Mental Health and Vitamins:

The May, 2005 issue of Discover Magazine has an interesting article entitled “Vitamin Cure?” It asks the question: “Can common nutrients curb violent tendencies and dispel clinical depression?”

Some researchers suspect that even mild nutrient deficiencies can affect a person’s psyche long before any physical symptoms appear. In 1997 a British study compared the mineral content of fruits and vegetables grown in the 1930s with that of produce grown in the 1980s. It found that nutrients had dropped dramatically, including calcium (down 30%), iron (down 32%), and magnesium (down 21%).

An Oxford University physiologist has been exploring the link between mental health and nutrients by giving basic supplements to inmates in one of Britain’s toughest prisons. He has found that antisocial behavior of all kinds drop by 35%.

The study of mental health and micronutrients is known as orthomolecular psychiatry. Dr. Linus Pauling, Nobel laureate, wrote that nutritional supplements, unlike psychotherapy or drugs, present a way to provide “the optimum molecular environment for the mind.” He also wrote that varying the concentration of nutrients in the human body, may control mental disease even better that conventional treatments.

Canadian psychiatrist Abram Hoffer claims successful treatment of thousands of schizophrenics with supplementation with vitamin C and niacin. He contends that the nutrients neutralize an oxidized compound that causes hallucinations when it accumulates in the brains of patients. Other researchers induced brain lesions in two groups of infant rats, then dissected them as adults. In those given supplements rather than placebos, the lesion shrank.

Most nutritional research has focused on single nutrients, but Harvard psychiatrist Andrew Stoll believes that the effects of nutrients are additive-that their true strength and positive effects become apparent only in multi-nutrient formulas.

The brain and other complex mechanisms of the human nervous system rely on at least 40 basic nutrients to run smoothly. Other experts believe that for optimal mind and body functions, that number may be as many as 75-80. The lack of any one may cause a malfunction, leading to depression, irritability, or psychosis. This is no less true for all other body systems; not only for the proper functioning of systems and organs, but also for the ability of the body to fight diseases of all kinds.