Healing Schizophrenia through diet and gut microbiome?

[Julius]

I just read this comment on a youtube video on the mircobiome and wanted to share it here, because it is a story of hope and good medical insight. The user called Abhinav Srivastava  wrote how he helped improve his mother's gut and had her Schizophrenia cured by diet. After she was on medication for 32 years:

Quote

 

My mother was about to die due to adverse reaction of some anti psychotics that the stupid doctor gave her. She had to be admitted to ICU for immediate flushing. She wasn't able to walk or even use her hands due to that, she also had extreme fever 106 degrees. Doctors were lying about her condition and were saying that she had typhoid. But she was also getting a lot of fits every now and then, which doesn't happen in typhoid. I was very stressed due to that and that forced me to go on internet and read about this deadly disease. And after a year, I look back and find all that trauma as a blessing in disguise. Due to observation, I figured out that she used to get more symptoms immediately after eating, So i did an experiment with her and kept her on 3 days water only fast and miraculously all her symptoms vanished after just 3 days of fasting. I became happy and gave her apple and grape juice to drink to break the fast and immediately she started getting Schizophrenia symptoms again. I immidiately knew that it has to do something with her gut. I started reading more about it and I figured out that pharmaceutical industry has killed more people than it has saved by it's poisonous pills. Even my mother was once hospitalized because of adverse Anti psychotics drugs' reaction in her body. I started asking my family about what medicines she used to take before she fell ill 32 years ago and found out that she used to take NSAID's pain killers during her PMS and also her diet was full of meat. Read how those pain killers badly damage the gut's lining as well as kills good bacteria in gut. Also a lot of meat in diet simply rots inside stomach and give birth to bad bacteria. I started giving her just one thing to eat at a time and started taking notes about her symptoms and in just a week found out that Gluten containing items like wheat, barley and some oats were giving her extremely weird thoughts as if someone wants to kill her, TV is talking to her etc. Milk casein protein was causing her to have hallucinations, she was seeing weird things on the wall or her dead parents and relatives after consuming milk or milk based products. So a combination of tea and cookies in breakfast was causing a lot of trouble for her. And a birthday cake which has bread, milk cream, eggs, sugar was a nightmare for her. Anything that causes gas build up in stomach was also giving her symptoms. I immediately removed these two things from her diet and my whole family was dumb founded to see that almost 95% her schizophrenic symptoms simply vanished. Last thing was sour food items like lemon, vinegar, oranges, grapes etc and too sweet items like white sugar or anything really sweet was also causing her to have extreme irritation and anger for no reason. Which were sign of bipolar disease, which again got vanished after I removed sour and sweet items from her diet. She became 100% normal. Next thing was to know what's wrong with her gut. And after messing on internet for many months, I found out a disease, which modern doctor's don't even consider a disease, known as "Leaky Gut Syndrom". In this the gut lining gets badly damaged and due to that, undigested protein fragments enter the blood stream and cause inflammation. Inflammation in parts of body was not so much visible but inside brain inflammation was causing Schizophrenia. Our intelligent immune system recognizes those undigested food fragments as invaders which can destroy body so it starts attacking those cells which have those fragments attached to them. When body senses that it's under attack from inside, it starts producing more adrenaline and then they get converted to adrinochromes and that in turn causes a lot of dopamine production and neurotransmitter activity inside brain gets messed up pretty bad. That's how Schizophrenia happens guys. The drug pushers ie doctors keep giving anti psychotics to reduce dopamine and never really pay attention to why the hell body is producing so much of it. And they are so stupid that they blame it on genes, anything that they don't understand, must be due to genes. They treat symptoms, not disease, by pushing pills down our throats. I started giving my mother what I used to take when i used to go to gym. It's called L-Glutamine powder and it helps body to build cells more efficiently specially gut lining. Started with 10g L-Glutamine x 4 times a day. 1000mg Curcumin extract 2 times a day as it helps calming down inflammation. 2 capsules of digestive enzymes before each meal, We also gave her 1g x 3 times Niacin (flush type), she never got flush though. Also zinc 50mg everyday as that helps in tissue building. And we started giving her probiotic rich food like kimchi and sourcrout after washing it's sourly liquid to increase good bacteria in stomach. And Bam! She never had any symptoms ever. In no time she started to sleep too much and we found out her anti psychotics were now causing her to sleep 14 hours a day so we started decreasing her dose very slowly to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Even though her doctor strictly said not to do so as that will cause a relapse. It's been a year now and she never had a single symptom. We just have to make sure that she keeps taking her supplements on time. She doesn't need that many supplements now, only L-Glutamine 5g x 3 times specially in the early morning to dilute stomach acid which irritates gut lining. And zinc 10mg everyday. And a cup of sourcrout. She is now on complete vegan diet. Milk is replaced by coconut milk, wheat, bread etc is replaced by rice, whits sugar is now banned in my family, we don't eat added sugars now. She eats all fruits except watermelon, and sour fruits like grapes, oranges etc. Also 6 cups of raw vegetables in the form of salad is a must as that helps good bacteria to sustain inside gut and also is easy on digestion. No meat, no milk, no eggs. She is free from her 32 years long mental trauma and lives a normal life. She has better memory than I do, she is a loving, caring and very smart woman who had to bear so much because of over the counter pain killers and antibiotics and artificial hormones laden meat. Eating meat may not be bad, but eating farm raised meat, eggs, fish is plain poisonous. They feed them antibiotics laden GMO based food. Those poor things live extremely devastating lives which causes them to live in stress all the time. Instead of water, Fish in farms swim in antibiotics soup, so that they don't die as so much stress will simply kill them without those antibiotics. When this antibiotic laden meat enters our gut, it simply kills those beneficial bacteria and in fact bad bacteria appears from rotten meat and they become antibiotic resistant after so consuming much antibiotic laden food. Now no one can tell that she ever had any schizophrenia. We don't eat Gluten and milk products in my family now. Also as inflammation reduced in her body, her migraine headaches, swollen feet, rashes on skin, excessive hair fall, pain in the bones etc all vanished as well. Touch wood and God bless. It's been one year free from any medicine whatsoever. No doctors are allowed to enter my home. PS. I am not giving any medical advice here as in my country only those drug pushers known as doctors can give medical advice. So please don't blindly follow what I stated, Use your own head. I am only telling what I did and cured my mother.

[xe****]

My concern is that this could be really dangerous for certain people to think they could have schizophrenia cured by diet changes. Their safety and the safety of those around them... I have a family history of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. I have had dear loved ones with these disorders. I do not myself have schizophrenia.

 

I realize over medication is a problem. And some psychiatric treatments seem barbaric to me. But there are also some legitimate reasons for sedation and anti psychosis medications as well as anti anxiety meds.

 

I would caution people not to just go off meds without talking it over with an expert practitioner, whether they are holistic or traditional. By expert I mean someone who has first hand experience treating schizophrenia so there is no experimentation factor. In other words, you should be able to know possible dangers before you start and be prepared to handle them.

[Tine]

I agree with @xenspirit The headline claiming to have schizophrenia cured by diet makes a very bold and for some ppl maybe even dangerous claim. When treating schizophrenia, there should be a professional involved. One size doesn't fit all. That goes for the new treatments or ideas as it goes with the established ones.

There are so many connections in body and mind, so many unknown or newly discovered factors, mysteries and very personal influences that I think it's important to stay open, curious yet critical. Why not try changing your diet to something healthier, cutting down on meat and then with every step seeing how it affects you. "Healthier diet -> healthier body -> positive effects on the mind" these connections seem more than plausible. Healthy, regular eating, fresh air and exercise are important parts of effective and lasting therapy for depression as well yet I wouldn't call them the cure based on a comment in a youtube video.

Maybe something like: Could the gut bacteria's health influence our mental health?

 

[Julius]

Thank you for your input and caution. You are totally right, everyone needs to make their own opinion. This is not medical advice, but just an interesting youtube comment I found... I added a question mark to the title, to make it more of a discussion than a statement

 

Having said that, I am not a big fan of the whole pharmaceutical industry, they are not in the business of healing people. Personally I encounter more and more cases where medication is actually doing more harm than good and I think they are completely over prescribed in our society. The pharmaceutical industry has some of the strongest lobbies and do not only influence laws, but also determine what is being taught to doctors.

 

People are manipulated through tv-shows and other media into perceiving doctors as uber-smart life savers, where in nearly all cases I encountered they blindly prescribe medication to treat symptoms without even questioning what circumstances lead to their existence in the first place. Many, if not most doctors do not stay up to date with the latest research, but simply follow the industry sponsored journals and therefore deepen their narrow view points and frankly ignorance to a more holistic picture.

 

Obviously this does not count for all doctors, there are exceptions who dare to question what they have been taught and continue learning and broadening their perspectives. Personally I doubt every recommendation any doctor gives me, do my own research and develop my own opinion.

 

Part of that bigger picture which is forming for me is that maybe we need very little external medicine. Whether or not we can see schizophrenia cured by diet, nature itself has tremendous healing potential. Fasting and/or well chosen foods/diets seem to be capable of healing a lot of mental and physical diseases. Or as Socrates said: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

 

[xe****]

Thank you for changing the tone of the comment of having schizophrenia cured by diet to debate. I agree that the pharmaceutical corporations have an unfair and more than probably unethical government lobby. And I have seen the people in the old folks home medicated into a stupor so I am on the same page there.

 

I remember the other side of that with the pschizophrenic illness in particular where there was so little medication and info and people were just put away for life or they became homeless at alarming rates when unmedicated when that practice of long term mental health hospitalization became obsolete and instead people were encouraged to live independently.  And most certainly my Generalized Anxiety Disorder and panic attacks might be treated as ”hysteria” or a product of those with female chromosomes in another age. I am grateful for a more enlightened amount of info about mental health. And at least I am grateful for medication.

 

I remember when I was very resistant to using them with an attitude much like the man in the comment. And I think if you've never lived through a psychosis or bouts of irrational fear when you are sure your most nightmarish imagined possibilities are absolutely true that a person might insist that no person with paranoia should be medicated because it is not natural. But I remember being homeless. I remember being alone with my anxiety.  I don't wish that on anyone and I absolutely believe that there is a reason for doctors, therapists and medication.

 

I guess I don't want to go back to the hell which I would call my particular version of a nightmare when my attitude was just like this gentlemen's that I could cure my anxiety if I found the right combo of diet and natural products. Some wisdom came with years of therapy. I learned some skills. I still have the same issues, though. And if either the healthcare system or the social system failed me due to the political currents, I think I could possibly end up being maybe if not in the same boat at least in a untenable position where life could be nearly impossible for me. For that reason I become really nervous when I hear people talking like the gentleman above that he doesn't trust traditional medicine at all. 

 

Although I practice a form of energy medicine and I appreciate that traditional medicine is imperfect and does not always have the best answers, I also have been the happy patient of some procedures that have saved my life on multiple occasions.

My most recent save was after my reiki practitioner detected that there was something vibrationally wrong in my chest area my doctor listened and had me tested and they found an aortic aneurysm. Which goes to prove the reiki principle to not rely on reiki alone for a persons medical issues. After a very long surgery and an afterwards lavage procedure to remove blood clots, I am still around to tell the tale. I am very thankful. Having a brush like that with mortality and then the resulting brain fog and also loss of use of my vocal chords (temporarily), I feel fortunate for what life I have and for the vocation of traditional medicine as well as grateful to the intuition and reiki insight of my reiki practitioner. 

 

I guess I am a person who would advocate for both types of medicine. I am very leary of those folks who say they have absolutely no use for doctors. I happen to live near Harvard and I have met and been treated by some of the brilliant folks who teach there. I kind of feel like those who want to rely solely on their own advice have that right, but I think it pays to be open to both views. Changing your diet can benefit your health, but to have schizophrenia cured by diet? In my experience it's not as simple as that.

 

[Li****]

Although I have no personal experience on the topic, I find this an interesting debate. Schizophrenia cured by diet is certainly a bold statement (or in this case, question!) and it has created a really interesting conversation. I also believe in a healthy balance and mix between both types of medicine - there are benefits to be had from both. And there are absolutely cases where doctors are too quick to prescribe a drug, and as mentioned above, other cases where there is absolutely no other way.

 

The most important thing is to find what works for you and your health, and to keep an open mind.💫

[Ni****]

I agree with the previous speakers that a miracle cure through a balanced bacterial culture in the intestine can give many people hope to escape from the dictates of the pharmaceutical industry, but to postulate this as a general cure also against mental illnesses I also consider dangerous.

 

Just like the uncritical trust in classic pharmaceutical medications. How about compromises that the individual affected person decides for himself? 

 

Proven industrial drugs can give insecure or anxious patients a basic security. And if something is of natural origin, it does not mean that it is automatically healthy or healing.

 

A generalized statement like schizophrenia cured by diet is just as incorrect as schizophrenia cured by psycho drug X. The individual truth probably lies in between.

 

I find that a healthy critical attitude in ALL directions is a good guide and I feel distrust when someone claims to have found the perfect solution for something. 

 

But overall, I also want to say that there is of course a very very strong connection between psyche and physique, the state of our psyche significantly affects the health of our body as well as vice versa.

 

It cannot be denied that the state of our digestive system (and our gut brain!) noticeably affects our mental health (and thus our cerebral brain). But to deduce from this that schizophrenia cured by diet is to be generalized, I find somehow misleading.