The Role of Nutrition in Mental Disease

Today, a tremendous development has transpired in the use of drugs to combat mental disease. Tranquilizers are given not only to those afflicted with mental illness, but others who merely need to be calmed down. These drugs do, of course, alleviate symptoms or modify the chemical environment of the brain, but do they get at the root of the trouble?

I am not here suggesting a specific treatment for mental disease but i would like to share with you researches of two prominent scientists and authors who believed that anxiety neuroses and other mild forms of mental trouble, including

emotional irritability and depression, may prove to be treatable, by paying expert attention to nutritional factors.

The late Linus Pauling, a brilliant chemist, published a significant article in Science entitled “Orthomolecular Psychiatry.” Ortho comes from the Greek meaning “straight”, and orthomolecular psychiatry is the kind that would be concerned with straightening out brain chemistry. In his article, Pauling specifically, mentioned the nutrients vitamin B12, niacinamide, ascorbic acid, magnesium, trytophan, and glutamic acid, as all being concerned with brain functioning and thus with mental disease.

Dr. Roger J. Williams, author of the books, “Nutrition Against Disease” and “Individual Biochemistry”, mentioned nine vitamins as agents that help protect against mental disease. He explored niacinamide as one of the nutrients for which brain cells have an absolute need. The relation between the lack of thiamine (vitamin B1) and mental depression is also linked, so with the evidence linking riboflavin (vitamin B2) to mental disease. Another is pantothenic acid as essential to brain functioning. VitaminB6 (pyridoxine) deficiency is still another factor mentioned. VitaminB12, potassium, magnesium, inositol are likewise linked in the nutritional chain that protects against mental illness.

All this may sound as though no nutrient is excluded but their safe assumption is

every essential nutrient is needed by brain cell.