Sequel Thread To Holistic Doctors, and medicine

Pink Sasquatch, you spent a lot of time writing messages to me, so I think it's only fair that I reply. I repeat, I'm not going to win any debating points and I don't intend to persuade anyone, but I'll address your points.My information covered the results when phases two and three of STAR*D were completed, respectively. I agree, it sounds like I could do with seeing the original info. I'm not sure if it's online anywhere but I'll have a look.When I said AD trials I meant the clinical trials, the ones used for FDA approval. Maybe I should have been more clear. Those are usually about 6 weeks long, and test one drug at a time. Logically they would of course. But no one seems to be interested in finding out how combos of these meds affect the body and brain, though it appears that plenty of studies use these combos (as a look at PubMed reveals).You did ask me to look at PubMed. A cursory glance tells me that ADs are now being recommended for obesity and type II diabetes. I know people who have been prescribed them for sleep problems, and muscle pain. Several of the sources I have referred to here say that you can CURE type II diabetes with diet. No I'm not aware of any clinical trials that prove this. Someone needs to do some. Think about it though. You get type II diabetes from poor diet usually (though if you are taking a psych drug this can also be a cause -- why they are being prescribed for its actual treatment is anyone's guess). Correct your diet by cutting out the things that muck your blood sugar around, eat foods that help you heal, exercise, and see if that doesn't help a little bit more than popping a pill down your throat. Since I started the Paleo diet my own blood sugar has stabilised. I no longer get highs and crashes throughout the day from eating sugar or junk or meals loaded with simple carbs. It's so common-sense that I don't see why anyone should need to wait for a clinical trial to decide to do it themselves.Yet when my neighbour developed the disease, she came home from the GP's office with leaflets telling her to eat crackers and bread with every meal, and a low-fat diet. She could have sugar and cookies as long as she didn't have too many, and she needed to make sure everything she ate was low-fat. I couldn't believe my eyes. No wonder she has to take drugs. She's never going to get better eating like that. The way to manage diabetes is by eating simple carbs with every meal? Sugar is OK?? Also, fat helps to slow the digestion of these things and she's told to restrict it. I don't know what studies, if any, influenced the people who wrote these leaflets, but their ignorance of nutrition is frankly distressing.Studies on PubMed are still using olanzapine (Zyprexa). They claim it "helps." This is the drug that Lilly knew caused a higher incidence of type II diabetes, but hid the information until they were forced to reveal it in a court case -- one of a number of court cases brought by people who developed the disease on the drug. It made headlines. Yet obviously this is seen as an "insignificant" side effect because so many people are "helped" by this drug.I question how they decide that someone has been "helped." Often a standardised test such as the Hamilton is used, though there are others. I've seen the Hamilton myself; I've taken it. In assessing my depression it asked me if I blamed all the ills of society on myself, whether I wanted to kill myself, whether I felt worthless, etc. The fact that I said "no" to all these questions would have influenced my score. I felt utterly awful and it was difficult to function. But I kept things in perspective; I didn't believe that the illness was all my fault, I didn't hate myself for it, and I just wanted to find a way to put it right. OK so that shows I wasn't severely depressed, you might say. Can't you see though, how BIASED these judgements are? There's no objective or biological test for depression. Its presence and degree, and its absence, are purely subjective. Even the criteria in the DSM are subjective. They have to be.Other questions on the Hamilton include how well you are sleeping and how anxious you feel. The doc could knock you out with a strong medication to address these things, whether or not it affects your mood. I tried one that kept me in a zombie state for three days and I could barely stay awake. But my Hamilton score would have improved wouldn't it? Because I sure as hell was sleeping well and I had no anxiety.You said: Yes, most drugs have side effects. Wouldn't you like to prevent yourself from needing to take any? Try following Buzsaw's regime.What's more there are side effects, and side effects. Psychotropic meds affect the brain. Not one of the places most people would be willing to get side effects in, is it? One of the side effects is tardive dyskinesia. The risk is particilarly high for neuroleptics like Zyprexa. Here is what Peter Breggin says about it in his book, Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications. Breggin defends these patients in court cases. These effects of neuroleptics (and they can be effects of antidepressants as well) have been known for decades. Yet they are still developed and prescribed. I am utterly outraged that any drug that could produce these effects, which are sometimes permanent, should be approved for use at all. I've heard neuroleptics referred to as a chemical lobotomy. Not only is TD common with their use, but the way they "treat" symptoms like psychosis is by tranquilising and depersonalising the patient.The studies in journals like PubMed nevertheless go on recommending them. There are other non-drug treatments for schizophrenia however. Dr. Abram Hoffer has had success in treating it with large doses of niacin and vitamin C. My ND has helped people heal from psychosis through her diet and supplement regime.I belong to other lists besides hers. Some are for people who have been damaged by the drugs, or who have friends or loved ones who have been. Some of them saw their children commit suicide on the drugs. Some of these lists are just general health or mental illness topics. It is again obvious that people are suffering from the drugs and from withdrawal. Not all of them obviously. A number also say they have been helped by them. I ask this though: at what price? Let's say they go on the drugs once, feel they've been helped, and go on to live normal lives. Does that excuse all the other people whose lives have been wrecked by those same drugs? The people who conduct the clinical trials, who are usually the makers of those drugs, seem to think so. As I've said here before, I feel it is the height of callousness to ignore this kind of suffering. You would tell someone to take a drug like Zyprexa, and risk developing TD or diabetes, because it is "tried and tested," whereas a naturopathic approach -- unlikely to do any harm whatsoever -- is not?These drugs damage people. I find that unacceptable when there are better, healthier alternatives to healing.

LOLOL Thanks RiverRat. I kind of got the impression that my writing is a logical mess and that I'm disseminating a lot of misinformation. Unfortunately some of my sources have not been faultless and I have to admit that this is the case. But I'm fine with being made to sharpen up, I'm going to try to work on that.I'm glad that someone feels they've been helped by this and that it hasn't been a waste of time

I'm sorry about the ambiguity of the post about Zyprexa Percy. Yes it's been shown to cause diabetes, and yes it is a neuroleptic. It shouldn't be prescribed for depression, though it commonly happens.Did you read the info I gave from Peter Breggin's book about TD and its variations? And the risks of developing it on these meds? The people whom you say seem to have been helped by the Zyprexa stand a significant chance of developing serious problems if they stay on the drug, or indeed any neuroleptic.I've been attempting to explain here how clinical trials that claim to show that ADS and neuroleptics help people, can be flawed. That side effects can be significant and damaging, sometimes permanently so. That there are healthier alternatives. I would be interested to hear your opinion of the Welcome To Orthomolecular.org site, and Dr. Hoffer's work in particular. He worked with Linus Pauling, and he had had success with treating schizophrenia using niacin and vitamin C. Yet, you still say that clinical trials are the most reliable and most trustworthy sources of medical knowledge.I am not knocking the whole of the medical profession. Many doctors do help people. My ND is one. And some drugs help people and save lives. If I needed surgery I would go have it. But I think there is a fundamental flaw with the whole diagnose-and-prescribe philosophy where drugs are concerned. Too many drugs are prescribed for preventable illnesses and diseases. People are taking medications for mental illness in unprecedented numbers and yet depression is still a major problem; if the drugs were so helpful, then why is that -- shouldn't it be LESS of a problem than it was in the past?Clinical trials simply complement the diagnose-and-prescribe philosophy. So yes, I am seriously denigrating that, you are right. I think it is nothing short of criminal to prescribe a drug that can cause TD. It's horrific. I've met people who suffer this kind of permanent damage and my heart goes out to them. Mentally ill people are amongst the most vulnerable in society. If they are put in an institution they have little choice about being put on these drugs, and usually it is several at once. I don't care whether they are statistically significant or not. They are significant as human beings who deserve humane and dignified treatments, not brain-damaging drugs.The only way I can see for this to change is if more and more people take the pharmaceuticals to court and sue them. It's very difficult to do though, and most cases end up being settled out of court, keeping the pharaceuticals' legal records cleaner than they perhaps should be. The challenges aren't going to come from the people who do clinical trials on the meds though. They are going to come from people strengthening the growing movement of naturopathy, as more and more of them come to realise that allopathic medicine and its prestigious studies and journals don't always have the answers that many of us were raised to think that they do.

PurpleDawn you said: First I'd like to say that I'm sorry about the troubles that your family, and Hoot Mon's, have experienced. People join my ND's list all the time who report similar experiences and it makes my blood boil. Not many people want to listen, have you picked that up? They need to start listening. There's suffering being caused.In reference to your above statement, the idea of ADs remedying a chemical imbalance is a marketing ploy. No one has ever proved that there is a chemical imbalance involved in mental illness, or that these drugs selectively treat it. By boosting levels of serotonin throughout the body you can cause a serotonin high, but this is not somehow rectifying an imbalance. The brain actually reacts to this by reducing the number of serotonin receptors, in an attempt to restore balance. This is one reason why the drugs can cause withdrawal. It takes time for the brain to adjust every time its chemistry is disrupted.In Dr. Healy's book, the Anti-Depressant Era, he documents how time and time again drugs were developed for a different purpose and an unexpected side effect was that they had an antipsychotic or antidepressant effect in some people. Prozac was developed by accident. Once Lilly realised that they had a 5-HT reuptake inhibitor on their hands, they had meetings to decide how they would market it. Initially they decided to market it as an antihypertensive -- at that time, that market was bigger and more lucrative than the antidepressant market. It was only when a number of other drugs appeared on the market as SSRI antidepressants, that Lilly decided to get in on it too. In recent years, when the original patent for Prozac expired, they again gave the drug a re-make by marketing it as Sarafem, a "treatment" for PMDD.Interesting how these supposedly selective drugs metamorphose, with the clinical trials data always keeping step.There is just no chemical imbalance. The data which people claim support it do not stand up to careful scrutiny. Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

Zyprexa is indicated for the treatment of schizophrenia and acute mixed or manic episodes associated with bipolar disorder. http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/olanzapine_ids.htm Oh, and the "efficacy" was established in 6-week trials.This means that anyone prescribing this drug for depression is doing it off-label. I have serious concerns about off-label prescribing and its ramifications. A question for you: if the clinical trials are so important, then why are doctors allowed to prescribe virtually any drug for any reason they think fit, whether or not that use for that drug has been supported by a clinical trial? Specifically what old methods? I take it you are not referring to the prescription of opium or cocaine, which were some old methods. Or to trepanning, or bleeding. I'm not referring to them either. And how are the methods you are referring to flawed, exactly? I refer you to the text I lifted from Breggin's book in Message 8 He gives citations for his claims. I've also read about this in various other places and yes I've met people who have suffered from TD and akathisia. They are known side effects of neuroleptics. I've asked you a number of times if you would be kind enough to check out Dr. Hoffer's work at Orthomolecular.org. He has successfully treated schizophrenia with niacin and vitamin C. Here is a bibliography of his work. You'll have to scroll down the page to Papers and Articles Published to find what you want. http://www.doctoryourself.com/biblio_hoffer.html What are the implications of this statement -- that because I am questioning the validity of clinical drug trials, it means everything I am saying is invalid? I've explained why pharmaceuticals have a vested interest in doing trials on drugs not vitamins, and in publishing certain outcomes from those trials. If billions of dollars are at stake because the trials involve a blockbuster drug, do you seriously think this is not going to be a big motivator for a positive result -- and that any flaws are just due to people being human and making mistakes? I've explained how the drugs can be damaging to many people and that it's likely that adverse effects are severely underreported. I've given nutritional alternatives as possible cures, which if administered properly can prevent and cure the conditions for which these drugs are prescribed. I'm not saying you should put crystals around your house, do some feng shui, or wear a special piece of jewellery. I'm not suggesting you take any herbs. Diet and supplements, that's all, and they will not harm you.If you feel I haven't given enough evidence for you to accept that this is a credble alternative, that's fine. I'm not going to sit around and wait for clinical trials that may never come from an establishment that is driven by the diagnose-and-prescribe philosophy, when what is prescribed is almost always drugs and almost never a good diet and supplement regime.The sailors didn't wait for clinical trials before eating the lemons and limes that prevented them from dying of scurvy, though this idea took much longer to gain acceptance in mainstream medicine.

Thank you Nator. I'm hoping that when I'm feeling a bit better, I'll write a fiction book. Not sure what about.I can see now that people here want evidence from published scientific studies, preferably in peer-reviewed journals. I'll look for that and give it where I can; though as I've said here, these can be flawed, and their absence does not mean that a particular approach is without merit.I think Dr. Hoffer has done some outstanding work and I hope someone here has a look.

Sources please? Wikipedia, a pretty mainstream site, has a page dedicated to alleged chemical imbalances. Here is what it says at the top: In PubMed (see, I've found my way there) Fred Baughman published an article titled "There is No Such Thing as a Psychiatric Disorder/Disease/Chemical Imbalance." He is talking in the main about ADHD, but his arguments encompass the entire spectrum of mental illness. I have to admit I was delighted to find such an article in PubMed. There's hope yet.

See the thinking here though. It's parallel to the thinking that because SSRIs have an antidepressant effect, depression must therefore be caused by a serotonin deficiency. It's like saying that because you took aspirin and your headache went away, your headache must have been caused by an aspirin deficiency.The first indication I had that no one really knows about biological causes of depression came with the different kinds of meds my GP wanted me to try. It's just a guessing game, and these meds do different things and focus on different neurotransmitters. It was SSRIs first. Nothing. OK, try an SNRI now -- something that works on norepinephrine as well as serotonin. Still nothing. At that point I didn't want to experiment on my body anymore, but there were other things that they could have tried. Bupropion (Wellbutrin), which works on norepinephrine and dopamine. The old tricyclic ADs. I did try one of those.There are no indications here that these medications really target specific deficiencies. They wanted to find something that "worked" for me, but they didn't understand any better than anyone else why they might "work." They also offered ECT, which I refused wholeheartedly.The medications discussed in your citation have been deemed by someone, at some point, to have a therapeutic effect on schizophrenia. Therefore schizophrenia must be a dopamine deficiency. Or a glutamate deficiency. The truth is that no one really knows; this is all guesswork.The brain is designed to function in a state of homeostasis. Where is the logic in thinking that somehow, for some unknown reason, a deficiency suddenly develops and you are mentally ill? The brain attempts to maintain homeostasis by reducing the numbers of receptors for whatever neurotransmitter is flooding it due to drug intake. This is one reason why it can be so difficult for a person to recover from heroin use. It can take a year or more for the number of dopamine receptors to return to normal after the drug is discontinued. If there were an actual deficiency that needed correcting, why does the brain try to defend itself from what is supposed to be helping it?People won't stop trying to find the magic bullet, because there is pervasive belief in the biological model of psychiatry. Meantime, Dr. Hoffer's work with niacin and vitamin C in schizophrenia is ignored and forgotten.

It's difficult to know what to say without repeating myself Percy, and you are repeating yourself too. You set up the clinical trial as the gold standard (keeping in mind that studies can be flawed) and seem to want me to be able to back up my position by giving this kind of evidence that my diet-and-supplement regime works. How can I do that if people aren't doing clinical trials on diet? I've seen a number on vitamins. Buzsaw gave a good link a few posts back. These clinical trials in CAM are run by NIH. Why would they be doing that if they thought it was all woo-woo science? Hoffer's work has been published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, The British Medical Journal, The Canadian Medical Association Journal, the Lancet, and others. Are you going to check him out or just keep dismissing him? The mean length of approval trials for 9 antidepressants introduced between 1985 and 2000, including Paxil, was 6.23 weeks, as you can see here. It hasn't been approved for use as an antidepressant. A GP could prescribe it for that reason anyway. But how do they know it's going to work? I have been unable to find a single study on PubMed using Zyprexa to treat unipolar depression. If they prescribe it for this reason they are guessing based on no evidence, which is what you accuse naturopaths of doing.Anyway, what's wrong with being skeptical about off-label prescriptions? I was getting the idea that being called a skeptic is a compliment on this forum.I am not arguing that anecdote ought to be the rule. I would like to see people do clinical trials on nutrition. I'd like to see them done on vitamins, and all kinds of things. There will be little or no progress made, however, until the power to do these kinds of trials rests with a well-financed independent body with a remit to test more than just pharmaceuticals. Why would any pharmaceutical company want to conduct clinical trials on nutrition? Where's the money in it for them?In the meantime, as far as I'm aware, Pauling and Hoffer provide the best empirical evidence for orthomolecular medicine. Both of them have been published in mainstream journals. There's a lot of info in Pauling's book if you want me to share it, including his thoughts on why his vitamin C research went largely ignored. He was a mainstream scientist through and through with a deep love for his work and for humanity, and I think he was shocked and dismayed at the reception his vitamin C work received. I'll provide a bibliography again here. As you will see, his vitamin C work has been published in mainstream journals, including the American Journal of Psychiatry and the New England Journal of Medicine.Never mind that I see my ND's approach working for me and over a thousand other people on her list who have been through the mental health system. Have a closer look at the work of Pauling and Hoffer and then tell me what you think. You've got the information now on the studies they conducted. Hoffer is in his 80s but is still in practice and still the editor of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.Edited by LindaLou, : It's "unipolar" not "monopolar"

What about a different analogy then. Attempting to treat psychiatric disorders with drugs is like cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. Thesae drugs do not exclusively target the brain. Whatever neurotransmitter they increase, it's increased throughout the body. SSRIs increase serotonin, 5% of which is in the brain and most of which is located in the gut. Even if there were some deficiency in the brain that this was treating, what do you think all that extra serotonin is doing in the rest of the body? Wouldn't you wonder, if you were taking one of these drugs yourself? Just because we don't know, does that make it safe? Can you cite your evidence for this please?In a way, brain chemistry is always changing. It changes depending on whether you are happy or sad or angry. On whether you are awake or asleep. We also all have something called biochemical individuality, which means that one person's biochemistry (and reaction to drugs) can be significantly different from another's. This all makes diagnosing a pathological brain state difficult. Let's say a scientist claims to have done so. He/she says that SSRIs should work for depression because a definite serotonin deficiency has been found in depressed participants in a study. SSRIs increase the amount of serotonin in the brain. Therefore, that extra serotonin ought to lift the depression. But this very plainly is not the case in many people. It wasn't for me, though you could argue from circumstantial evidence that a lack of serotonin might have been my problem. My mood was low and I was no longer able to get enjoyment out of activities I used to love. I developed some anxiety, especially when the sun went down. Darkness was a particular problem, especially during the gloomy grey British wintertime. I was always worse in the tail-end of winter. I was convinced I had SAD. One of the things that sunlight does for us is stimulate serotonin production. I took ADs and I did hours of light therapy, both of which should have boosted my serotonin. They didn't help. I do not believe my depression was caused by something wrong with my brain that required a chemical fix and I believe that's the case for most, if not all, mentally ill people, unless they have suffered actual brain damage e.g. from a stroke or an illness or a genetic condition. How does an organ like the brain suddenly go "wrong" without the presence of a pathogen, or some kind of physical damage?Keep in mind that there can be many, many causes of mental illness that can be corrected without resorting to drugs. Nutritional deficiency diseases can cause a person to display symptoms of mental illness, even psychosis. What is it appropriate to do in that case -- diagnose and treat the deficiency, or give a mind-altering drug? Pauling's mother seems to have suffered from mental illness due to pernicious anaemia. Food allergies can also be causes of mental illness. Sometimes they can be quite acute. In his book Putting it All Together: The New Orthomolecular Nutrition, Dr. Abram Hoffer describes how a patient came to him presenting symptoms of psychosis. Through careful testing he discovered she had a number of severe food allergies. He discovered that the consumption of milk was a large catalyst for a psychotic episode. Thanks to Hoffer's help, this woman was able to put her life back together and became well enough to live independently and get a job. My ND, who is a practicing neurologist, told me. Do you tell your GP to give you sources of evidence for his claims when you go to see him? She's a busy person and she thinks that my talking here about this is largely a waste of time when I could be finding others to talk to who are more open to these ideas, though I have to say I'm enjoying the discussions I'm having on this forum and they're good for me in other ways. At any rate, I have attempted to find some evidence on my own that what she says is likely to be true. Here is an article from the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry by several doctors, which says that one possible cause of AD withdrawal symptoms is the decrease in availability of serotonin once the drug is withdrawn, and the fact that the serotonin receptors have been downregulated (decreased in numbers) due to the presence of the drug. It also suggests cholinergic rebound as another factor in withdrawal symptoms, which is something my ND frequently gives as an explanation for certain symptoms people report on her list. Here is another article from the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry which says the symptoms of SSRI withdrawal are similar to those of acute tryptophan depletion (tryptophan being the amino acid precursor of serotonin). This would be consistent with the idea that the brain downregulates its serotonin receptors in response to an SSRI; and once the drug is discontinued, the patient can suffer the symptoms of serotonin depletion until the receptors are able to upregulate in time. This is one reason why a very slow taper is usually the best way to discontinue these drugs; it gives the body time to adjust.I will talk more about clinical studies and mainstream medicine in my post to Percy.

Percy you said: So it's OK for a GP to prescribe a drug for a certain off-label condition as long as there have been no studies done showing that this practice is harmful? Surely the absence of evidence is not evidence in itself? This GP could be doing a lot of harm by prescribing drugs inappropriately until someone eventually does a study showing that this is so; and even then, it's still legal for the GP to carry on, though he/she would now be vulnerbale to being sued by someone who suffered adverse effects.What's more, the scientists conducting the clinical studies are trying to find novel uses for these drugs themselves. Your GP could soon receive approval, or even encouragement, to prescribe you an SSRI for tinnitus, weight loss, IBS, headaches, insomnia, or narcolepsy. None of these conditions qualifies as a mental illness, and none of this lends any credence to the suggestion that depression is due to a serotonin deficiency which these drugs treat. They can't be that selective, can they, if they supposedly are able to treat so many conditions? Would you like to find yourself being told to take Prozac next time you get some ringing in your ears? If you want to dismiss Breggin without reading anything he says, because he isn't published in a peer-reviewed journal, that's fine. I actually cited Pauling and Hoffer, both of whom have published in such journals many times. Even that isn't acceptable now apparently, because the broader scientific community disagrees with them. You seem to put a lot of faith in the authorities. I am going to be so bold here as to call this a logical fallacy. Instead of looking at anything either of these people have written, you are using an appeal to authority -- "The experts disagree with them, so that should be proof enough for you too."Let me tell you a bit about myself and others on various forums I belong to. The vast majority of us used to think just as you and Nator do. We never had any reason to question the trust we placed in our doctors, or in the medicines they prescribed. But then we became ill, and the doctors were unable to help us. The search for help often involves seeing many different doctors, including consultants and other specialists. A wide array of tests. Drugs. None of it helped. What do you do when modern medicine is at a loss and you are suffering? It's clear they don't have the answers. You must look elsewhere, or risk being chronically ill. Sometimes the pain, mental or physical, can be so bad that you want to end it all. You are driven by necessity to find some answers, someone who can help.Here is a case documented in Dr. Rogers' book, Depression Cured at Last. The patient had depression which was accompanied by headache, inability to concentrate, and dizziness. She worked as an attendant at a hospital's parking lot, and she'd seen four different specialists in that hospital for her condition. Many tests were done, all negative. She was eventually told what many people in her situation are told: that because they couldn't find anything wrong with her, she must be making it up. She then went to see Dr. Rogers, who is an ND with specialisms in nutrition and environmental medicine. Rogers recognised the symptoms as a cluster that can commonly be caused by environmental toxins. Eventually the air in the booth in which the patient worked was tested, and was found to contain twice the amount of carbon monoxide considered safe. Using the information from Rogers, the patient was able to persuade her employers to install ventilation in the booth, and in a short time she was symptom-free.Doctors need to know how to look for the root causes of these kinds of illnesses. They need to be given the time to do so, not just a 5 or 10 minute appointment in the middle of a busy day. Mind-altering drugs need not be prescribed if the cause of the symptoms can be treated and cured, and there are people whose job it is to do this. They are called naturopaths and orthomolecular doctors. There needs to be more of them, and yes they need to be regulated so that the actual charlatans can be removed.You can tell me, or anyone else who sees an ND, that we are wrong to place our trust in these people. When our original trust in mainstream doctors and medicine has been destroyed, what else do you suggest exactly? Diet and vitamins don't produce the side effects that drugs do. People don't look at the statistics of those who have been made ill, or disabled, or died from their use and decide that they are statistically insignificant. There is no harm in experimenting with them. What's wrong with trying Hoffer's niacin and vitamin C regime for schizophrenia, if the alternative is to take a mind-altering drug that could give you TD?I'm not sure if there's much more I can say on this subject. I think our positions are clear. Should we try shifting the focus to something else within the scope of holistic medicine? I'm going to be busy the next several days and I'm not going to have the time to come back and reply to 20 posts LOL. Unless someone else like Buzsaw wants to talk some more about nutritional therapy?

If anyone can use this research to discover what the root causes of scizophrenia are, great. Presumably the aim here, though, is to find drugs to treat the abnormalities people say they have found.I would ask you to please read several of the posts I have written here, as I have explained why these kinds of studies do not always translate into people being cured, especially where drugs are involved. If you want to accept that mainstream medicine is correct and that its gold standard clinical trials are (almost) beyond reproach, then you must also accept that the drugging of millions of people with psychotropic drugs is helping them. That millions of children should be taking these drugs for ADHD and bipolar disorder, "epidemics" that were virtually non-existent a generation ago. Children as young as 2 years old are put on these drugs. It's for their own good, right?Here are some studies by Abram Hoffer.Hoffer A & Osmond H. The adrenochrome model and schizophrenia. J Nerv Mental Dis 128:18-35, 1959.Hoffer A. Treatment of arthritis by nicotinic acid and nicotinamide. Can Med Assoc J 81:235-238, 1959.Hoffer A. Adrenaline metabolites and schizophrenia. Dis Nerv Syst 21, Monograph Supp, 79-86, 1960.Hoffer A & Osmond H. The biochemistry of mental disease. Can Med Assoc J 85:1309-1311, 1961.Hoffer A. Ascorbic acid and schizophrenia. B.M.J. 1:1342 only, 1962.Hoffer A & Osmond H. Some schizophrenic recoveries. Dis Nerv Syst 23:204-210, 1962Hoffer A & Osmond H. Scurvy and schizophrenia. Dis Nerv Syst 24:273-285, 1963.Osmond H & Hoffer A. Massive niacin treatment in schizophrenia. Review of a nine-year study. Lancet 1:316-320, 1963.Hoffer A. Nicotinic acid: an adjunct in the treatment of schizophrenia. Am J Psychiat 120:171-173, 1963.Hoffer A & Osmond H. Treatment of schizophrenia with nicotinic Acid - a ten year follow-up. Acta Psychiat Scand 40:171-189, 1964.Osmond H & Hoffer A. A comprehensive theory of schizophrenia. Int J Neuropsychiatry 2:302-309, 1965.Hoffer A. Megavitamin B-3 therapy for schizophrenia. Can Psychiatric Ass J 16:499-504, 1971.The list is enormous; these are just a few studies. Hoffer advocates orthomolecular treatments over drug treatments. Because the interest of current mainstream medicine is in drug therapies, why does that necessarily invalidate Hoffer's work?I think it's realistic, rather than cynical, to say that a pharmaceutical company is going to prefer developing and marketing a drug that makes them billions of dollars, over testing niacin, which will make them little money.If you are a biochemist Molbiogirl, then I hope you will one day have an interest in doing studies on possible therapeutic effects of nutrition and vitamins. Not enough studies like this exist. Be as skeptical as you want but do the studies. There are enough psychotropic drugs out there already, the new ones usually don't show much if any efficacy compared to the old, and people are already taking too many drugs as it is.

Your point being-? That this is OK? We're talking about mind-altering drugs being prescribed for physical complaints. People will be experiencing the full spectrum of side effects, including sexual dysfunction, nausea, emotional numbness, and even suicidal ideation and psychosis (all recognised side effects of SSRIs) in order to treat headaches and tinnitus? Surely I can't be the only one who thinks this is madness?

He has also been published in The Lancet and the American Journal of Psychiatry. These were studies involving niacin. He hasn't changed his fields of study since he started publishing in his own journals. Linus Pauling got studies published in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine as well. Here is what Wikipedia says about Hoffer's reasons for his decisions: If I read you right, you will say that he was a crank who was rightly ignored. I see him as a humanitarian who was deeply frustrated, as Pauling was, that an establishment increasingly interested in the biological psychiatric approach was ignoring the positive work he was doing in orthomolecular medicine. The "advancements" being . . . more drugs? None of them cure schizophrenia, and neuroleptics can cause some terrible side effects, such as TD. People here seem to be dismissing TD. It is quite common on those drugs. I'll repeat what I said in another post: if a drug is capable of causing this in patients, it should be banned. It is a horrendous affliction for anyone to deal with.Back when lobotomies were in vogue, would you have been arguing in favour of those because they were tried and tested? The mentally ill have been, and continue to be, given "treatments" that are capable of causing severe and permanent damage. ECT is still legal too, and still recommended to people. And I work with many people who have seen whole decades of their lives destroyed by psychiatric drugs. I wish the two groups could meet. When you research a new drug, do you ever pause to think about the people out there who will suffer severe reactions from it -- for the greater good? Do they not matter as long as the statistics are small enough?You criticise me for giving anecdotes; I presume you have given some yourself in an attempt to beat me at my own game? I'm not familiar with the case but there are certainly aspects of it that wouldn't apply to my own methodology. Let me explain.If I had physical symptoms, I might well decide to go to my GP and ask for some tests. If I had cancer then presumably mainstream medicine has some good ways of diagnosing it; I don't know, fortunately neither I nor my family have had that experience. But in order to treat it, I would not accept chemotherapy unless it was absolutely the last resort.Naturopathy says that cancer cells appear quite commonly in the body, and that a healthy immune system is able to attack and kill them. It's when something goes wrong with the immune system that the cancer grows. In order to heal, the immune system needs a boost. I would expect to take very large amounts of vitamin C, preferably intravenously, and couple it with a good diet. I would want to be under the care of a naturopath with a good track record, who can monitor my progress and suggest changes to my regime as necessary. I would want this person to be an MD who also has knowledge of nutritional medicine.So I would be very picky about whom I put my trust in. I am skeptical about very many people who claim to practice naturopathic medicine and I want them to have the same knowledge as my GP, plus more, before I put them in charge of my or my family's health. With those qualifications, they would not make the mistakes of the ND in your anecdote; they would have proper tests performed. I could list you 100 cases of what psychiatric meds have done to people on the lists I belong to, and how they are healing with the advice of my ND. Let's not have a war of anecdotes here, it's a waste of time and nobody else would be interested.BTW I couldn't figure out how "diet" was involved in the anecdote you gave, the details aren't there. And if anyone told me that all I had to do to cure myself was take a herbal concoction, I would consider them a charlatan. I'm at a loss for words. This is deeply disturbing. I mean this rhetorically, I don't expect a reply, but have you ever taken an SSRI yourself? Have you experienced what it does to your brain and body? I think it's ludicrous that anyone would want to prescribe it for physical ailments. No, not everyone will experience side effects, but many will. And I think it would be a rare person who experienced no mental effects at all. SSRIs by their very nature are mind-altering substances.I had IBS. I got attacks that were so bad that I was completely laid up for 24 hours at a time, and vomited whenever I tried to get up. The pain was excruciating. I ended up in the ER once, and I saw a consultant as an outpatient. None of this helped me. They gave me drugs that did no good. I lived in terror of the next attack because they were unpredictable.I no longer have IBS. It's been a couple of years since the last attack. I changed my diet and it was gone. It sends a chill down my spine to think that at some point, someone might have offered me an SSRI for it. By the way, I don't get headaches anymore either, or indigestion. It's all gone.Lastly, if you want to discuss ADHD or overmedication, I would ask you not to start a new topic just now, because I won't go there until I'm finished here. You started the Poltergeist thread and while I'm enjoying that (and learning a lot), I find I'm spending a huge amount of my time here trying to defend my views. My house needs cleaning from top to bottom and I've got other things I need to do. While I'm here at the computer, life is passing me by LOL.

I have a question for you Molbiogirl. You're keeping me very busy by pulling chunks off of the Quackwatch site, posting them here, and expecting me to respond. Do you attempt to verify anything Barrett says for yourself? This is feeling very similar to debates I have had with creationists. They pull chunks off of AiG and say "There, it's true because Duane Gish (or whoever else) says so." And then, being a non-scientist, I end up spending hours having to painstakingly do the research for myself and explain how this is wrong. Only to be answered with another chunk of text.You are an intelligent person. Why are you letting Barrett do your thinking for you? Look at his page on Pauling; look at the language. This is a person with a propagandist agenda. "No responsible medical or nutrition scientists share these views." His definition of "responsible" equating with "mainstream," no doubt. "NHF promotes the gamut of quackery." Do you know who the NHF are? Do you care? Trust Barrett because he does, right? ". . . his late-in-life beliefs in vitamin megadoses have been thoroughly discredited." That is what he would like you to believe.You are getting all of this through the filter of Stephen Barrett, and you're OK with that because you trust him. Do you also trust that he is not cherry-picking the facts he presents, and the studies? That he is not leaving out any information which does not support his claims? Or even that he is not lying? How do you actually know?So you're not happy with Hoffer. I've been citing Pauling and Hoffer here because they are the two figures in orthomolecular medicine with whom I am most familiar. There are others. Pauling was not the first to study vitamin C and its effects with the common cold. He cites quite a number of other people who did this work before him in his book. You can see some details about the work of other scientists into vitamin C and other vitamins here. Do you want to attempt a demolition job on them too? Or are you going to decide to be open at any point to the idea that these people might have had something useful to say? Do you consider anyone who has ideas about using anything other than conventional drug therapy a quack?I found an interesting abstract on an article in JSTOR called "The Politics of Therapeutic Evaluation: The Vitamin C and Cancer Controversy." Unfortunately I can't read the full text without paying, but possibly you would have open access. Here is an excerpt: Conventional drug therapy, and the biological model of psychiatry, are king. All challengers are mere pretenders. I find this to be a rather closed-minded attitude.You have found some information on the Mayo Clinic's clinical vitamin C trials which claimed to have reproduced Pauling's methods exactly, but which did not repeat his results. It looks like you got this from Quackwatch. This is a case in point for why you should not blindly trust everything Barrett says. The Mayo Clinic did not reproduce Pauling's methods exactly, in at least one crucial way. The patients on the Cameron-Pauling protocol were given vitamin C not only orally, but also intravenously. An April 2004 study by NIH showed that much more vitamin C gets taken up when it is given intravenously rather than orally. Blood concentrations were found to be 6.6 times higher, and plasma concentrations 60 times higher. This study concluded that The efficacy of vitamin C treatment cannot be judged from clinical trials that use only oral dosing. You can read the details here, in an article titled "War on Cancer." Look here on PubMed and you will find a wealth of studies by Padayatty and Levine. I am becoming more aware all the time that contemporary research supporting the use of large doses of vitamin C does exist. If I can find it, you can. My guess is that you are not looking. I thought you weren't bothered about who funds clinical studies? When I've pointed out that clinical drug trials are almost always sponsored by the companies that make the drugs, you didn't seem to mind. Why are you (or, I should, say Barrett, where this came from yet again) bothered about the Pauling Institute getting funding from a vitamin C manufacturer?What's more, there's more to it than this. I don't know who continues to fund the Linus Pauling Institute, but the Hoffmann firm's vitamins division was bought by a Dutch firm called DSM in 2002. Hoffmann seems to have been more focused on its pharmaceutical division anyway, as the manufacturer of the benzodiazepines Librium and Valium. In 1970 they reported that 2/3 of their sales came from drugs, mainly these two. 1/4 of their sales were from the supply of bulk vitamins, of which vitamin C was a part. This is hardly a firm whose financial survival depended on vitamin C. What's more, the Linus Pauling Institute resorted to this kind of funding because it failed to obtain the government funding it was hoping to receive. The money had to come from somewhere. Finally, the institute is criticised today for not remaining true to Pauling's theories about vitamin C, and it is also using very small amounts in studies. There are other groups that claim to be more accurately following on with his work.I spent a lot of time finding all this out, because of a quote mined from Quackwatch. I honestly have to say I feel a little resentful.About the dispute between Pauling and Robinson. I have attempted to find more of the facts but have been unsuccessful. Maybe the only one who really knows now is Robinson himself. Yes it sounds like Pauling's conduct was deplorable, but I hesitate to make judgements without knowing more of the facts. It is possible that Robinson's work honestly was flawed. I can't look up the studies of his that you cited here to see what his methodology was; and even if I could, I would need an honest interpretation from someone who understood it because I am not a biochemist. All I can say here is I simply don't know.However, as I said, the studies you cited are not the death-knell for the study of vitamin C. It carries on today. Here are some studies I found. This one concludes that [Vitamin c's] administration in moderate to high doses may protect against atherosclerosis and hypertension. This is an article that talks about how vitamin C can inhibit the growth of some tumors. The PubMed study can be found if you type "Chi Dang vitamin C" (can't make the link to the study work for some reason.)Here is what my ND says about vitamin C studies and Stephen Barrett. To address some of your final comments: TD does not appear in a "small percentage" of patients taking neuroleptics. Breggin's quoted estimates of its occurrence, with citations, can be found in Message 8. I shouldn't have to have any. I haven't had more than a sniffle since I started megadosing vitamin C two years ago (neither has my little girl). These aren't the same operational procedures that were used several decades ago to "treat" the mentally ill. I am not a doctor, I don't honestly know anything about brain surgery, and I cannot comment on the examples you have given here. I know, though, that I would not want myself or any of my loved ones to undergo psychosurgery unless it was the absolutely last resort, and it would have to be in utter desperation. I don't personally feel these people know enough about the brain to fully understand the effects of what is being done and I would be worried about brain damage, maybe which isn't immediately obvious. Then why do you not verify Barrett's claims yourself? Your skepticism does not appear to be applied to his website. I haven't been debating natural vs. synthetic vitamins with you. This is not an issue for me regarding vitamin C.