Schizophrenia Diet

The World Health Organization estimates that about 24 million people worldwide suffer from schizophrenia, which the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) defines as a "profound disruption in cognition and emotion, affecting the most fundamental human attributes: language, thought, perception, affect, and sense of self." While to be completely controlled the illness requires medication, a growing body of evidence suggests that the course and severity of schizophrenic symptoms might be at least partly controllable through diet.

Carbohydrates

Results published by Duke University researchers in the February 2009 issue of Nutrition and Metabolism indicated that adhering to a low-carbohydrate and gluten-free diet may reduce the schizophrenia symptoms. The researchers cited the case of a 70-year-old patient diagnosed with schizophrenia in her late teens who reported having experienced auditory and visual hallucinations throughout her life. After undertaking a diet that restricted her carbohydrate intake to under 20 g per day, the patient reported that after just eight days, she stopped hearing voices and seeing skeletons. There were no changes in her treatment, including type or levels of medication, other than modifying her diet to include mainly meats (beef, poultry and ham), fish, green beans, tomatoes, diet drinks and water.

Gluten

Gluten sensitivities have also been associated with schizophrenia. As long ago as 1966, after noting that countries with lower wheat consumption during WWII reported fewer patients hospitalized with schizophrenic symptoms, researcher Dr. F.C. Dohan posited that in at least some patients, a genetic defect exacerbated by gluten caused many of the same psychiatric symptoms, suggesting that in some cases there may be a link between celiac disease and schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia wishing to adhere to a gluten-free diet should read ingredient labels very carefully. Foods manufactured after 2006 must list "wheat" if it is an ingredient in any form. Unfortunately, avoiding gluten is not easy given the modern, Western diet. Not only is it found in obvious sources such as wheat, millet, soybean, and potato flours, but also in seeds (sunflower, sesame), nuts, corn (including cornstarch, corn syrup, cornmeal and corn flour), barley, rye, spelt, rice, whey and artichokes.

Several organizations, notably the Gluten-Free Certification Organization and the Celiac Sprue Association, authorize gluten-free foods to display a certification mark. Select grocery stores, health food stores and online suppliers provide gluten-free substitutes for flour that allow you to cook and bake healthier versions of almost any recipe that requires wheat flour.

Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids

The human body requires a certain amount of essential polyunsaturated fatty acids---Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids---for normal nerve and cell health. An excess of the latter, however, can interfere with the health benefits of the former, and has been linked to an increase in certain illnesses. Research suggests a healthy diet should include no more than four times as much Omega-6 as Omega-3.

The University of Maryland Medical School website cites six studies that showed that maintaining proper levels of fatty acids through dietary changes or by ingesting supplements may benefit patients with schizophrenic symptoms, and that polyunsaturated essential fatty acids may also make the medications often used to treat the illness more tolerable and thus more likely to be taken as prescribed.

Omega-6 fatty acids are found in most vegetable oils such as sunflower and safflower, as well as flaxseed, cottonseed and soybean oils. They are also found in poultry, avocados, nuts, eggs, chicken and turkey. Although our bodies cannot manufacture Omega-6 fatty acids, the average American gets more than enough through diet alone and would not benefit from supplements. That is because Omega-6 can be found in most margarines, snacks, crackers, cookies, baked goods and fast foods. Maintaining a healthy balance of somewhere between 1:1 and 4:1 (Omega-6 to Omega-3) may require as little change as cutting down on snack foods and "junk" calories to eliminate the soybean oil found in so many of these foods today. Since many of these snack foods also contain gluten (see above), reducing or eliminating them from your diet may be doubly beneficial.

Omega-3 fatty acids (eicosapentaenoic acid, or EPA, and docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA), in contrast, are less common in the modern diet. The primary natural source of EPA and DHA is the oil of such cold water fish as salmon, mackerel, herring, black cod, anchovies, bluefish and sardines. They can also be found in abundance in flaxseed oil. The late British psychiatrist Dr. David Harrobin argued that the cause of schizophrenia is not, as it generally believed, caused by an excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine but by a breakdown of the synapses sheathed in fatty acids. He suggested that EPA could drastically reduce the symptom of schizophrenia. A recent study published in the Israel Journal of Psychiatry Related Science seems to support this theory.