Nutrition & Supplements in Major Mental Illnesses

This book does not advise or recommend or reject any treatment, nor this book is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any illness. It imparts information. It does not provide nutritional supplements recommendations as substitute for psychological or medical/psychiatric treatments. Hopefully some patients and their relatives will find this information useful to arrive at intelligent decisions in their life. Notes: (1) The word “Doctor” in this book, unless otherwise indicated, will stand for allopathic doctor and/or a psychiatrist. (2) Whereas no gender bias is intended in this book with the use of masculine expression like “he” or “his”, their use will be solely for convenience and brevity of expression and will be intended to represent both the genders. As a quick rescue to the reader, we will like to tell the reader to skip large chunks of chapters and go to the last few paragraphs of the mental illness chapters in which he is interested, to find the nutritional approach for the mental illness. Thus, the last few paragraphs of the chapters three, four, five and six will be of use. But the reader, who is not sure which of these chapters to look into, will be better placed if he reads the entire book. This book is not meant to convey the message that one treatment, one vitamin or a group of vitamins in specific dose will benefit everybody. First, we all have “biochemical individuality”, to quote Linus Pauling (1986). What does it mean? It means we all have to experiment to determine what vitamin combination in what dose works, for us. In this book, guidelines are provided to start the experiments on own self. The guidelines hold true for most of us but not for all. Second, the nutrients work synergistically, helping each other. They work the best when taken together. This is strikingly true for the B group of vitamins. The few exceptions that are there will be specifically mentioned as such in this book. For example some amino acids have to be taken as stand-alone, otherwise they compete with other amino acids for absorption into the brain.