foodconsumer.org

Vitamin D and schizophrenia

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Dear Dr. Cannell: My son has schizophrenia. Will Vitamin D help him? He started hearing voices twelve years ago and our lives have been a nightmare

Mahala Kempf

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:31:35 +0000

Thank you, Dr Cannell, for a very informative article, with many links to other important research papers. Wonderful.

Could it not be a simple but good measure to routinely test prenatal levels of Vit. D in pregnant mothers?

It would be difficult to justify merely having a control group since in 20 - 25 years time many more cases will be evident - which might have been prevented by the Vit.D test in the first place.

At the very least, it is a serious matter that ordinary people are made to feel worried about being out in the sun. Our (shizophrenic) son seems to benefit a lot from being out doing manual work, come rain or shine, at a local site where he can volunteer, though physically he could not manage this every day.

Perhaps prisoners with more serious mental health problems & living at feasible latitudes would benefit, not so much from the 'correction' part of rehab.(i.e.being shut away), but more humane, correct conditions for better care, especially including a certain amount of outdoors work & activity (sport) & being shown the dignity worthy of people who almost certainly never meant to find themselves there in the first place.

We became involved in the mental health world in Britain about 10 years ago & the thing that's most depressing about it is the door one is expected to accept as closed on a normal life & normal social acceptance for one's (grownup)child. I believe in cures, along with countless others in seemingly hopeless situations I suspect; we have to work - & go on working - to change prejudice, everywhere.

Schizophrenia

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:52:25 +0000

A new-fangled drug, Saphris, has received the approval of the FDA for treatment of adult schizophrenia and bipolar disorder I. Bipolar I disorder is an unremitting, vicious, intermittent psychiatric disorder that leads to sporadic episodes of despair, agitation and reduced sleeping patterns. The general side effects in schizophrenics are restlessness or staying totally stock-still, reduced oral sensation and sleepiness.

Frances

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:26:37 +0000

My son was Dx at 7 with Paranoid Early-Onset Schizophrenia. My son had precursors for it:

Difficult pregnancy
Born in winter
Lack of Oxygen at birth

I was on bed-rest for the last 6 of my 9.5 months of pregnancy. My son is a January baby, had a knot in his cord and didn't breath at birth (1st apgar was 2).

Being on bed-rest (with prenatal vitamins), I didn't get access to much daylight, neither did my winter baby. As a new mom, I saw a Vitamin D supplement for nursing babies in a mother's magazine and thought it was "crazy." I wish I had bought it now. I can't help but feel really guilty.

My son started showing signs of Autism around 18 months old, Dx'ed at 4 with High Fx Autism and then with E-OS 3 years later.

It was like the HFA blossomed into something VERY different. His stress level spiked during an all consuming, very stressful ABA home program. Within 2 months, he was a very different boy and almost had a psychotic break. We caught it just in time & his first med worked within days.

Things are SO tolerable now (he's 9). The Autism symptoms vanished as did the hallucinations, delusions and disorganized thoughts and speech. We homeschool to keep his stress down. He is SO smart, I hope it gives him an advantage during puberty when his ventricles start to expand and more of his brain deteriorates. That's so scary to think about!

It's funny, he really enjoys pacing back and forth in our sunny backyard, chattering away. It helps him, now I know why. I'm putting the sunscreens away from now on and I'm going to get him more access to sunlight. It won't be hard, we live in California.

Thank you for this article! I'll talk to his pedo psych about Vit. D and get him some tank tops for summer. You've probably changed my son's life because I was able to access this info. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

PS. You're so good at this, I wonder if you could find research about the link between Parkinson's and Schizophrenia since both have effect on Dopamine levels but in opposite ways. (My son's grandpa got Early-Onset Parkinson's at 27yo).