Re: Mental and physical illnesses are caused by something, and we need to find out what...

I wish I had time to follow the thread of all the responses to this amazing post.

Sorry if this is redundant, but have you tried looking at George Watson's book "Nutrition and the Mind" yet? Or "Biobalance" by Rudolf Wiley?

Most people have heard of metabolic typing by now, as there are so many versions out there, now, but George Watson was one of the most important pioneers in this area, with his particular focus on mental health. Rudolf Wiley followed up his and others' research and found simple lab tests to help pinpoint metabolic imbalances that drastically affect mental health. Their focus is primarily on mental health and how it is impacted and relieved by foods.

George Watson was able to help people with a variety of symptoms, including a woman that went in and out of catatonic states according to the food she ate. His book simply floored me. Wiley continued his work toward figuring out how to use Wolcott's insights. He did lots and lots of lab tests to see if there was a way to make the typing process clearer. He found that venous blood pH, measured the hundredth place, has the key to diagnosis. When he found that some people did not universally improve on diet based on this diagnosis, he did further lab work on them and found that some people swing between imbalances during the course of a month (especially women) or the course of a day (some children, tormented by their aggressive and violent outbursts were able to function normally when their meals and snacks were designed to counterbalance their blood pH swings).

Finding each person's tendency toward imbalance, and in particular cases, finding the fairly predictable pattern, and eating properly to counteract it, resulted in amazingly high success rates for people. He has 2 protocols to follow to identify these imbalances - one you can take to a cooperative doctor so that lab tests can be performed, and the other you can do at home, using self-observation. Clearly, awareness of the possibility of "swings" makes all the difference in the world when trying to self-diagnose, vs giving up when there seems to be no hard and fast way that food will affect a person.

The question of "how did these imbalances start" is not addressed (the work they did is so amazing, it would be petty of me to criticize them, so I won't!). In their experience, people did not "get better" in the sense that they could go back to their habitual ways of eating without experiencing a return of symptoms.

As awareness of the neurotoxic effects of heavy metals on the body, and the various ways that impaired digestive systems affect the body, I find myself wondering how many "mental illnesses" could be corrected by removing these problems and restoring the digestive system to its full, pro-biotic and enzyme-rich glory and function.

Either way, it sounds like Watson and Wiley have shown a way to cope with mental illness in a do-no-harm way, and provided a basic lab test to monitor the situation to see if anything changes.

I hope this helps.

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