-Caveat Lector-
Clear Link Between Nutrition
And Bi-Polar Manic-Depression Found
By Anne McIlroy
The Globe and Mail
http://www.globeandmail.com
7-1-1
When he was 3, he would colour with black crayons only
and was obsessed with death. Over the next few months,
the boy became ultrasensitive to light and noise, began
curling up in a ball and refused to respond to his parents.
He wouldn't eat and lost at least 15 per cent of his body
weight.
"He stopped talking, he wouldn't look at us. It was
frightening," says his mother, who asked that the family
not be identified.
His parents, a professional couple from the Ottawa area
with two other healthy children, thought that he might be
showing signs of depression. But like their doctor, they
couldn't believe the disease could strike someone so
young.
"We have bipolar disorder [manic depression] in my
family, my grandmother has it, so we thought there might
be some link," the 30-year-old mother says.
Her grandmother's symptoms had dramatically improved
after trying a mineral supplement developed by two
Alberta men as an alternative treatment for manic
depression and other kinds of mental illness. It is based
on a formula proven to stop erratic behaviour in pigs, and
contains a wide variety of vitamins and minerals in a form
that is easy for the body to absorb.
"I said to myself, whatever happens, it won't hurt," the
mother remembers. She started making her son
milkshakes with the supplement blended in.
That was a year ago, and today, her four-year-old son
has gained 17 pounds, grown six inches, and is an
intelligent, giggly little boy.
New-age quackery? The mother says she was cynical
until she saw how much her son improved.
Researchers are also taking a close look at whether there
is a link between nutrition and mental health. More than
half a dozen clinical trials are under way or in the works in
Canada and the United States.
The supplement the boy took was created by David Hardy
and Tony Stephan, who decided to market the
supplement after they helped him personally.
Stephan's wife committed suicide in 1994 after battling
bipolar disorder for years, and two of his 10 children were
also diagnosed with the illness. He feared they would also
take their own lives and expressed his desperation to
Hardy, a friend whose expertise was in making feed for
livestock.
Hardy had an idea.
"With over 20 years as a biologist in the agri-food
business, I knew that behaviour problems in pigs such as
ear-and-tail-biting syndrome were treated through the use
of nutritional supplements," Hardy says.
"On a comparative basis, pigs make excellent subjects:
They are raised in captivity and their gastrointestinal
system is very similar to ours. On the basis that their
'manic' behaviour could be controlled through the use of
nutritional supplements, we concluded that it was entirely
feasible that human behaviour could also be treated using
nutritional supplements."
Hardy put together a homegrown formula for Stephan's
children. When they showed remarkable progress, the two
men formed Synergy Group of Canada Ltd., to sell the
formula.
The supplement is in large capsules, and patients have to
take 32 a day. Each has 36 ingredients, including calcium,
iron, magnesium, zinc, copper, potassium and vitamins A,
C, D, E and several B vitamins. The concentrations of the
minerals and other nutrients are generally higher than in
most other vitamin supplements, but below levels in which
they would become toxic.
It is a nutritional supplement, which means it is not subject
to the same strict regulations as a drug. Patients are
urged to take it in consultation with their doctor, and
Stephan and Hardy won't sell it to people on some forms
of medication.
So far, they have sold it to about 2,300 patients. It costs
about $140 (U.S.) for a month's supply. The company has
not yet made a profit, and Stephan insists that was never
his aim.
In 1996, they persuaded University of Calgary research
psychologist Bonnie Kaplan, who studies and treats mood
and behavioural disorders at Alberta's Children's Hospital,
to begin experiments on their formula.
"I could see they weren't hucksters; they were the real
deal," Kaplan says.
She conducted two initial studies -- one involving nine
children, the second with 11 adults -- with positive results.
All nine children, who suffered from bouts of explosive
rage and irritability as a result of developmental or other
disorders, showed significant improvement after eight
weeks.
The results were even more dramatic with the adults, who
had bipolar disorder. They showed a 50-per-cent
improvement based on standard psychiatric evaluations
over six to 18 months.
The initial results on the adults were made public last
year, and Kaplan presented her data on the nine children
at conference this spring.
Her results sparked interest in the supplements across
North America, raising the hopes of patients and intriguing
questions about the role of nutrition -- and the quality of
the food we now eat -- might play in mental illness.
Now, the Alberta Science and Research Authority has
provided $500,000 in funding for a trial of about 100
adults with bipolar disorder. For the first six months, half
will get the supplement and half will get a placebo. For the
second six months of the experiment, all the patients will
get the supplement.
Another trial is planned to study 21 teenagers who are
newly diagnosed with mood disorders and who haven't
taken any medication. Half will get conventional treatment,
including, for example, drugs used to fight depression.
The other half will get the nutritional supplement. The idea
is to see how the supplement compares with conventional
treatment.
A third study is being designed to see if it can help kids
with explosive rage, a common symptom in children with
autism or other serious developmental problems. The idea
is not that the supplement would cure the disorder, but
would allow the child to function better at home or at
school.
Kaplan's early work was hindered by the fact that the
supplement was being put together from several
commercial sources that sometimes changed their
ingredients. Once Hardy and Stephan began producing
their own product, she began to see promising results.
The work is still in its early stages, but the fact that
nutritional supplements seem so effective in helping some
people with mental illness or developmental and
behavioural problems raises interesting questions about
the food we eat.
Kaplan's theory is that mental illness results from a
combination of genetic and environmental factors.
Many researchers believe there is a genetic component
for some mental illnesses, and the evidence is particularly
strong for manic depression, although no gene has been
found.
"People who inherit predisposing genes for mental
disorders are inheriting genes that code for proteins that
are very important in the metabolic pathways of the brain,
which are dependent upon dietary nutrients, like trace
minerals," Kaplan says.
For example, zinc has been shown to be essential for at
least 100 chemical reactions in the brain.
"So maybe what is being inherited is a genetic abnormality
of brain metabolism. Maybe that abnormality means these
people need more nutrients than you and I.
"So when you combine that with a food supply which
seems to be going in the opposite direction, and it might
account for why some people believe there is an
increased prevalence, or incidence, of mood disorders."
Is food less nutritious than it used to be?
Very little work has been done in this area, but one of the
few studies, conducted in Britain, looked at whether the
mineral content in fruits and vegetables had changed
since data was first collected in Britain in 1936.
Anne-Marie Mayer, now a doctoral student at Cornell
University in Ithaca, N.Y., found that there were significant
reductions in calcium, magnesium, copper and sodium in
vegetables. The greatest change was in copper levels,
which were one-fifth of what they once were. There was
less magnesium, iron copper and potassium in fruits.
It is not clear what caused these reductions, but she noted
in her paper that in the past 60 years, the food-supply
system has changed considerably, and fruits and
vegetables are now selected for handling qualities and
cosmetic appeal.
"Breeding to enhance nutritional quality is rare," Mayer
says.
Agricultural practices have also changed, and farmers
have become far more dependent on fertilizers, pesticides
and other chemicals.
"These practices affect the structure, chemistry and
ecology of the soil in ways that could affect the
availability
of minerals to plants and hence the mineral content of
crops," she wrote in a paper presented in 1997 at an
international conference at Tufts University in the United
States.
Mayer called for more research to see whether modern
agriculture could be reducing the mineral content of fruit
and vegetables. "We need to find out whether the
declines are real and how they impact people's overall
dietary intake."
There is research that indicates that mood disorders and
behavioural problems in children are on the increase, but
both Mayer and Kaplan say there is not enough evidence
to draw a link between those statistics and declining
nutritional levels in food.
Even if there were, it wouldn't mean we are all losing are
minds because of what we eat.
Kaplan says scientists have shown in animal studies that
there are huge individual differences in dietary
requirements. In rat studies, some animals are fine when
they are fed a nutritionally poor diet, while it causes
others
to exhibit extremely abnormal behaviour.
"So some people may be very sensitive -- the canaries in
the coal mine -- and others can eat nothing but junk food,
and maybe they [just] get fat."
Copyright 2001 Globe Interactive, a division of Bell
Globemedia Publishing Inc.
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