psychosis – Notes of a Neuropsychiatry Amateur

Celiac disease and dairy proteins – summarization of articles

I want to address the issue of whether dairy could be an issue for those with celiac disease. I don’t think that I will be able to arrive at an exact answer with this post, but I do wish to summarize existing articles and evidence on this topic. From my personal experience, I get all the same symptoms from dairy products as from foods containing gluten. The symptoms include pains in the lower abdomen, bloating, constipation, fatigue, inflammation of the eyelids, as well as psychiatric symptoms including panic attacks, anxiety, and depression. Gathering anecdotal evidence by speaking to reddit users in the gluten-free subreddit, multiple individuals have also expressed the same experience with dairy causing similar symptoms to gluten. Also these individuals noticed that the same symptoms were caused by lactose-free products, therefore likely the culprit is not the sugar (lactose), but the proteins in dairy (casein). Below I will summarize several articles addressing the consumption of casein by individuals with celiac disease.

The first study that I found looking at the correlation between gluten and casein is from 2007, Mucosal reactivity to cow’s milk protein in coeliac disease. This article discusses the fact that some celiac patients on a gluten-free diet still experience gastrointestinal symptoms. The authors then examine whether these patients have an inflammatory immune response to the protein in cow’s milk. The results of this study indicated that in fact in a fraction of celiac patients did experience a similar reaction to the milk protein as to gluten. As usual, I used python to create article summaries, including this one.

Summary:
On clinical grounds cow’s milk (CM) protein sensitivity may be suspected. Here, using rectal protein challenge, we investigated the local inflammatory reaction to gluten and CM protein in adult patients with CD in remission.
In 18 of 20 patients gluten challenge induced neutrophil activation defined as increased MPO release and increased NO synthesis.
A mucosal inflammatory response similar to that elicited by gluten was produced by CM protein in about 50% of the patients with coeliac disease.

Summary using LexRank (graph-based method for computing relative importance of sentences):

Mean rectal ΔMPO was 303 ± 27 µg/l after casein challenge and 16 ± 27 µg/l after challenge with α-lactalbumin.
Compared to healthy controls, patients with CD showed significant increases in rectal NO and MPO concentrations measured 15 h after challenge with both CM and gluten (P < 0·001), while ECP was increased to a similar extent in the two groups ( ).
The major finding in this study is that rectal challenge with CM protein frequently induced a local inflammatory mucosal reaction in patients with CD but not in healthy controls.
Our patients with CD had normal serum levels of IgA, IgG and IgE against casein and α-lactalbumin, which might be explained by the fact that they were on a gluten-free diet and therefore had improved the mucosal integrity.
Our finding that, in a fraction of coeliac patients, CM protein challenge may induce an inflammatory reaction of the same magnitude, as did gluten challenge, may also suggest an innate as well as adaptive immune response to CM, and casein in particular.

There were several other studies on the topic of gluten-free and casein-diet, but they all investigated whether this diet would help patients on the autism spectrum, which is not the topic of my post. I did find another short article on gluten-free and casein-free diet helping with psychotic symptoms. Personally I have a similar experience, as consuming any gluten or dairy increases my paranoia, panic attacks, and intrusive thoughts. The authors claim that there is a following mechanism for psychosis:

“In autism and schizophrenia, incomplete digestion of certain proteins, gluten and casein, cause an autoimmune response as indicated by elevated levels of IgA and IgG antibodies. This intestinal malabsorption also causes pathogenic elements (peptide fractions), which bind to opioid receptors by crossing the blood-brain barrier. This releases exorphins (opiate-like substances, similar to certain drugs) that cause psychotic symptoms.”

Evidence-Based Practice: Introduction of a Gluten-Free and Casein-Free Diet to Alleviate Psychotic Symptoms
A case review of a young boy yielded an unexpected resolution of psychotic symptoms after the introduction of a gluten-free, casein-free (GFCF) diet.
The purpose of this paper is to show that health care professionals may use a gluten-free and casein-free diet (GFCF) as an additional element to standard treatment methods, to alleviate psychotic symptoms.
Additionally noted were similarities between autism and schizophrenia.
Introduction of a GFCF diet helps reduce psychotic symptoms, and gives another option for patients resistant to traditional treatment methods, especially adolescents and young adults.
Keywords: autism, gluten-free, casein-free diet (GFCF), psychosis, schizophrenia

Inflammation and Schizophrenia – a short lecture

Came across this short lecture on schizophrenia and the inflammation hypothesis. The author mentions three hypothesis for the causes of schizophrenia – elevated dopamine, glutamate receptor abnormalities, and inflammation. He also mentions the fact that autoimmune diseases can present with psychosis – lupus, Hashimoto’s encephalopathy, celiac disease, etc. It’s great to hear a professional acknowledging this fact, as not all doctors look into the link between psychiatric symptoms and autoimmune diseases.

Important notes from the lecture – some inflammation can be determined in a straightforward way by checking the C-reactive protein levels. Elevated levels of this substance increase the risk of schizophrenia onset. C-reactive protein levels are used to check for infection or chronic inflammatory disease, they also lead to increased risk of heart disease. It can be elevated due to a variety of diseases, such as obstructive sleep apnea, some viral infections, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis.
In one study lumbar puncture was performed on a sample of patients with schizophrenia. 54% of the patients had self-directed antibodies in the cerebrospinal fluid (another piece of evidence to support the immune system disturbance hypothesis). What could the antibodies be targeting? Possibly neuronal proteins or neuronal receptor proteins.

Inflammation and Schizophrenia video lecture

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

Improvement with lithium chloride supplement

I have extensive experience with psych meds, first prescription being abilify and seroquel in 2015, then mirtazapine, wellbutrin, risperidone, cymbalta, trazodone, and more. None of the meds worked for me. Last trial was of fluoxetine in November, which caused severe insomnia on only 10mg, and panic attacks. In March I also tried Zembrin which is a serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SRI). Zembrin also caused panic attacks for me and increased psychotic symptoms. I decided I don’t want to touch any additional SSRIs, SNRIs, nor SRIs.

I have also tried shrooms microdosing. I found that 1-4 gram occasional trips are better for me as microdosing makes me fatigued. While on shrooms though, a lot of thoughts came to me about reducing my caffeine intake and lithium. Lithium was mentioned to me several years ago by one consulting psychiatrist, but was never prescribed. I asked my current psych about it, but she refused to prescribe it.

While I was on Zembrin in March, by mid-month I started to get more paranoid and psychotic, as I was also in luteal phase of my cycle. A lot of women with mental illness experience PME – premenstrual exacerbation of symptoms. I unfortunately experience that as well. Mid-March I decided to stop Zembrin and any other supplements I was trying – mushroom coffee, rhodiola rosea, St. John’s Wort tea. I also stopped drinking coffee in general as I think it exacerbates my mood swings. I only continued with lithium orotate supplement that I purchased, but I stopped it as well as it seemed that it was causing more frequent urination. As I stopped these supplements and my period stabilized, my mental state somewhat stabilized to a point where I could better observe myself and think about what to do next. I decided that I still wanted to try lithium, but purchased a supplement which was in a different form – liquid which contains lithium chloride, instead of the lithium orotate tablets. I chose lithium chloride because there is more existing research on it than on lithium orotate. I also made homemade CBD oil from the Avidekel strain.

Well it has been over two months since mid-March and I’ve hard a lot more days which were just ‘alright’ instead of being a struggle with intrusive thoughts and depression. I’ve felt more calm and was able to read more throughout these two months, actually finished two books, on my third now. So in general a beneficial experience so far, will see how it goes.

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.

Celiac disease, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and a beef patty

I’ve done something today that I probably haven’t done for at least a year or more. I bought a beef patty. I felt very guilty because I don’t want to eat large mammals. Ideally I wouldn’t eat any birds or animals, but we have to make practical choices. From my experience, having celiac disease, I don’t absorb vitamins and minerals well. A chicken leg of 100 grams has approximately 6% daily value of cobalamin, 6% DV magnesium, 7% DV potassium, and 25% DV B-6. Without eating meat or fish, you could try to get vitamin B-6 from beans, also fortified cereals contain B-6. Here is the issue – with celiac you cannot eat most fortified cereals and breads since they are not gluten-free, also eating too many beans causes digestive problems. So I had to make a choice and about a year ago I chose to eat seafood and poultry, but not mammals. My reasoning is that compared to chickens and turkeys, large mammals such as pigs and cows have more complex brains and nervous systems and therefore have more complex emotions and might suffer more during their short life in a cage at a factory farm. I have no proof of that, but I had to make a choice.

Unfortunately recently I had to make another choice to start eating red meat again. I was experiencing lethargy and noticed white bands on my nails. Some sources stated that white spots on nails could be a sign of zinc deficiency, while others indicated that there was no correlation. This did lead me to wondering whether I was getting enough zinc, selenium, and B vitamins from chicken and salmon. 100 grams of beef on average contain 43% DV (daily value) of B12, 20% DV of B6. Dietitians of Canada also list beef as top sources of zinc, 75 grams of beef containing 4.0 – 8.6 mg of the mineral (women need 8 mg per day). Chicken is much lower in zinc, 1.3 – 2.2 mg per 75 grams. Salmon was not listed as it is not a good source of zinc, it contains about 0.64 mg per 100 grams. Some studies indicate that it’s harder to absorb zinc from a plant based diet, in addition to that my absorption may be worse due to gut inflammation caused by autoimmune disease.

“With reduced intake of meat and increased intake of phytate-containing legumes and whole grains, movement toward plant-based diets reduces dietary iron and zinc absorption.“

Moving Toward a Plant‐based Diet: Are Iron and Zinc at Risk?

zinc1

Why do we need zinc and what happens if there is a zinc deficiency? Zinc is found in cells throughout the body and is needed to make proteins and DNA. Zinc plays a role in cell division, cell growth, wound healing, and the breakdown of carbohydrates. It is important for the function of the immune system and also the senses of smell and taste.

zinc2

Zinc deficiency can cause appetite loss, poor immune system function, diarrhea, eye and skin lesions, feeling lethargic, strange taste sensations, hair loss, weight loss, poor wound healing. Individuals with chronic conditions and poor absorption are more likely to be zinc deficient.

Zinc performs its biochemical functions as a divalent cation (positively charged ion) primarily when bound to enzymes and other proteins. Zinc is essential as a catalytic, structural, and regulatory ion and is involved in homeostasis (the tendency to maintain a stable, relatively constant internal environment), immune responses, oxidative stress, apoptosis (the death of cells which occurs as a normal and controlled part of an organism’s growth or development), and aging. Zinc is recognized as being important for stabilizing DNA and appears to reside in the nucleus longer than any other cell compartment. Therefore, it is possible that as intracellular levels of zinc increase, more iron will be displaced from nucleoproteins and less OH-driven DNA damage will occur.

Biological consequences of zinc deficiency in the pathomechanisms of selected diseases

A study on zinc deficiency in relation to psychiatry:

“Zinc participation is essential for all physiological systems, including neural functioning, where it participates in a myriad of cellular processes. Converging clinical, molecular, and genetic discoveries illuminate key roles for zinc homeostasis in association with clinical depression and psychosis which are not yet well appreciated at the clinical interface. Intracellular deficiency may arise from low circulating zinc levels due to dietary insufficiency, or impaired absorption from aging or medical conditions, including alcoholism. A host of medications commonly administered to psychiatric patients, including anticonvulsants, oral medications for diabetes, hormones, antacids, anti-inflammatories and others also impact zinc absorption. Furthermore, inefficient genetic variants in zinc transporter molecules that transport the ion across cellular membranes impede its action even when circulating zinc concentrations is in the normal range. Well powered clinical studies have shown beneficial effects of supplemental zinc in depression and it important to pursue research using zinc as a potential therapeutic option for psychosis as well. Meta-analyses support the adjunctive use of zinc in major depression and a single study now supports zinc for psychotic symptoms.”

The Emerging Role for Zinc in Depression and Psychosis

From my own experiment with N=1, I did feel better after eating a beef patty. This could be a coincidence, a placebo effect, or an actual effect of the minerals/vitamins in beef on my mood. I also thought of a substitute for beef that is not a mammal – mussels and clams. A 3-ounce serving of cooked mussels contains about 15% of daily value of zinc. The same amount of moist-cooked clams also provides 15% of the daily value for zinc. Clams and mussels contain high amounts of vitamin B12, selenium, and iron, as well as omega-3 fats. I think therefore it’s possible for me to continue avoiding beef if I include chicken, fish, mussels, and clams.

CAMH ER Waiting Room

The room is in the building at College and Spadina. The room doesn’t have any windows, but it does have a clock, so you can know what time of day it is. What you can’t know is when you will be let out (but to be fair, involuntarily hospitalization can be a maximum of 72 hours). There are armchairs along the perimeter of the area and in the middle. There are about six of us at the moment. Some will be released soon and new ones will arrive. None of us want to be waiting here, twisting on the pale green chairs. Also most don’t agree that they should be here. A young black woman is banging on the locked door of the staff room, a nurse comes out. The woman is nearly dressed with a designer purse and fur boots. She starts pacing back and forth. “If I knew what this place is like, – she yells at the nurse, – I would have never come here. Look at me, I don’t need to be here. I don’t cut myself and shit.” The nurse talks to her calmly, she tells her what she tells everyone – you have to wait to speak with the psychiatrist. The woman continues to yell that she is not like the rest of us. She complained to her family doctor about stress at work and the doctor referred her to this address, told her that she could get a note for stress leave. She just wants a note, she assures that she doesn’t cut herself.

As of that is what we all do. If only it was that simple – you either cut yourself and are insane, or you don’t, and are not. I’ve never cut myself and yet I voluntarily checked myself into the CAMH ER. I also didn’t think that I needed to be in there, but there was no other way. I wanted to be set free from my inflamed brain, from the malfunctioning neuronal synapses. I wanted to be free to get lost in writings of other people’s ideas, to play Bach’s Gavotte, to be attracted and be attractive. I wanted to be released from the dark well inside my own mind. I wanted to suppress the hell, to get the intravenous immunoglobulin treatment. But how to convince them, how to make them understand that is what I needed?

After sometime the black woman was released. I was still waiting. There was renewed yelling, coming from a different patient. Similar to the woman who just left, she was yelling at the nurse that she didn’t need to be here. She was also getting extremely agitated, I think if she had something to throw, she would. The whole room now was aware that she was old enough to have ten children and that she didn’t want this visit on her record. Her sister couldn’t take care of her own kids and who would then be doing it if not her? But with a CAMH visit on the papers, maybe she wouldn’t be allowed to take the children in. The nurse tried to explain that visiting CAMH was not same as police record, but the woman already went into rage, reasoning does not work at that point.

So why do we all scream in fear – I shouldn’t be here, I am not like the rest of them? We must have evolved to have this fear of being declared insane. Insane means being banned from the tribe, starving alone in the savannah. It’s hard to let go of that basic fear of being abandoned by our tribe. Even in the isolated room at CAMH, where only the doctors and about five other strangers could hear you, we still don’t want to admit that something could be wrong. We could admit cancer, meningitis, infertility, but not that we are not mentally well. Most diseases are just affecting our body, but it is our mind that makes us who we are. And if there is something wrong with that, then what are we? Of course this is not what I think, this is an assumption of what goes on through people’s minds in this state of fear. There is no separation from mind and body, both are a combination of cells, proteins, amino acids. Signalling to each other, reproducing. And any part of the whole mechanism can malfunction.

I would say – learn to accept. You didn’t choose this body, you just sort of woke up in it. I would have chosen another model, if I could, but no choices were given. Well here I am, at CAMH ER, because some signals are malfunctioning, and it’s not my fault. This is the situation though, and I have to accept.

Hot weather and other factors, autoimmune disease, and psychosis

I’m thankful to bloggers who wrote about their experience with diet and depression. I’ve learned through the blogs and then my own observation that I was making my mental health worse by eating gluten in all possible forms – pasta, sandwiches, Subway, wraps, tempura, soy sauce. I have also established that casein in cow’s milk makes me more psychotic, so I had to give up a lot of delicious habits – taro bubble tea, cheesecake, easily ordering a coffee with milk at Denny’s – I now usually carry goat milk in a cooler with me everywhere, in case I want to add it to tea. This post won’t be about diet though, I have posted on diet previously:

Autoimmune Encephalitis and Diet

This post is about the fact that changing your diet may improve your mental health but it won’t necessarily cure you. I think it’s important to remember that in order to not constantly blame yourself. I used to do that when I was on strict AIP diet – I used to blame myself for feeling depressed. After I noticed that the AIP diet was actually helping, I became convinced that I would soon be cured, as long as I stay on the diet. Probably I’ve read too many blogs claiming that grains contain lectins that cause brain inflammation and therefore depression. There are a lot of success stories online with bloggers stating that their depression vanished after going on AIP diet or paleo or keto or vegan, you name it. It’s easy then to start blaming yourself each time you feel depressed again – if all those people were cured, maybe then I am slacking, not avoiding enough foods, not being strict enough. I think we may go into the blaming state because we want to believe that we can have full control of our mood and it would be nice if as long as we didn’t eat certain ingredients, we would never be depressed or psychotic.

Blaming yourself only makes you feel worse though and it doesn’t let you accept the reality that mental health problems are caused by many factors. I think yes – you should definitely strive for a healthy diet – avoid fried foods, high glycemic foods, red meat, etc., but should you feel guilty about the brown rice bowl that you ate yesterday because AIP and paleo bloggers claim that all grains cause inflammation? No, I am not sure if there is any evidence that grains are an issue, some research actually suggests that the healthiest diets are ones that include whole grains – such as the Mediterranean and MIND diets. I think we have to accept that there are other factors affecting our mental health and some we cannot control. Periods are definitely one of them and they suck. I find that my paranoia and obsessive thoughts are definitely exacerbated during the first three days of my period. Can I cure this issue with diet? I don’t think so. Being female, my hormones will always fluctuate with the menstrual cycle, there is nothing I can do about that. I can remind myself that it’s only worse for three days and it will get better, I am not always psychotic, I can try exercising more, going for a walk. But cure? I don’t know of one.

Menstrual Psychosis: A Forgotten Disorder?

I have recently realized that heat increases my intrusive thoughts. I had observed for a while that hot weather makes me lethargic and quick-tempered, but now I have also correlated hot weather with psychosis. It had occurred several times during the past month when I experienced exacerbated negative commentary in my head. I noticed that each time this happened on a weekend when I was away, camping. Supposedly camping is better than work – I was not alone, I was with friends, eating meals together – just as I like. Also I was moving – swimming, kayaking. Getting enough vitamin D. Definitely sniffing a lot of soil (reference to the antidepressant bacteria Soil Bacteria Work In Similar Way To Antidepressants), always bringing my own food in a cooler – tempeh, mung beans, buckwheat, freeze-dried vegetables, oatmeal. Stuff that I usually eat, so that was a constant factor. When analyzing what caused an event, we have to look into the differences, and the only factor that I could think of is heat. This summer has been very hot in Ontario, multiple days above 30 degrees. Every weekday though I am in an extremely air conditioned air building where I often wear my shawl. At home I have two functioning ACs. It was only during the camping that I was exposed to extreme heat for many hours in a row. I think I have to accept this fact – I love camping, but hot weather increases my aggression and psychotic symptoms.

There is also research supporting the idea that heat exacerbates mental health problems. “Above a threshold of 26.7°C, we observed a positive association between ambient temperature and hospital admissions for mental and behavioral disorders. Compared with non–heat-wave periods, hospital admissions increased by 7.3% during heat waves.“

The Effect of Heat Waves on Mental Health in a Temperate Australian City

“Heat exposure associated with mental illness – A mental hospital-based study in Hanoi, Vietnam looked at if there is a relationship between heat exposure and mental health problems. The results showed significant increase in hospital admissions for mental illnesses during periods of heatwaves, especially during longer periods of heat exposure.“

Heat exposure associated with mental illness

Exposure to sun can also exacerbate autoimmune disease symptoms, and for me this directly means worsening of mental problems. ”

“‘Photosensitivity can trigger the whole darn disease, including full systemic flare and joint pain and kidney failure,’ Dr. Connolly said. ‘The younger patients sometimes say, ‘The heck with this, I’m tired of carrying sun block,’ and they’ll stay out there, and it’s not just that they are going to give themselves a bad rash. This is something to take seriously.’

The link between the sun and lupus flare-ups is thought to be a set of inflammatory protein molecules called cytokines, which are activated when ultraviolet light hits the skin. The skin inflammation that results can create a chain reaction of other symptoms.“

A Sunny Day Can Mean All Sorts of Distress

This is all sad news, but I still want to go outside. I want to go hiking, kayaking down whitewater rivers, canoeing through uninhabited islands. I still have to accept that sometimes camping might make me feel worse. Probably I need to give up on t-shirts and always wear long sleeves when it’s hot. I do always wear a hat and sunscreen. Also going outside is important for vitamin D and we do need UV light to set our circadian rhythm. Therefore no, you shouldn’t lock yourself up in the house, but it’s better to not be out in the sun in the swim suit for too long. I’m going to stick with pants, shirts, running shoes, and caps. On the other hand I’m also not going to blame myself if I do feel worse. I did not create this disease, it’s not my fault that I react to weather, I can’t control the weather and I can’t avoid the weather. Let’s not feel worse by blaming, let’s learn from the available information and also remember that even if you are doing everything right, sometimes psychosis may still occur and we won’t know why. Maybe we will in the future and you will have this device that will tell you in real time ‘your dopamine levels are going higher than the suggested threshold, eat this scientifically advanced cookie and it will fix the problem’. I do hope for such a future, but for now it’s just science fiction. Research has shown that one way to reduce suffering during a psychotic episode is to accept the experience but not act on it. Accept also that there will be a peak of the symptoms but then they will diminish, it will pass.