Tag: Neurology

NLP: Summarizing l-theanine articles

In this post I will describe my use of NLP (Natural language processing, not neuro-linguistic programming. Natural language processing is cool, while neuro-linguistic programming is some pseudoscience stuff) in the application of summarizing articles from the internet. Specifically, I chose the topic of l-theanine and psychiatry, as previously I have already summarized the Nootropics subreddit discussions on l-theanine. The next step, therefore, is to summarize existing articles on this topic.

Summarizing experience with green tea from the Nootropics subreddit

The first step was to perform an automated Google search for a specific term. I chose the term “l-theanine psychiatry” and set the number of unique urls to be 15. Some of the resulting urls are listed below:

Can L-Theanine Help Treat Symptoms of Bipolar Disorder?

Effects of L-Theanine Administration on Stress-Related Symptoms and Cognitive Functions in Healthy Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial

L-theanine

How does the tea L-theanine buffer stress and anxiety

It can be seen that the article titles are quite relevant to our topic. The next step is formatting the text and summarizing the information.

The idea behind the summarization technique is calculating word frequencies for each word in the combined text of all articles (after stop words removal), and then selecting words in the top 10% of frequencies. These words will be the ones used in scoring each sentence. More frequent words will be given more importance, as they are deemed more relevant to the chosen topic, therefore sentences containing those words will receive higher scores. This is not a machine learning approach, but a basic frequency count method. In total, 148 words were used for sentence scoring. Some of the most frequent words (from all articles combined) are listed below:

Theanine, administration, effects, placebo, weeks, study, four, sleep, scores, cognitive, may, stress, function, fluency, studies, related, symptoms, participants, bacs, anxiety

BACS was one of the top frequent words, it stands for the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia. Once each sentence was scores, 15 highest scoring sentences were selected in order to create a summary. The summary of the articles is presented below. From the summary we can infer that l-theanine was studied for its effects on cognition, anxiety, and stress. Some studies had positive results, indicating that l-theanine performed significantly better than placebo in regards to positive cognitive effects such as improved verbal fluency and executive function. Studies also noted significant improvements in stress reduction with the use of l-theanine. Other studies did not find any significant differences between l-theanine and placebo.


Second, only about 20% of symptoms (the PSQI subscales) and cognitive functions (the BACS verbal fluency, especially letter fluency and executive function) scores showed significant changes after L- theanine administration compared to the placebo administration, suggesting that the effects are not large on daily function of the participants.

Although psychotropic effects were observed in the current study, four weeks L-theanine administration had no significant effect on cortisol or immunoglobulin A levels in the saliva or serum, which was inconsistent with previous studies reporting that salivary cortisol [34] and immunoglobulin A [33] levels were reduced after acute L-theanine administration.

Considering the comparison to the placebo administration, the current study suggests that the score for the BACS verbal fluency, especially letter fluency, but not the Trail Making Test, Stroop test, or other BACS parameters, significantly changes in response to the 4 weeks effects of L-theanine.

The BACS verbal fluency, especially letter fluency (p = 0.001), and executive function scores were significantly increased after L-theanine administration (p = 0.001 and 0.031, respectively; ), while the Trail Making Test A and B scores were significantly improved after placebo administration (p = 0.042 and 0.038, respectively).

When score reductions in the stress-related symptoms were compared between L-theanine and placebo administrations, changes in the PSQI sleep latency, sleep disturbance, and use of sleep medication subscales were significantly greater (p = 0.0499, 0.046, and 0.047, respectively), while those in the SDS and PSQI scores showed a non-statistically significant trend towards greater improvement (p = 0.084 and 0.073, respectively), during the L-theanine period compared to placebo.

Stratified analyses revealed that scores for verbal fluency (p = 0.002), especially letter fluency (p = 0.002), increased after L-theanine administration, compared to the placebo administration, in individuals who were sub-grouped into the lower half by the median split based on the mean pretreatment scores.

Discussion In this placebo-controlled study, stress-related symptoms assessed with SDS, STAI-T, and PSQI scores decreased, while BACS verbal fluency and executive function scores improved following four weeks L-theanine administration.

The present study aimed to examine the effects of four weeks L-theanine administration (200 mg/day, four weeks) in a healthy population, i.e., individuals without any major psychiatric disorder.

The PSQI subscale scores for sleep latency, sleep disturbance, and use of sleep medication reduced after L-theanine administration, compared to the placebo administration (all p < 0.05).

The effects on stress-related symptoms were broad among the symptom indices presented in the study, although a comparison to the placebo administration somewhat limits the efficacy of L-theanine administration for some sleep disturbance measurements.

For cognitive functions, BACS verbal fluency and executive function scores improved after four weeks L-theanine administration.

PMID: 31623400 This randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover, and double-blind trial aimed to examine the possible effects of four weeks L-theanine administration on stress-related symptoms and cognitive functions in healthy adults.

The anti-stress effects of L-theanine (200 mg/day) have been observed following once- [ 33 , 34 ] and twice daily [ 35 ] administration, while its attention-improving effects have been observed in response to treatment of 100 mg/day on four separate days [ 36 ] and 200 mg/day single administration [ 37 ], which was further supported by decreased responses in functional magnetic resonance imaging [ 38 ].

These results suggest that four weeks L-theanine administration has positive effects on stress-related symptoms and cognitive function in a healthy population.

A rare type of encephalitis

Encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) is rare in general, luckily, but in this post I will write about an even more rare cause of encephalitis. Primary Amebic Meningoencephalitis, or amebic encephalitis, is infection of the brain caused by microscopic ameba, a single-celled organism. Specifically, it is caused by naegleria fowleri. This ameba is found in warm freshwater, therefore it can be in lakes, rivers, and hot springs, it can be found in the soil as well. The ameba can enter the brain through the nose, and the infection is usually fatal. There have been cases in the US of this type of encephalitis – from lake water and tap water.

I know this happens quite rarely, and hopefully we will keep it that way, but some researchers predict an increase in the number of cases due to the rising average temperatures. Therefore it’s important to rinse your nose only with previously boiled water, and check any warnings by the municipality in regards to the body of water where you want to swim.

Rare brain-eating amoebas killed Seattle woman who rinsed her sinuses with tap water. Doctor warns this could happen again.

“I think we are going to see a lot more infections that we see south (move) north, as we have a warming of our environment,” said Dr. Cynthia Maree, a Swedish infectious-disease doctor who co-authored the case study about the woman’s condition.”

Great toxicology YouTube channel… and celiac disease misdiagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia?

A really great guy – a toxicologist with his own YouTube channel telling real life ER stories. Here is a link to one of his episodes. A woman with delusions read on the internet about a specific colon cleanse, which led her to drinking 1 liter of soy sauce in two hours. 1 liter of soy sauce contains 200 grams of salt. What happened then to her brain? Why did she choose to drink the soy sauce in the first place? Was it due to paranoid schizophrenia, or was something else also going on?

A Woman Drank 1 Liter Soy Sauce Colon Cleanse In 2 Hours. This Is What Happened To Her Brain.

It’s not always about some serotonin imbalance… let’s pay more attention to neurology

I get articles recommended by my Anroid phone, I assume based on an algorithm that performs some sort of machine learning model based on my browsing history. I actually like this feature, because I find the recommendations often actually interesting. So thumbs up for machine learning!

Today I came across an article about a woman with recurring severe depression, and in her case for many years no medical tests were performed, and her psychiatrist kept prescribing her different kinds of antidepressants, without considering any other potential causes or treatments. This reminds me of my own experience with autoimmune encephalitis, luckily I did get treated after two years from my first hospitalization in the psychiatric unit, not after more than a decade. In the case of this woman, eventually a brain tumour of a significant size was found, in 2019. She had recurring episodes of severe depression starting from 2002. As I understood, it’s not possible to find out at this point when the tumour actually originated, and whether it was the cause of depression, but it’s clear from the story that after the treatment of the tumour, the woman’s life significantly improved – she went back to her scientific career, finding a job as a scientist in a biotech firm. She got married, resumed activities she used to enjoy, and was weaned off antidepressants. Given these observations, it seems to me that the tumour and her depression were not just a correlation, but there is a causation here.

Unfortunately it seems rare that psychiatrists would order any medical tests even in the case of treatment resistant depression. I had to switch a few family doctors, and in the end went to one whom my mother knows for decades, and she agreed to order an MRI for me, and blood tests for thyroid hormones, infections, and antibodies. My psychiatrist never proposed to do any tests. Only after I received back the results, and some of them were abnormal, specifically the antibody levels, I was able to refer myself to neurology. Seems that we, psychiatric patients, have to often be very proactive in demanding medical testing. For this reason I think it is important to be aware of cases where depression was resistant to standard antidepressant treatments, but later on a specific medical cause was found.

Not ‘just depression.’ She seemed trapped in a downward mental health spiral.

  • Blaine’s first bout of depression occurred in 2002 when she was in her first year of a doctoral program in materials science at the University of California at Santa Barbara
  • She was prescribed Prozac, recovered and returned to California. Six months later she left school for good and found full-time work in a coffee shop
  • In 2005, Blaine began working as a research associate at a polymer film company
  • Her illness seemed to follow a pattern: after a few years the antidepressant inexplicably stopped working; her psychiatrist would prescribe a new drug and she would get better
  • In 2018 Blaine had lost her job of 10 years and she seemed trapped in a downward spiral
  • She left her job as a research scientist in 2018 and began working as a server at a variety of restaurants in Charlottesville
  • By late summer Blaine had developed what she assumed were frequent migraine headache, sometimes her balance was off and she complained that her vision had deteriorated and she needed new glasses, psychiatric medication was not effective
  • On Jan. 2 2019, a hospital psychiatrist doubled the dose of her antidepressant
  • Several days later Blaine suddenly collapsed and began vomiting, at the ER where she was diagnosed with a “vasovagal episode” — fainting that results from certain triggers including stress
  • Her sister and mother insisted doctors take a closer look, Blaine underwent an MRI scan of her brain
  • MRI findings showed a tumor the size of an orange had invaded the right frontal lobe of Blaine’s brain, there was evidence of herniation, a potentially fatal condition that occurs when the brain is squeezed out of position
  • During a 10-hour operation, University of Virginia neurosurgeon Ashok Asthagiri removed a grade 2 astrocytoma, a slow-growing malignancy that he said “could have been there for years.”
  • “especially in the setting of mental illness,” the neurosurgeon cautioned, “it is easy to disregard symptoms that maybe should be evaluated.” Doctors “need to be vigilant. Once [a patient] gets labeled, everything is viewed as a mental health problem.”
  • After recovering from surgery, Blaine underwent radiation and chemotherapy; she finished treatment in December 2019
  • Recently Blaine was hired as a scientist at a biotech firm. She has resumed the activities she previously enjoyed: rowing, cooking and walking her dogsHer psychological health has improved significantly and her new psychiatrist is weaning her off her antidepressant

More articles on this subject:

Why are women with brain tumours being dismissed as attention-seekers?

  • Women with serious medical conditions are more likely than men to have their symptoms attributed to depression and anxiety
  • Historically, women’s health has been viewed with a “bikini approach”, the primary focus being breasts and the reproductive system
  • One study drew data from 35,875 cardiac patients, 41% of them women, across nearly 400 US hospitals. It found that women faced a higher risk of dying in hospital, subsequent heart attacks, heart failure, and stroke. They were less likely to have an ECG within 10 minutes and to receive crucial medications. And women younger than 65 years old are more than twice as likely to die from a heart attack than men of the same age
  • A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain, found that women were less likely to receive aggressive treatment when diagnosed, and were more likely to have their pain characterised as “emotional,” “psychogenic” and therefore “not real”

Woman misdiagnosed with anxiety actually had a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball

  • Laura Skerritt, 22, began suffering migraines, sickness and psychosis and was told her symptoms were caused by anxiety, depression – and even bi-polar disorder
  • She was prescribed anti-depressants but the medication had no effect on her condition which continued to deteriorate
  • By November 2018, the young swimming instructor, from Templecombe, Somerset, was struggling to walk and was having seizures.
  • A scan at Yeovil District Hospital revealed a tennis ball-sized brain tumour

Brain tumor revealed by treatment-resistant depression

  • The 54-year-old woman had been depressed for 6 months, but treatment with the antidepressant fluoxetine and the anti-anxiety medication bromazepam was discontinued after 5 months because these were not found to be effective
  • She had suicidal thoughts, admitted self-accusation due to ineffectiveness in her job, and lost interest in her usual past times
  • A neurological examination was normal. However, a brain CT scan and MRI revealed meningiomatosis with a giant meningioma–the most common primary benign brain tumour–in her left frontal lobe
  • The patient underwent emergency surgery, and made a recovery. The depressive symptoms disappeared within one month
  • Recommendation – brain scan should be performed if the patient presents a late onset of depressive syndrome after 50 years of age, if a diagnosis of treatment-resistant depression is made or if the patient is apathetic

A great story of recovery from Anti NMDA Receptor Encephalitis

I recently had someone contact me in regards to their relative who was in a hospital, diagnosed recently with autoimmune encephalitis. It was an ongoing situation, and therefore extremely painful for them. Probably unless you are in the neurology field, or immunology, you have never heard of autoimmune encephalitis, unless it happens to you or someone you know. Most people think of brain injury being caused by a physical accident, such as a sports injury, by stroke, or by dementia. Very few people could imagine that a young person, twenty or thirty years old, could also receive a brain injury, from the immune attack of their own body.

The person who contacted me described their relative as being young, and previously completely healthy. Going from that state, to being in a hospital, held down due to severe aggression and violence, is of course shocking. I was asked whether myself I ever recovered, whether I was able to work. The person was concerned that their relative does not love them anymore. They did say after our conversation that talking to me gave them some hope, given that I also had similar symptoms of aggression and violence, swearing, believing that my close people were making plans on how to get rid of me. Not being sure if they were actually real, whether they existed, or only in my thoughts. It’s hard to describe that experience. And then going back to a much more normal state – being able to spend time with people as usual, not constantly finding secret meanings in their words, not seeing predictive signs everywhere. I also sent that person a story of recovery that I found on YouTube, and I hope it will add more hope for them as well. The young woman in the story clearly had a very severe case of encephalitis, as she was not able to recognize her parents and some point, she ended up in a coma, and currently does not remember those several months of illness. Also she provides important information on treatment in the video – for her it was specifically a combination of two chemotherapy drugs, Cytoxan and Rituximab. I think it’s important to know, as IV steroids or IVIG may not work for all cases of encephalitis. It’s good to know about other available treatment options, which as you can see, in some cases lead to great recovery.

Anti NMDA Receptor Encephalitis – Amanda’s Rare Autoimmune Disease Story

 

Clams and coffee for a good morning

I like B vitamins and caffeine, that is a good combinations. And a bit of carbs. Coffee, clams, and oatmeal bar with dates makes a good breakfast. I don’t know the mechanism, but I am finding that coffee helps me to be more present in the moment with fewer anxious thoughts about the future. Going back to coffee was not a random idea, there are several studies in regards to the use of caffeine for treatment resistant OCD. By the way, OCD is not just about washing your hands multiple times or checking five times that you locked the door. The worst aspect of if it is how your mind is affected by unwanted and intrusive thoughts. There are infinite types of OCD, it can impact on any thought, on any subject, on any person, on any fear, and frequently fixates on what’s important in a person’s life. For example, if religion is important to someone, OCD fixates on unwanted intrusive thoughts around religion, perhaps making the sufferer believe their actions/thoughts will offend their god. Another example is if someone begins a new relationship, OCD can make a person question that relationship, their feelings, their sexuality resulting in almost constant rumination, perhaps with the sufferer worrying that they may be misleading their partner.

Obsessive thoughts are what happens when you just want to go for a walk in the forest. It’s a warm day, finally summer, you are surrounded by colourful moss on intriguing rocks. You want to wander around observing the details of nature, but your mind is fixated on the thought that there is no point. There is no god, therefore our lives are meaningless, and there is no point of this wandering. Or the thought is – I don’t have a child, so I need to work on getting a family. And then you feel that because you haven’t achieved this goal, you will be punished for wandering around the forest. You should be punished for any enjoyment as those are not focused on the goal. You need to solve the problem at hand, you need to act now, you need to think through the plan. And it goes on.

B vitamins are essential for creating dopamine, epinephrine, serotonin, and myelin. They also help the mind focus, help hemoglobin hold oxygen and lower cholesterol. Vitamin B is essential to good health. It is also used for energy production in the human cells. B vitamins help convert food often consumed as carbohydrates into fuel. They also help the nervous system function properly. B vitamins are water-soluble, which means that they are easily dissolvable in water and easily excreted out of the body via urine output. As a result of this type of vitamin that can be dissolved in water, individuals cannot overdose on them because all excess will simply be excreted.

Solubility – Solubility is defined as the maximum quantity of a substance that may be dissolved in another. How a solute dissolves depends on the types of chemical bonds in the solute and solvent. For example, when ethanol dissolves in water, it maintains its molecular identity as ethanol, but new hydrogen bonds form between ethanol and water molecules. For this reason, mixing ethanol and water produces a solution with a smaller volume than you would get from adding together the starting volumes of ethanol and water.

When sodium chloride (NaCl) or other ionic compound dissolves in water, the compound dissociates into its ions. The ions become solvated or surrounded by a layer of water molecules.

Thiamin is vitamin B1, it is essential in carbohydrate metabolism and neural function. It is water soluble and is absorbed through both active transport and passive diffusion. Not being endogenously synthesized, the only available source of thiamine is dietary (beef, poultry, cereals, nuts, and beans). In the human body, thiamine-rich tissues are skeletal muscles, heart, liver, kidney, and brain. Thiamine serves as a cofactor for a series of enzymes in different metabolic pathways and is required for the production of ATP, ribose, NAD, and DNA. Thiamin plays a key role in the maintenance of brain function. Thiamin diphosphate is cofactor for several enzymes involved in glucose metabolism whereas thiamin triphosphate has distinct properties at the neuronal membrane.

Thiamin metabolism in the brain is compartmented between neurons and neighbouring glial cells. Thiamin deficiency is commonly encountered in severe malnutrition associated with chronic alcoholism, HIV-AIDS and gastrointestinal disease where it frequently results in Wernicke’s encephalopathy (the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome).

In developed countries, the predominant use of industrial food processing often depletes thiamine content along with other vitamins and nutrients. An increased consumption of processed food in the form of simple carbohydrates, not supplemented with adequate levels of thiamine, has been named “high calorie malnutrition”. As thiamine is a key factor in the metabolism of glucose, an increased carbohydrate intake will proportionally increase thiamine’s dietary demand. Heavy consumption of tannin-containing or food rich in caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline (such as those present in coffee, chocolate, and tea, respectively) can inactivate thiamine, thereby compromising the thiamine status. Other risk factors that increase the likelihood of insufficient thiamine intake include aging, economic status, eating disorders, medical conditions affecting the gastrointestinal tract, subjects receiving parental nutrition, bariatric surgery, diabetes, and alcohol abuse.

Thiamine deficiency might cause brain tissue injury by inhibiting brain energy utilization given the critical role of thiamine-dependent enzymes associated within glucose utilization. This is supported by the significant rate of thiamine uptake by the blood–brain barrier emphasizing the high brain demand for thiamine and the need for its supply to sustain adequate brain functions.

Throughout the digestive tract, dietary proteins get hydrolyzed, releasing thiamine. In the intestinal lumen, alkaline phosphatases catalyze the hydrolysis of thiamine-phosphorylated derivatives into free thiamine.

There are cases of psychosis resulting from thiamine deficiency.

Case 1 – a 63-year-old woman with thiamine deficiency who showed auditory hallucinations, a delusion of persecution, catatonic stupor, and catalepsy but no neurological symptoms including oculomotor or gait disturbance. Her thiamine concentration was 19 ng/mL, only slightly less than the reference range of 20-50 ng/mL. Her psychosis was unresponsive to antipsychotics or electroconvulsive therapy, but was ameliorated by repetitive intravenous thiamine administrations at 100-200 mg per day. However, one month after completing intravenous treatment, her psychosis recurred, even though she was given 150 mg of thiamine per day orally and her blood concentration of thiamine was maintained at far higher than the reference range. Again, intravenous thiamine administration was necessary to ameliorate her symptoms. The present patient indicates that the possibility of thiamine deficiency should be considered in cases of psychosis without neurological disturbance and high-intensity T2 MRI lesions. Also, this case suggests that a high blood thiamine concentration does not necessarily correspond to sufficient thiamine levels in the brain. Based on this, we must reconsider the importance of a high dose of thiamine administration as a therapy for thiamine deficiency.

Case 2 – Mr A, a 40-year-old man, was transferred to our drug and alcohol dependency clinic after admission to the emergency department of a general hospital. He had a 25-year history of regular alcohol consumption (2 bottles of wine and 3–4 bottles of beer per day recently). Notably, he gradually increased his alcohol intake. His family stated that for the last 2 years he started his mornings with his usual “eye opener,” and he had not been eating enough or regularly. They also described periods of alcohol withdrawal, which resulted in delirium tremens symptoms such as confusion and auditory and visual hallucinations. He presented to the emergency room with forgetfulness, difficulty walking, falling down, urinary incontinence, losing his belongings, and not being able to recognize where he was or the current date. His family also reported that he had been telling incongruent stories that never seemed to have happened.

Mr A was diagnosed with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome according to DSM-IV diagnostic criteria, and diazepam detoxification, rehydration, and thiamine repletion therapy were started. He had no signs of alcohol withdrawal in the clinical follow-up. He was administered intravenous (IV) 2,000 cm3 of 5% dextrose and 1,000 mg thiamine hydrochloride. This regimen was administered until the fifth day of treatment since gait ataxia and restriction of eye movements were no longer prominently present. On the sixth day of treatment, the IV thiamine was replaced with 100 mg oral thiamine. Within the third week of the treatment regimen, his gait and postural ataxia improved and his orientation to time, place, and person was intact. By the fourth week of treatment, he was able to find his way around the city and back home when he was on home leave for 2 days. However, it was observed that it took him longer to remember his past experiences when questioned. He was discharged 41 days after his hospitalization. He had no significant mental symptoms apart from a minimally longer reaction time and minimal impairments in current memory, although he still had difficulty in tandem walk and a minimal nystagmus in his neurologic examination at discharge.

Neuropathology of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome is characterized by gliosis and microhemorrhages specifically in the periaqueductal and paraventricular gray matter, atrophy in the mammillary bodies and thalamus, and volume deficits in the hippocampus, cerebellar hemispheres, pons, and anterior superior vermis; however, anterior thalamus, mammillary bodies, and the mammillo-thalamic tract are reported to be related with later memory impairment and Korsakoff syndrome.

Active transport – the movement of molecules across a membrane from a region of their lower concentration to a region of their higher concentration—against the concentration gradient or other obstructing factor.

Passive diffusion – is a movement of ions and other atomic or molecular substances across cell membranes without need of energy input. Unlike active transport, it does not require an input of cellular energy because it is instead driven by the tendency of the system to grow in entropy.

Hyrdolysis – any chemical reaction in which a molecule of water ruptures one or more chemical bonds.

Alkaline phosphatase – an enzyme that liberates phosphate under alkaline conditions and is made in liver, bone, and other tissues.

Gliosis – is a nonspecific reactive change of glial cells in response to damage to the central nervous system (CNS). The glial cells surround neurons and provide support for and insulation between them. Glial cells are the most abundant cell types in the central nervous system. The four main functions of glial cells are: to surround neurons and hold them in place, to supply nutrients and oxygen to neurons, to insulate one neuron from another, and to destroy and remove the carcasses of dead neurons (clean up).

Microhemorrhages – cerebral microhemorrhages, best visualized by MRI, result from rupture of small blood vessels in basal ganglia or subcortical white matter.

Mammillary bodies – the mammillary bodies are part of the diencephalon, which is a collection of structures found between the brainstem and cerebrum. The mammillary bodies are best known for their role in memory, although in the last couple of decades the mammillary bodies have started to be recognized as being involved in other functions like maintaining a sense of direction.

Auditory Hallucinations Simulation

I hope technology will help us to simulate others’ experiences. This is especially needed in psychiatry. I often found myself lacking appropriate words to describe what I felt. My previous psychiatrist misdiagnosed me with schizophrenia. There is currently no lab test to verify whether someone does have schizophrenia, my diagnosis was based on a verbal consultation. I don’t know what people with schizophrenia experience so I can’t know whether my experiences were actually similar or not. Did we all feel this extreme fear in the same way or was ‘fear’ just a common word that we used but our experiences were actually different? I’m sure many people out there, like me, dream of a machine that would allow us to project our feelings onto someone else. We don’t have such an invention at the moment, but the first step is through the use of audio and video. I discovered an interesting representation of auditory hallucinations on YouTube, link below. I know that it doesn’t convey the emotions that a person could be experiencing along with the hallucinations, but it is a start in explaining how schizophrenia/psychosis can affect a person.

Auditory hallucinations – representation

It’s better to listen to this audio in headphones in order to get a better simulation of the surrounding sound. Put on your headphones and try to go through the whole length of the audio. It’s quite unpleasant. It’s nice to know that any second you can pause the video. With real psychosis unfortunately you don’t know when it’s going to end. Psychosis also is usually not just hearing voices that aren’t there, it’s thoughts and emotions – panic, fear, distrust. How can someone know that they are having a psychotic episode versus rational thoughts that are unpleasant? The line is not clear. Recently I had an episode at work during which I kind of heard my boyfriend’s voice inside my head saying that what I did was a ‘low level job’, ‘it was pointless’, that he wouldn’t do such a job, that I was wasting my life. Was that a psychotic episode caused by my immune system acting up or does everyone experience such moments? I would say it was closer to psychosis as it was similar to the audio representation – the voice was not part of my thoughts, it was inside my head, but I could not control it. This seems similar to what people with schizophrenia describe about auditory hallucinations, but then many people without schizophrenia also complain about inside negative ‘voices’. Perhaps by ‘inside voice’ in general people really mean thoughts, and these are more under their control, unlike the hallucinations.

Below is another video of schizophrenia simulation. As one comment states, “This is KINDA accurate but you can’t really recreate the feeling of panic and doubt and paranoia. During an episode you’re possessed by so many emotions that a video just can’t convey.”

Schizophrenia Simulation

What I experienced in the most acute stages of encephalitis also could not be portrayed well with just audio or video. What I experienced was primal fear. Imagine maybe being in an airplane, a long trans-Atlantic flight. You are going 900 kilometers per hour, ten thousand meters above the ocean. Suddenly there is severe turbulence. You’ve experienced turbulence before, but not of this magnitude. You hope it will cease soon, because the pilots know what they are doing, right? But it doesn’t, there is another fall through the air, you can feel it. Perhaps before the turbulence started you were reading a book, do you think you will be able to continue? Or you were talking to the person you are flying with about housing prices, will you be able to hold the conversation, or will you be overwhelmed with the primal fear? The fear that we experience when we are suddenly reminded of our mortality with an added rush of adrenaline. And not just our mortality, but also the mortality of people who for us make our world. That’s what acute encephalitis episodes were like for me. It was like constantly being in that passenger plane above the ocean in severe turbulence. And if that goes on for long enough, when the fear is constantly present, you may then actually start to wish for the situation to resolve in any way, as long as it resolves quickly. I mean that you may wish for the plane to just fall quickly, you no longer believe in safe arrival, but you just want to already escape the fear and the anticipation of pain.

Autoimmune Encephalitis vs. Schizophrenia

I don’t have schizophrenia so I can’t say that I experienced it, but I was misdiagnosed with it, therefore it’s possible that some of my experiences are similar to those of people with schizophrenia. Unfortunately autoimmune encephalitis is often  misdiagnosed as a psychiatric disorder. I spent a lot of time in the Understanding Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy Facebook group and after talking to the women there, the commont story that emerged was that most of them were initially referred to a psychiatrist and treated with antipsychotics/antidepressants/benzodiazepines. I say women because the group members are mostly female, probably over 90%. Autoimmune diseases affect women more often than men and this seems to hold true for autoimmune encephalitis. Schizophrenia on the other hand is more common among males.

I am not a schizophrenia expert, but since my psychiatrist assumed that I had it and I was treated for it, from experience I can say that schizophrenia is usually treated with antipsychotics such as risperidone and olanzapine. Psychotherapy can also be recommended but in addition to the antipsychotics, it would not be enough on its own usually. Autoimmune encephalitis does not improve with antipsychotics. AE is inflammation of the brain that is caused by the immune system and it required immune suppression such as IV steroids, IVIG or plasmapheresis. Many patients have to stay on oral immune suppressants such as prednisone or Cellcept. Some get regular Rituxan infusions. Some patients do take antidepressants or antipsychotics in addition to the immunosuppressant treatment, but the first step should really be suppressing the immune system.

Autoimmune encephalitis often does cause psychiatric symptoms such as intense fear, panic, paranoia, delusional thoughts and depression. All these symptoms could be present in patients with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is also much more common than autoimmune encephalitis, it affects about 1% of population. Since psychosis due to autoimmune reaction is quite rare, it’s reasonable for a psychiatrist to assume schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or psychotic depression. I do think though that if the psychosis is present along with physical symptoms, a blood test for autoimmune conditions should be performed as well. I don’t think schizophrenia is associated with facial swelling, lightheadedness, brain fog, extreme fatigue, etc. Autoimmune encephalitis on the other hand does cause all these physical symptoms and more severe ones as well such as seizures and going into a coma. Also I think that if a patient has tried different antipsychotics for several months and has not responded to them, it’s probably time to consider that there might be a different cause and perform further testing. My psychiatrist for some reason did not consider this. I was not aware of existence of autoimmune diseases, it was my mom who suggested specific blood tests.

BBC – Some psychosis cases an immune disorder

Further on, once I started reading more about causes of panic, anxiety, and mood swings, I bought a glucometer and decided to check my blood glucose. My fasting blood sugar was checked previously at the hospital and it was fine, but after performing my own measures, I noticed a problem. After specific meals that contained high glycemic index foods, my blood sugar could stay at higher than 11 mmol/L two hours after eating. Diabetes UK states that blood glucose over 8 mmol / L two hours after a meal is of concern. Later on I spoke about these results to a doctor and she said I may have hyperglycemia. I also noticed feeling psychologically worse when my blood sugar was high. My point here is that if you are not responding to antipsychotics, there are further things to investigate. There is autoimmune testing – high levels of thyroid antibodies could indicate Hashimoto’s encephalitis, there are also other types of autoimmune encephalitis with different antibodies (NMDA receptor encephalitis, for example). TSH, free T3, and free T4 is a standard test to check the thyroid function, hypo/hyper thyroidism can also cause psychosis. Diabetes/hyperglycemia can affect your mood. Usually fating blood sugar is checked, but I would also verify blood glucose levels two hours after a meal with high glycemic carboydrates.

Diabetes UK – Diabetes and Hyperglycemia

 

Autoimmune Encephalitis and Diet

This post will be mostly based on anecdotal evidence , but I believe this information is still useful and there is not much harm in the suggested diets. In the worst case, the diet won’t help with autoimmune symptoms,  and you’ll just end up eating more vegetables. I don’t think that’s a terrible outcome.

The most popular diet for autoimmune diseases is the Autoimmune Protocol Diet (AIP). Most popular doesn’t mean it has the most evidence to back it up, but for whatever reason, it got around the internet. The AIP diet excludes many foods that are considered to be inflammatory and claims to reduce levels of thyroid antibodies. I cannot claim that his mechanism is true as there are almost no scientific papers on this, only anecdotal evidence. On the other hand, this diet is not unhealthy, so I doubt someone would be worse off by trying it. Usually bloggers/naturopaths recommending the diet suggest to try it for at least thirty days. Food groups that are excluded are gluten, all grains, pseudo-grains, dairy, legumes, beans, nuts, seeds, nightshades, eggs, vegetable oils, processed foods, and sugar. I might be forgetting something because there are so many items that get excluded, but if you are interested, you can read about the diet below.

Autoimmune Protocol Diet

What evidence is there? Well when I googled “AIP diet evidence”, I found one paper. You can try the same Google search. This particular study found that following the AIP diet, 6 weeks elimination phase and 5 weeks maintenance phase, improved endoscopic inflammation in patients with IBD (irritable bowel disease). Only 18 patients were enrolled in the study, so that is a very small sample size. Also such a study does not tell us whether it was necessary for all these food groups to be eliminated, maybe the results would be the same if only gluten and processed foods were eliminated. So it is some evidence that the diet helps but it is only one study and it doesn’t tell us about the mechanism of action of this dietary intervention.

Efficacy of the Autoimmune Protocol Diet for Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Personally I did follow the AIP diet for about a year. When I found out in June 2016 that I had high levels of thyroid antibodies, I finally started to have some hope that maybe I have an autoimmune disease that can be treated instead of treatment resistant schizophrenia and psychotic depression. My mom googled a lot at that time, I didn’t have the energy or motivation to do it, and she convinced me to start trying dietary changes. I started by excluding gluten and dairy and later on went on the AIP diet and stayed on it until December 2017. In June 2016 my Anti-Tg antibodies were over 1000, Anti-TPO was 40 something. Comparing to spring/summer 2016, I did improve by fall 2017, and my Anti-Tg antibodies reduced to about 500. Anti-TPO stayed the same. Was this improvement directly related to the AIP diet and was it necessary for me to eliminate all the food groups? I don’t know the answer to that question. I did go to a gastroenterologist who diagnosed me with chronic gastrointestinal inflammation and advised me to go on a low FODMAP diet. AIP diet overlaps with low FODMAP diet, therefore it could be that it was the elimination of high FODMAP foods that helped me.

The low FODMAP diet is based on the idea that certain foods contain compounds that contribute to gastrointestinal disorders such as IBS. FODMAPS are short chain carbohydrates and sugar alcohols, such as fructose, fructans, galacto-oligosaccharides, lactose, and polyols. Research indicates that some people might not be able to digest these compounds well and this could lead to inflammation in the intestines and gas produced by bacteria as they break down undigested carbohydrates.

Below is a list of high and low FODMAP foods (for those that are FODMAP intolerant it is advised to avoid high FODMAP foods, this can be discussed with a gastrointerologist).

High and Low FODMAP Foods

Could a bad diet cause brain inflammation and psychotic depression? Could a change in diet reduce symptoms if there is inflammation? I don’t think at this point we have a concrete answer, there have been studies though which indicate that a specific diet could improve your mood and physical health. Autoimmune encephalitis is quite rare and I haven’t seen studies on AE patients and diet changes, but I still encourage you to consider whether you are eating healthy and to consider making changes. In general, from what I’ve read, many doctors consider the Mediterranean Diet. This diet includes whole grains, a lot of vegetables,  yogurt , nuts and seeds, and more fish instead of meat (increasing Omega 3 content). There has been a study with positive results, indicating that Mediterranean diet can help patients with depression.

Mediterranean Diet Depression Article

So which diet is best, should you try a specific diet, which one? There is no medical test for this at the moment, only trial and error. As I mentioned, I was on the Autoimmune Protocol Diet for about a year and I did see an improvement in symptoms and reduction in Anti-Tg antibodies . My gastroenterologist also advised me to stick to a low FODMAP diet due to my abdominal issues and I have been following this advice. After I received the IV steroids treatment in December 2017, I relaxed my AIP dietary restrictions and tested several items. I stick to eating gluten-free free and cow dairy free, also I felt that I had skin/abdominal issues become aggravated by potatoes, peanuts, and hot peppers. I avoid processed foods and vegetable oils.

It sounds restrictive but I found this diet to be working for me and I feel that I have enough variety. I eat a lot of goat/sheep/buffalo plain yogurt with nuts and seeds, tea with goat milk, quail eggs, poultry , seafood. In terms of vegetables – zucchini, carrots, squash, plantains, sweet potatoes, kale, spinach, bell peppers, etc. Grains – black rice,  quinoa, buckwheat, oatmeal. For bread I eat sourdough version and sometimes I make cassava flour tortillas. I don’t eat beans and legumes much because they are high FODMAP, sometimes I add canned chickpeas or sprouted mung beans. For cooking I use olive, avocado , and coconut oils.

My story at Autoimmune Encephalitis Alliance Org.

Hi everyone, I am very happy that my story got posted in AE Alliance blog. I hope it will help some readers to receive a proper diagnosis. I cannot say that I recovered 100%, but there is improvement after IV steroids, and at least now I know the specific diagnosis. I’m sure that for many being told by doctors multiple diagnoses is a horrible experience. Going from one doctor to next, being told it’s schizophrenia, major depression, schizoaffective disorder… More doctors need to be aware of HE!