areas colourized)

Scientists have discovered a remarkable similarity between the genetic faults behind both schizophrenia and manic depression in a breakthrough that is expected to open the way to new treatments for two of the most common mental illnesses, affecting millions of people.”
… may be due to early brain development …. early intervention …”

60 minutes reruns frmi story

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/31/60minutes/main4694713.shtml

memory and the aging brain

aging brain

keep your mind nimble as you age by working with three forms of memory … long term,  short term and sensory….. To Keep Your Brain Nimble as your Age, Stretch It..

A new study by MIT neuroscientists has found that memory and cognitive impairments were more associated with loss of brain “white matter,” which forms connections within and between brain regions.

“Historically a lot of people have put their eggs in the gray matter basket. This study suggests that what might really be important are the connections and the integrity of the connections,” said David Ziegler, a graduate student in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and lead author of a paper on the work that appeared in the online edition of Neurobiology of Aging in December. Link

Web Surfing Stimulates Aging Brains

A group of scientists found that searching the Internet doesn’t make computer-savvy, middle-aged and older adults stupid. It actually triggers key centers in the brain that control decision making and complex reasoning. In other words, we might not have to resort to word puzzles and pinochle to fend off senility.

The study, reportedly the first of its kind to assess the impact of Internet searching on brain performance, will be published in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

“The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerized technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults,” said principal investigator Dr. Gary Small, a professor at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. “Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function.”

Protest May 17th APA in SF

The American Psychiatric Association is coming to San Francisco and bringing along a LARGE drug exhibit, in front of which, we will all be protesting.  Details of the protest can be found at this site on the left sidebar, under events.

I’m looking to dress up as a Black Box Warning for Abilify, with black leggings, and carry a sign that says one of the following (votes?):

Pills Don’t Solve Problems
End the Psychopharmaceutical Complex
My Mood is Not a “Disorder”
YOU Are the Crazy Ones
Psychiatry = Sales
Psychiatry = Pseudoscience
Psychiatry: Just Say No

I realize that psychiatry and psychiatric drugs do help many people, people who are beyond batshit crazy. However, I think they’re the exception, these drugs are being way overused, and people are not being informed of the risks associated with these drugs adequately, and alternatives are tried as a last resort, instead of the other way around, as it should be. Neuroleptics (also known as Antipsychotics, Antischizophrenics, and Major Tranquilizers) in general are particularly poisonous and therefore my biggest concern. They do help get some people through unbearable times (such as myself, admittedly) but they should be used on a short term basis for THAT PURPOSE ALONE, and that is NOT how they are being used. I have known way too many people who’ve been harmed by these drugs. The biochemical imbalance theory is unproven, unsupported, and now being debunked by major research institutions. The diagnosis of a mental illness literally comes from a doctor pointing at your behavior and saying, “You have MENTAL ILLNESS X”. No blood test, no serum test, no urine test, no MRI. These are all things that the general public doesn’t know.

This is not to say that mental illness isn’t real– it is. Clearly something was going wrong with MY brain, and it was a very acute situation, during that one to two month period. And I am on the mild end of the spectrum. However, the current research is not enough, and it is being way too influenced by PHARMA, whose interest is to make sure we stay on the drugs as long as we live, whether or not they are effective, or harmful.

This is about educating the public about the myths and misconceptions of psychiatry and pushing for a dialogue built on full disclosure and informed choice for people– especially patients.

Nutrition and mental health

On the bright side, there’s more studies linking a lack of nutritional health with mental disorders. The incidence of mental disorders has risen with the deterioration of the American Diet.

From Nutritional Therapies for Mental Disorders by Shaheen E. Lakhan and Karen F. Viera

The article states:

Researchers have observed that the prevalence of mental
health disorders has increased in developed countries in
correlation with the deterioration of the Western diet [7].
Previous research has shown nutritional deficiencies that
correlate with some mental disorders [8,9]. The most
common nutritional deficiencies seen in mental disorder
patients are of omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins, minerals,
and amino acids that are precursors to neurotransmitters
[10-16].

With major depressive disorder:

As reported
in several studies, the amino acids tryptophan, tyrosine,
phenylalanine, and methionine are often helpful in treating
many mood disorders, including depression [28-33].
Tryptophan is a precursor to serotonin and is usually converted
to serotonin when taken alone on an empty stomach.
Therefore, tryptophan can induce sleep and
tranquility and in cases of serotonin deficiencies, restore
serotonin levels leading to diminished depression

For Bipolar Disorder:

Some biochemical abnormalities in people with bipolar disorder include oversensitivity to acetylcholine, excess vanadium, vitamin B deficiencies, a taurine deficiency, anemia, omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies, and vitamin C deficiency. Bipolar patients tend to have excess acetylcholine receptors,
which is a major cause of depression and mania [42,43]. Bipolar patients also produce elevated levels of
vanadium, which causes mania, depression, and melancholy [44,45]. However, vitamin C has been shown to protect the body from the damage caused by excess vanadium.

A double-blind, placebo controlled study that involved controlling elevated vanadium levels showed
that a single 3 g dose of vitamin C decreases manic symptoms in comparison to placebo [45].
Taurine is an amino acid made in the liver from cysteine that is known to play a role in the brain by eliciting a Some biochemical abnormalities in people with bipolar disorder include oversensitivity to acetylcholine, excess vanadium, vitamin B deficiencies, a taurine deficiency, anemia,
omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies, and vitamin C deficiency. Bipolar patients tend to have excess acetylcholine receptors, which is a major cause of depression and mania
[42,43]. Bipolar patients also produce elevated levels of vanadium, which causes mania, depression, and melancholy [44,45]. However, vitamin C has been shown to protect the body from the damage caused by excess vanadium. A double-blind, placebo controlled study that involved controlling elevated vanadium levels showed that a single 3 g dose of vitamin C decreases manic symptoms in comparison to placebo [45].

Not to mention, I’ll have to do some research on something they call lithium orotate, which crosses the blood brain barrier better than the traditional lithium carbonate, so one can use much lower dosages, decreasing the risk of side effects. I’ll be asking my doctor about this and possibly trying it. Look for that in a further post.

For Schizophrenia:

The most consistent correlation found in one study that involved the ecological analysis of schizophrenia and diet concluded that increased consumption of refined sugar results in an overall decreased state of mind for schizophrenic patients, as measured by both the number of days
spent in the hospital and poor social functioning [57]. That study also concluded that the dietary predictors of the outcome of schizophrenia and prevalence of depression are similar to those that predict illnesses such as coronary heart disease and diabetes.

The whole article can be found here

Antipsychotics and Cardiac Arrest

I saw this article earlier today and was spitting mad. Here it is, but I have quoted from it.

For the new study, published in the Jan. 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Ray and his colleagues expanded on earlier research that suggested the newer drugs disrupt the heart’s rhythm. The researchers examined the medical records of 44,218 patients who used the older antipsychotic drugs and 46,089 patients who used the newer ones. All the patients lived in Tennessee and were recipients of Medicaid, the government-sponsored insurance program that serves low-income people.

The researchers also looked at the records of 186,600 people who didn’t use antipsychotic drugs.

They found that users of the newer drugs were 2.26 times more likely to suffer from sudden cardiac death than those not on the medications. Those who used the older drugs were 1.99 times more likely to die versus those not taking the medications.

Patients who took the highest doses were at the highest risk. Overall, the patients had a three-in-1,000 risk of sudden cardiac death a year, Ray said.

The numbers may seem low, but they’re significant, Ray said. “If I were talking to a friend or family member, I’d advise them to avoid [the drugs] if possible.”

So let’s recap: I have had two major “mood episodes” in my life. They were over four years apart. In between that time, and at all other times in my life, I have had little to no mood instability– people regularly describe me as being calm and normal. Both times, I was under huge amounts of stress and went long stretches without sleep. Both times I took benadryl or over-the-counter sleeping meds with benadryl in them and had an adverse reaction to it. Medicine’s answer is that I should have been drugged that entire 4 years, needlessly, and for the rest of my life as well. The higher risk of diabetes, parkinsonian symptoms, abnormal uncontrollable muscle twitches, and oh yeah, now CARDIAC ARREST means nothing, and I should just go on my merry way popping pills until I kick the bucket, miserable, diabetic, and jerking around like a fool.

Yeah, I’m mad. Just a little.

I think I’m done

Today I had an appointment with my neurologist. His site can be found here. He is very anti-psychiatry and was very disappointed to hear that I am on Abilify, 10 mg. He stops just short of calling psychiatrists evil people.

I believe they really believe in what they’re doing, but their methods are, for lack of a better word, insane. It’s been stated elsewhere, but it bears repeating, there’s no blood test for bipolar disorder. No urine test. You can’t even diagnose it by looking at an MRI or an fMRI. Said neurologist doesn’t believe it exists. I won’t go that far– I know I had problems December of 07, but I’m not sure they were biochemical problems that need to be chemically addressed. My psychiatrist has never asked about what may have triggered the events, and when I suggested triggers, quickly denied their importance. That stung.

The neurologist, on the other hand, believes that we all have problems, just not necessarily medical ones. He pointed out that ever since they’ve come up with neuroleptics, psychiatrists been quick to point out that degenerative brain damage in people with psychiatric illnesses is “just the natural course of the disease”. But prior to the invention of the neuroleptics, no such brain damage was ever shown! That sold me. I’m already sick to death of the religion known as psychiatry. Here is what happened:

1. The social assault I was under at work made me very, very angry.
2. Due to this anger, and the fact there was nothing I could do about the situation, I had trouble sleeping.
3. I took three doses of diphenhydramine and,
4. Had an adverse reaction,
5. Showed up at the emergency room where I was locked away and drugged against my informed consent (meaning I still have no idea what I took that day).

The neurologist told me that anxiety is due to excess breathing, and says all the symptoms of anxiety are present when you breathe too deep, too much, or sigh deeply too often, or yawn excessively (all of which I do). The physical symptoms make one feel as though there’s impending doom, which make it spiral. He said that when I catch myself breathing too much, stop doing so, and if I feel so anxious I feel like crawling out of my own skin, do aerobic exercise. And thirdly, breathing into a paperbag will help.

He took me down to 5 mg of Abilify and I’m to go back in two weeks. I think I’m done with this bipolar bullsh*t.

alternatives, again

as a child, 9, always sad, detached, never 'in' my body

where does one go, when one desires to change their life, or to re-engage in life unmediated by the side-effects of psych-tropic medications? this is certainly not a path one would have the wherewith-all to travel solo, without community, without a prescribed plan, without some medical supervision. Without a group of individuals well versed in what could be expected and what remedies applied to the anticipated anxieties and psycho-medical repercussions of withdrawal.

For the past 16 years, my stability has been artificially maintained  by a cocktail of SNRIs, first-resort anti-depressants, SSRIs and benzos, chuncked together to ensure a good night’s sleep, a cap on my hyperactive HPA axis, and a degree of homeostasis engineered by artificially induced psychic equilibrium in myriad ganglia of my unique beleaguered neuro-transmitter synapses.

HPA Axis: On Alert

Earlier this year, i hooked onto the Amen Clinic, thinking perhaps I might convince them to initiate a clinical trial for long term anti-depressent users, replacing our drug induced compliance with their theories regarding re-wiring the brain through new findings in cognitive and neurological discoveries on neurogenesis.

which brain can you afford

Only to discover, that Dr. Amen is now big business. A consult, just an opportunity to have him look over your fMRI runs in the thousands.  A  1/2 hour consult with his clinic staff runs $150. Dr. Ahem is more involved now in promoting himself, as a regular guest on Brain Fitness shows and an inspirational speaker.

Then

Next thought was Mill Valley’s Howard Kornfeld, whose Recovery without Walls program offers an alternative to residential treatment programs for individuals dealing with addiction to pain killers and other addictions.  His practice, set in a small office in downtown Mill Valley, promotes itself as a healing community based upon its location in one of Southern Marin’s most luxuriously beautiful, hyper-elite neighborhoods (a place where many of the top 1% whose wealth has proliferated throughout the 8 years of the Bush administration reside). I know this because I am one of the ‘minority’ inhabitants of this absurd bubble community, one of the ‘real’ people who still live here, amidst the Porsches and Mercedes and the 20 plus day spas, plastic surgery and botox centers and a wellness bistro which pumps healthy infusions into the arms of the county’s eternally young, rail-thin Hermes and True Religion jeans zealots, who flock here for fresh wheat grass juice daily.

An oasis for treatment without walls

I think Big Pharma should be required to subsidize the withdrawal of the millions of Americans they have addicted to their anti-depressants and mood stabilizers in lieu of the billions they pour each year into ‘direct to consumer advertising,’ a practice that was not legal until the Clinton administration (oh, those Clintons, so what favors they might pull in from Pharmaceuticals and MSM on the heels of creating their mind-bogglingly orgasmic financial fiefdom.

Was depression so wide-spread before they began informing America just how many of our normal life experiences had a name?  Were males really secretly so impotent?  Were so many legs restless, so many sinuses clogged?  Do you remember if we had such a magnitude of ills  before these symptoms were torched into our brain as identifiable treatable illnesses?

There is no cure with these medications. There is no solace, no return to normal functioning. Rather, there is an on-going cascade of side-effects: word retrieval problems, memory loss, fugue, confusion, lethargy, weight gain, appetite loss, loss of motivation, joy. A seamless disconnect from the realities of engaging in meaningful relationship, from the normalcy of holding down a steady job.

So I’ve been doing all this research, about neurogenesis, about the role of yoga, the role of sound therapy, the role of brain exercises. The possibilities offered by natural supplements which weren’t on the market 16 years ago, when my first psychotic break brought me (after two months of fighting) to the doors of traditional western medicine where they informed me i suffered from Major Depressive Disorder and I, too weak and crazy) finally bent over and swallowed the prescribed remedies. I look back now and recall saying, “But I’m not depressed. I’m anxious, I’m nervous, I can’t sleep.”  Back then… Prozac was already old hat; we had moved on to Pazil and Wellbutrin. Wonderdrugs. The leitmotif of the moment. Who knew? Who suspected?

Does this describe Major Depressive Disorder with Psychosis? Cause this is what I experienced.

Symptoms of a Nervous Breakdown

Panic attacks
Breathlessness
Vertigo
Thoughts of suicide
Multiple phobias
Inability to cope
Fear of enclosed or open spaces
Loss of confidence
Uncontrollable crying
Feeling apprehensive
Heart palpitations
Unusual physical sensations
Increased social anxiety

Loss of short-term memory
Depression
Intrusive dark thoughts
Loss of concentration

NO, I didn’t feel depressed; no, I felt like I was losing my sanity … due to lack of sleep, obsessive and intrusive thoughts, fear ….

Was my lack of sleep due to excessive cortisol secretions at the wrong time, messed up circadian rhythms or vica versa? Nobody tested my cortisol, guess they didn’t know about doing that back in the day. They didn’t even know how to describe to me what these rushes were that I was having like clockwork early every afteroon, this rush, this movement of energy up in my chest, like a flittering bird trapped within my chest cavity. And this was before the brain zaps and the electic shocks which traversed the length of my body, from toes to head. Hmmm. Nobody quite understood that either.

But like I keep saying, I wasn’t depressed. I was terrified. Ideations of death, suicide, blood on the walls, pictures morphing into blood soaked canvases, dogs into wolves chasing my car. Two people standing along the side of the roadway, a potential murderer about to pull out a knife on his female companion.

“What if ….?” ” What if ….”? “What if….” Every, any imagineable horror seemes on the verge of actualization. There was no safe place. Intrusive thoughts whirled through my mind 24×7.

Cortisol and depression

If a person is depressed the hypothalamus may continuously influence the pituitary to produce CRH without regard to the amount of cortisol in the blood.

Thye timing of the release of cortisol can cause problem in people who are depressed. In the normal cycling of cortisol, its level is highest at approximately 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m, and lowest during the night. While in a depressed person, they might have a consistent level of cortisol all the time, or highest amounts in the middle of the night.

Cortisol Testing

The level of cortisol can be tested by using a dexamethasone suppression test (DST). It is can be used to confirm a diagnosis of depression. In this test a dose of dexamethasone, a synthetic cortisol is given to the person before going to sleep at night. At next morning the person’s blood is tested for checking the level of cortisol at 8:00 a.m. and again at 4:00 p.m. In normal person it is found that the cortisol level is drop first later return to normal level. But the people who are severely depressed, approximately one-half will show the abnormal result.

So once again, I’m looking for an alternative. My last session with my psychiatrist of 16 years ended with a sense of uncertainty as to where we are going from here: is there a ‘forward’ left in our relationship? Are we too different in our world views to work together?  And the growing realization within myself: perhaps I am not my diagnosis; perhaps I have been just an unwitting victim of a trend in treatment which lumped all of us with horrifying symptoms into a category which met the guidelines of the pharmaceutical industry for its latest drugs. Can I remain with a doctor who has admitted to being too busy to read up on new research which questioned the efficacy of these drugs? Who didn’t know what a BrainZap was before I told her about experiencing them? Whose re accreditation courses are funded by drug companies?

… kind of floating free right now… not knowing what my next step will be, fiercely mistrustful that all treatments are gimmicks. That we are all pawns in a system driven purely by profit.

I return tonight to a study of mirror neurons and read again the amazing article “The role of mirror neurons in addiction and recovery” in which  Prof. V.S. Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition of the University of California at San Diego, suggests mirror neurons are perhaps one of the most important findings in neuroscience of the decade. “Mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology,”  So, I wonder, who is working with mirror neurons and the treatment of depression?

And then, once again, I return to brain state conditioning.  And find that yes, there are practitioners in my area. The Quiet Mind

Find yours

So is this where I go? Is this my next step? Maybe double down on my iyengar yoga classes, 6 times a week rather than 3, meditate twice a day, and find someone who works with CBT?

Perhaps the most fascinating discovery of my work tonight is the findings about mirror neurons and how the need for connectedness is part of our genetic code:

To be sure, the mere presence of mirror neurons in an organ known to be involved in addiction is not proof of a connection, but it’s an issue that seems to warrant study. Another hint that addiction may be connected in some way with the mirror neuron system comes from behavioral observations of social isolation in many individuals with addictive disorder. Again, social isolation is far from a universal pattern, and isolation can be explained by other mechanisms – stigma, shame, rejection, etc. – but the mirror neuron hypothesis offers an interesting alternative perspective that bears investigating. What has probably not been illuminated sufficiently in the
past is the sensation of resonance that group participants sometimes experience. In our LifeRing groups, where participants recount the highlights and heartaches of their current lives, we frequently hear people use the vocabulary of resonance – “this resonates with me” or “that rings a bell with me” or “I feel for you” are common expressions. This resonance has the quality of directly felt experience, a quality that goes deeper than cognitive similarity or abstract congruency. We can now hypothesize that this feeling of resonance occurring in the group process stems from the activation of our mirror neuron system. This resonance may lead to cognitive insights, and it may very well have an emotional component, but the core energy released is neither cognitive nor emotional, but experiential.

Sweet hope,

sweet hope

we are not alone at all, after all. We are ‘wired’ to be communal animals. As society and cultural norms have morphed into promoting disconnection from family, social outlets, a real world community, our ‘mirror neurons’ have become frayed, disjointed, desperately lacking the cohesion required for their primary function: human contact.

Help, get me out of my self!

Endnote:

Two simple articles from Time magazine explaining such concepts as neurogenesis, repurposing of parts of the brain to assume lost functionality in damaged regions, mirror neurons, and Cognitive Therapy and changes to the brain’s structure

The New Map of the Brain

How the Brain Rewires Itself

self-therapy and depression

Originally posted on my other blog, which I won’t link to here

<snipping all the personal stuff
Marked Features of Depressive Thinking:
* Inability to Concentrate
* Inability to Make Decisions
* Self-criticism: “Everything I’ve done is a failure”
* Self-loathing: “I AM a failure
* Pre-occupation with problems, failures, and bad feelings
[Taken almost verbatim from "Managing Your Mind: The Mental Fitness Guide", 2nd Edition, by Gillian Buttler, PhD and Tony Hope, MD [page 286]

I highly recommend this book; it’s not a “fun” read but the practical advice is astounding.
It has its own cognitive behavioral strategies for working on depression. First of all, since the natural tendency of depression is to conserve energy– depression, as it were, being accompanied by fatigue and feelings of “what’s the point?”… force yourself to do things, even a few simple things every day. Getting out of bed, taking a shower, taking out the recycling, paying a bill. All of those will increase your feeling of accomplishment which will increase your self-worth. If you don’t get some of these little things done, depression becomes a downward spiral, and you feel even worse because you didn’t do them.

But, something even more compelling that the book mentions is, Be Kind to Yourself. Recognize that things that used to be easy for you are now hard, for the time being, just as if you have the flu. I find this absolutely life-changing. It never occurred to me to allow myself the same kindness for getting stuff done as I would show myself if my body had the flu. In other words, push through to some activities, even if it’s only one or two a day at first. Re-engage in the activities that you used to find enjoyable, even if, due to the depression, you no longer find them enjoyable… that will help you out of your depression, gradually (it is NOT an overnight process).

The book later suggests that there are two other things one can focus on: your thoughts and your support systems. With thoughts, avoid looking too far ahead. Just focus on feeling better than you are now, at this moment, don’t worry about feeling completely better.

Keep a diary/record of each of the things you do during the day, and separate them between mastery and pleasure. Mastery is for tasks that you found difficult to do, but did anyway. Rank them. Pleasure rankings is for tasks that you found relatively enjoyable and rank them on a pleasure scale (both scales 1-10. And then there are a bunc of suggestions around activities, bolded, summarized and directly quoted here [Butler and Hope, p. 298-299]

Schedule more pleasant events, even something like a leisurely bath. I find that a spa day really helps lift my mood.

Schedule those activities that increase your energy level, like working out, going for a hike, running with your kids.

Look for activities that you find relatively absorbing, which can help you forget your depression until it becomes a non-issue. As proof, just merely writing this piece has lead me to get out of a funk in which I took psychopharmaceuticals, which by the way, did not work. I still felt anxious, just sleepy too. It was only doing something mind-occupying and active did I “forget” my depressive thoughts long enough to not feel them.

Establish a daily routine for yourself!! This one I have found to be KEY. The more disorganized your days get, the more depressed you are likely to be, adding a little routine can go a long ways.

the elusive happiness

I found something interesting about happiness. Nico Fridja, a dutch professor of psychology at the University of Amsterdam, in 1986 developed something called the 12 laws of emotion. I was most interested in this:

“There are certain awful circumstances to which we can never become accustomed. If things are bad enough, it is impossible to escape negative feelings like fear or anxiety. On the other hand positive emotions always fade over time. No matter how much we are in love, how big the lottery win, or how copious the quantities of drugs consumed, positive emotions like pleasure always slip away.” snipped from Psychblog.

I don’t understand what this means. Is he saying that if things are bad enough one is doomed to feeling constant, pervasive chronic fear for the rest of one’s life? That seems awfully deterministic, and well, hopeless. Frijda is arguing that pain and sorrow never really subside over time, but positive experiences (which then generate positive emotions), such as a safe living environment, enough food on the table, even winning the lottery, generate temporary feelings of happiness that fade over time. As humans, then, we must constantly be seeking new ways to become happy.

But this is a decidedly western view. I know that Buddhist Psychology does not buy into this bullshit (bullshit being used in caustic tones, not meant to degrade his work, as I somewhat believe what he is saying is true, I’m just not sure if our emotions, and the role they play in our moods, HAVE to be this way). I will have to pick up my Pema Chodron and see what Buddhist Psychology has to say about this.