The UltraMind Solution (14 page)

Imagine a room full of people with depression. They all meet the
DSMIV
criteria for depression, and they would all be prescribed antidepressants for their “disease.”

However, neither this diagnosis nor the treatment provided takes into account their genetic individuality. It doesn’t tease out the reasons each of them became depressed in the first place.

These problems arise because the real causes of depression are not addressed with antidepressants.

It may be there are many “depressions,” not just one generic “depression.” These “depressions” may be the result of a multitude of causes: folate, B
₆
, or B
₁₂
deficiency; low thyroid function; “brain allergies”
*
to foods; an autoimmune
^†
response to gluten that inflames the brain; mercury poisoning; abnormal proteins called gluteo-or caseomorphins from poorly digested food that alter brain chemistry; brain inflammation from a hidden infection; blood-sugar imbalances; low testosterone or other sex hormones; a deficiency of omega-3 fats; or adrenal-gland dysfunction from excessive stress among many other possible causes.

These are some of the real causes of “depression” as well as many other mental illness and neurological conditions. Without addressing core, underlying issues like these, we can never have optimal brain function or mood.

There is really no such thing as the “disease” called depression, just many different systemic imbalances that cause the symptoms we collectively refer to as “depression.” One disease, many causes...

On the other side of the spectrum, there can be one factor in a person’s diet, lifestyle, environment, or genetic makeup that can cause dozens of different and seemingly unrelated “diseases.”

Gluten, the protein found in the most common grain eaten in America—wheat—as well as barley, rye, oats, spelt, triticale, and kamut, is an excellent example. Gluten is one common factor that can create so many illnesses and diseases it would be hard to count them all.

The reasons are many. They include our lack of genetic adaptation to grasses, and particularly gluten in our diet. Wheat was introduced into
Europe during the Middle Ages, and 30 percent of those of European descent carry the gene for celiac disease (HLA DQ2 or HLA DQ8),
⁴
which increases susceptibility to health problems from eating gluten. Keep in mind that American strains of wheat have a much higher gluten content (which is needed to make light fluffy Wonder Bread).

A recent review paper in
The New England Journal of Medicine
listed fiftyfive “diseases” that can be caused by eating gluten.
⁵
These include many neurological and psychiatric diseases such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, dementia, migraines, epilepsy, and neuropathy (nerve damage).
⁶
Gluten has also been linked to autism.
⁷

Besides making the brain inflamed, gluten can be broken down in the gut into odd little proteins that are almost like psychedelic drugs (opiumlike peptides called gluteomorphins). These change brain function and behavior.

Gluten also contains significant amounts of
glutamate,
a molecule that accelerates, activates, excites, and damages brain cells through a special brain receptor or docking station called the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor. Overactivation of this receptor by glutamate is implicated in many psychiatric disorders.
⁸
Glutamate is called an excitotoxin (a substance which overexcites and kills or damages brain cells).

Gluten can cause brain dysfunction by three different mechanisms— inflammation, odd morphine or psychedelic proteins, and as an excitotoxin.
⁹

So gluten, we see, can be the single cause behind many different “diseases.” These diseases are not treatable with better medication, but simply by 100 percent elimination of gluten from the diet. One cause, many diseases...

One disease caused by multiple factors, one factor that causes multiple diseases? How could this happen? It completely upsets our current thinking. And it should!

But the reason this is true is simpler than you might think.

We are all unique, biochemically and genetically, and have different responses to the same insults. In one person gluten may cause arthritis, in another it can cause depression. Depression may be caused by gluten in one person; in another it may be caused by B
₁₂
deficiency.

The beauty of Functional Medicine, the seven keys to UltraWellness, and the science of nutrigenomics is that they take these factors into account to help create health for each individual.

Medicine has been looking for answers in the wrong place. Finally, science
has provided a gateway to a different way of thinking about mental illness and brain disorders. We need to get out of the name-it, blame-it, and tame-it game—the myth of diagnosis—and start thinking about how the body works, how to personalize our approach, and how not to suppress symptoms but to restore normal function.

The UltraMind Solution
leverages all of these new methods of understanding health and illness to help you sort through the real causes of your broken brain and get to the root of the problem, not just stay stuck with the name of your disease and the limited options available for treating it in this outdated paradigm.

I want to let you in on a little secret...

Depression is
not
a Prozac deficiency.

The real problem with conventional medical training is that doctors are not trained to be healers, but to be pharmacologists (except for surgeons). This problem is a direct consequence of the myth of diagnosis. We are trained to name the disease, and then assign a medication to treat it.

But if the causes of a disease can be radically different in a given group of people, why should we believe that a “one-size-fits-all” prescription of medications would work to treat those underlying causes of the disease?

Medications can be lifesaving, and are incredibly useful if given in the right dose, for the right person, at the right time, for the right reason. But the problem in medical practice today is that our
only
tools are medications. The old adage, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” applies to medicine today.

The best or right treatment for any particular condition may be ignored, because all we have studied and used are medications.

If you are sleep-deprived you can increase alertness and energy with a stimulant medication, but the “right” treatment is sleep. If you are depressed because your intestine is inflamed and you are not absorbing vitamin B
₁₂
, Prozac may help you feel a little better, but the treatment is fixing your gut and replacing B
₁₂
.

This all seems obvious enough, and in fact is common sense, but it is
so
far away from how doctors are trained and how we currently practice medicine.

Our goal in medicine should be to find the right “medicine” for each
person, without prejudice, whether it is a drug, a nutrient, diet change, detoxification, a hormone, exercise, or exorcism! We must embrace whatever works, and inquire into its effectiveness with all our scientific, economic, and political resources.

Let’s take a look at the main categories of medicine for the brain: antidepressants (such as Prozac), stimulants (such as Ritalin), and tranquilizers (such as Valium and major tranquilizers such as Risperdal). Do they work? Are they safe? What problems are associated with them? Is there a better alternative to medications like these, one that addresses the underlying causes of mental illness and brain dysfunction?

These mood-altering drugs are the fastest-growing segment of the pharmaceutical market, and as a group constitute the second-biggest class of medication in total sales and prescriptions. In children alone over the three-year period from 1997 to 2000, the use of antipsychotic medication increased by 138 percent, atypical antidepressants by 42 percent, and SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—they are the most commonly prescribed antidepressants) by 18 percent.
¹⁰
The global use of ADHD medication rose 300 percent from 1993 to 2000.
¹¹

What’s worse is that the use of untested and potentially unsafe combinations of psychotropic drug cocktails has increased 500 percent in children. The authors of the study that pointed this out warned that our prescribing practices are not in sync with our current knowledge.
¹²
In other words, our current research
does not
support these drug-cocktail combinations.

Concerns about overuse extend to adults as well as children. In fact, Eli Lilly, the maker of the antipsychotic drug called Zyprexa, has already paid $1.2 billion to settle thirty thousand lawsuits from people who claim that Zyprexa caused them to develop diabetes or other diseases, and is also alleged to have promoted Zyprexa for unapproved off-label use, which it denies. Drug companies cannot actively promote drugs for off-label uses, but doctors can prescribe them for such uses. (For example, Zyprexa is approved for schizophrenia but doctors also prescribe it for anxiety.)

Do we really need medications to keep us from being sad, hyper, anxious, or psychotic?

Today modern psychopharmacologists dispense drugs like candy despite their limited effectiveness. Often these drugs are administered in untested cocktails and combinations, which may occasionally be helpful, but come with more side effects.

Consider the rather astonishing example of antipsychotics or major tranquilizers (including Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, and Geodon). This class of medications is one of the biggest-growing sectors in drug sales.
Antipsychotic usage has shown a 10 to 20 percent rate of increase per year over the last few years and today sales of these drugs total about $12 billion a year.

Traditionally such medications were reserved for psychosis, defined as an inability to distinguish what’s real from what’s imagined. Hearing voices and thinking that aliens are visiting your bedroom at night are examples of psychosis.

But now, with little hesitation or scientific evidence, antipsychotics are given to children with behavioral problems, autism, and ADHD, and to adults with depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disease, dementia, and Parkinson’s disease.

These drugs can lead to serious side effects. Besides acting like a chemical straitjacket and making people dull, slow, and stupid, they increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, stroke, blood clots, and more serious conditions known as neuroleptic malignant syndrome (where your body literally burns up with fever and your muscles are destroyed) and tardive dyskinesia (uncontrolled repetitive, involuntary, and purposeless movements such as lip smacking, rapid eye blinking, grimacing, and spasms in the legs).

Have we suddenly all gone crazy?

What most consumers don’t understand is that drug testing is often very limited before drug approval. New drugs are tested on a few hundred to a few thousand people often for a very limited time (usually a few weeks to a few months). Then they are released on the market, supported by more than $30 billion in pharmaceutical advertising dollars (or about $25,000 a year for each one of the 737,000 physicians in America).

Once approved, these drugs can be prescribed for
any
use.

We in the medical industry call these “off-label uses.”

For example, the drug may be approved
only
for use in schizophrenia (as in the examples of antipsychotics above). But doctors can prescribe it for anyone they like—from someone who is overly anxious to someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder to a child whose behavior is out of control.

Once the drug is approved, there is no official tracking of its risks or benefits to the millions who are prescribed the drug. It’s left up to patients or doctors to self-report problems.