Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
I have known a number of bipolar people and I tend to easily click with them. I don't think I am actually bipolar, but I do suspect my medical condition sometimes impacts my brain functioning in a similar manner.
Without bothering to get into lengthy anecdata I think a) acidosis likely is a root cause of mental health problems but b) solving it isn't as simple or straight forward as just controlling the acidity.
If your body functions different from the norm such that the result is high acidity, there will be a lot of other knock off effects.
So, it is a little like saying "Deserts are deserts because they lack water. So let's just add water." Well, no, they typically lack water because they are in the rain shadow of a mountain range. Importing water doesn't fix that. Importing it consistently, for many years may allow you to mitigate many of the effects, but you will have to keep working at it. You will not find that climate in the area "normalizes" just because you imported water and grew plants. You will still be in the rain shadow of a mountain and if you stop importing water and stop lovingly tending to human planted flora, it will eventually revert back to desert.
In biology there are many complicated feedback loops and in some cases a parameter seems to get stuck outside of the normal range. In those cases, bringing the parameter back into the normal range can be enough to allow the normal feedback mechanisms to work properly again.
Some examples:
* Eczema: There can be a loop between irritation, inflammation, damage to the skin, more irritation. Treat the skin with steroids to both improve symptoms and disrupt the loop.
* Myopia: Studies have shown that undercorrecting for near-sightedness actually makes it worse [2]. Bringing it back into the normal range doesn't just help the symptoms, it also makes it progress slower.
* Depression: Maybe operating at a higher level, but there's a clear loop between changed behaviour and improved motivation.
Even something like acidity could be like this. You could speculate a link between gut bacteria and acidity, whereby changing the acidity directly could alter the balance of bacteria which locks in the change in acidity.
[1] http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Catling2012_GreenMoun...
[2] http://www.journalofoptometry.org/en/under-correction-human-...
My medical condition is genetic in origin. I have reversed a lot of my symptoms and, yes, maintaining my improved condition is easier than I expected.
I have come to believe that "the normal progression" of my condition is rooted in a nasty positive feedback loop. If you can interrupt it, it is game changing.
But interrupting it isn't for sissies, so to speak.
Even so, my body will never be normal. But it is sort of like being a Kosher Jew: As long as I abide by particular dietary and lifestyle restrictions, I don't have to be sick all the time, even though it means I can't live "normally." I am happy to accept that deal over the alternative.
From the 2010 story:
> Sixty million years ago, a lemurlike animal—an early ancestor of humans and monkeys—contracted an infection. It may not have made the lemur ill, but the retrovirus spread into the animal’s testes (or perhaps its ovaries), and once there, it struck the jackpot: It slipped inside one of the rare germ line cells that produce sperm and eggs. When the lemur reproduced, that retrovirus rode into the next generation aboard the lucky sperm and then moved on from generation to generation, nestled in the DNA. “It’s a rare, random event,” says Robert Belshaw, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford in England. “Over the last 100 million years, there have been only maybe 50 times when a retrovirus has gotten into our genome and proliferated.”
>...Perron in 2008, found HERV-W in the blood of 49 percent of people with schizophrenia, compared with just 4 percent of healthy people.
I've often wondered how many viruses we contract that don't present any obvious symptoms.
How would we know to look for them?
Does anyone know if this idea has been looked in to?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Immune_respo...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenovirus_serotype_36#Role_in...
I asked him once about the alleged behavioral changes associated with T. gondii and he said the research on that is bunk. Shrug...
Even the idea of contracting a virus is not well defined. Does it have to reproduce from human cells? What if it just passes through us or lives off our gut bacteria?
The whole world is soaked with viruses. They're everywhere all the time and if they don't specifically interfere with us we never notice 'em.
For me, this further confirms that metabolic problems are causally-associated with 'mental disorders'.
Lactic acidosis is a medical condition characterized by
the buildup of lactate (especially L-lactate) in the body,
which results in an excessively low pH. It is a subtype of
metabolic acidosis, where excessive acid is due to a
problem with the body's metabolism.
I used the courts to get the mental health system to reduce the harm they were perpetrating upon my friend, who they thought had a 'persistent mental disorder'. Really she was just self-medicating depression with the street pharmacy. (Cocaine and the amphetamines are not very good for people's mitochondria/metabolism, which is why they're illegal.)
In response to my bullying, the treatment provider did a genetic test, and decided that she needed Folate (Vitamin B-9), as she can't convert folic acid like most people. She's doing much better on the reduced dosages of tranquilizers ('anti-psychotics')/etc.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-integrationist/2014...
> down sugar to generate energy, which subsequently turns into acid."
The "Ketosis" / "Ketogenic diets" are helping in this case?
That kind of answers your question, but not directly.
[1] Biochemistry of exercise-induced metabolic acidosis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15308499
Note: During low oxygen levels in tissue, metabolism becomes anaerobic -> lactic acid is produced. Lactic acid <-> lactate + H+.
See e.g. http://www.normalbreathing.com
CNS/Diseases of the Brain Are Caused by Low Brain O2/CO2 Levels
http://www.normalbreathing.com/diseases-Brain.php
Sedatives | CO2: Natural Sedative and Tranquilizer http://www.normalbreathing.com/CO2-stabilizer.php
After 15 years of panic attacks, anxiety, migraines, hay fever... if finally found the solution: learn to breathe correctly again. The best and cheapest thing I've ever learned for my health!
This is just one site, but there are many more on the web. Not affiliated to a single one of them, but hopefully I can share the joy of a panic attack free live with at least one other person. :)
If it works for you it works for you, but I'd caution readers to be skeptical when trying it out.
I agree that everyone should be skeptical and look for evidence.
For me personally it has been a godsend, that's what I can state. I also know about 5 other people who have applied this knowledge and all had noticeable improvements in various areas.
Experience may vary of course. Bodies are also different.
You can go the Buteyko way, Chi-Gung, Yoga, Wim Hoff method etc etc. whatever works if you need it.
Generally I do however think that breathing is way, way underappreciated as a cause for various diseases.
I've seen 5 medical specialists who overlooked my breathing _patterns_. I've been hooked up to heart monitoring devices, gave plenty of blood to examine and all that jazz.
The solution was literally right under my nose.
In the end it was a $5 USD discounted book about Buteyko's research that made all the difference.
Breathe through your nose, your mouth is for eating and talking. That will already help many people. :)
Excuse my ignorance, but I don't see how they ruled out the possible link between antipsychotic drug use and increased acidity?
I'm also puzzled by how they can confidently diagnose rodents with human social disorders based solely on "genetic indicators" when the links between genetics and disorders like schizophrenia are still far from understood.
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v9/n7/full/4001511a.html?fo...
Sometimes lots of theories come out of a minute variation correlation and sometimes it's just a sampling coincidence (like it's just how schizoid brains break down). I'm VERY sure, someone has altered a schizoid's diet to a more or less acidic diet before. I will bet that pH therapy won't be very effective, but it might lead to some other discovery.
just a note on what therapeutic impact pH therapy have in other situation - mice study on pH therapy (baking soda added to drinking water) for cancer shows at least 2 things - neutralizing tumor pH improves response to other therapies and when alone the pH therapy reduces and slows down metastases formation (at the level of chemotherapy drugs - check out the 2 times difference in survival at the end of 4 month experiment https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2834485/figure/... ).
I'd love to know how a ten day water fast affects the mental processing and bio-markers of a group of schizophrenia patients. I'd also love to compare their brain activity in a sleep study to that of a control group.
Parallel issues here as with most dementias. Plaques seem to form in all brains, but for most people there are cleaning cycles that break them apart and remove them. With Alzheimer's disease this stops happening. Why?
Another intriguing question for schizophrenia -- eating foods rich in glutamate, for instance rich cheeses, is a negative trigger for many people with schizophrenia. Why? Well, glutamate is metabolized in the brain and it's used as a neurotransmitter. Obviously there is some sort of chemical processing issue in some patients. Figure out what exactly what the issue is and I'd bet you'll know much more about the root cause of Schizophrenia, and potentially several other major mental disorders.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25236722
"Glutamate plays key roles linking carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism via the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, as well as in nitrogen trafficking and ammonia homeostasis in brain."
"Ammonia homeostasis," sounds like something that might affect PH, right?
What is the significance behind ten days of starvation? Why not 1 or 2 or 3? 10 sounds 100% arbitrary.
Isn't increasing carbon dioxide in the air a standard stress invoking procedure in lab tests on rodents etc?
Further, we don't know whether acidity is the cause or the result of the disease. If it is a result of the disease, then reducing acidity may not affect symptoms of schizophrenia, much as eliminating beta amyloid does not guarantee a reduction in symptoms of Alzheimer's
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/87/5/2008/2846608
Because consumption of K+, Mg2+, and Ca2+ decreases calcium excretion, whereas consumption of Na+ and sulfur increases it, and because calcium is more soluble in acidic solutions and less soluble in alkaline solutions, there was a tendency to refer to the former as "alkaline" and the latter as "acidic". This is infuriating to people who know enough chemistry to know that Mg2+ is in fact much more acidic than Na+.
I am an amateur, but I've put a decent amount of time towards making sense of this, and it appears to me that it's mostly potassium, and to a lesser extent calcium and magnesium, that explains what is really going on here.
In this case, you'd try an acidic diet in order to coerce your body's natural processes to bring yourself to a more normal pH.
Obviously I don't know if that would work, but nobody can really say one way or the other without doing some proper research.
Bacteriocidal antibiotics which enduce mitochondrial dysfunction
Chronic sleep deprivation and stress
People with problematic genetics having children when 200 years ago it wouldn't have been possible
Lots of things that contribute to the increase in the incidence of various mental illnesses
Solutions are not easy at all either. If you ever see a diagram of what we know about metabolism it's ludicrous.