Monthly Miracles

by Michael Gerber, MD, HMD

Anxiety, Depression, and Psychosis

I have always been interested in mental illness, which I have studied since my postdoctoral years at the Palo Alto VAH and the Stanford Research Ward. This was home to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The universal take on mental illness is that it is a multifactorial problem, and I observed that the standard pharmacological treatment was extremely heavy handed and frightening. I occasionally was the person who tackled escapee psychotic patients on the hospital grounds and restrained them until the nurse arrived with intramuscular injections of Thorazine, a chemical restraint. It still leaves an indelible impression. Bless us all to evolve to more humane and reasonable treatments for mental ailments.

Remembering the woodcuts from the “Bedlam” asylum in 17th-century England with the wild-eyed inmates pressing their faces against the bars reminds us that adrenaline, sympathetic dominance, is an old problem. Dopamine antagonists still rule in psychotic therapy and emptied the mental hospitals in the 1950s and 1960s. I worked one summer at the Stockton (California) State Mental Hospital, which once housed 15,000 patients; by the time I was there, in 1969, the patient population was only 1500, thanks to phenothiazines. Modern antipsychotics, antidepressants, and anxiolytic drugs are more user friendly but are still in the dark ages of medical practice.

Multiple Causations for Mental Illness

Causes include unrelenting stress, PTSD, sexual and physical abuse, Lyme disease, chronic viral illness, parasitic diseases, inherited genetic weakness such as MTHFR, homeopathic miasms, environmental illness, heavy metal toxicity, root canals with infected teeth, bad diet, and nutritional deficiencies. Many other factors such as candida, mold, unfortunate maternal stress during the third trimester of pregnancy giving transgenerational adrenal weakness, thyroid insufficiency in the face of normal blood tests, menstrual disorders, and hormone imbalance also contribute to mental illness.

So Many Helpers, but Remember Progesterone

There is a pretty awesome repertoire of healing modalities for mental illness. Thyroid replacement with either porcine or bioidentical T3 and T4 has been reviewed in several previous issues of the Townsend Letter. Puffy, cold, hair-losing women who are constipated, fatigued, and depressed need a trial on thyroid. Those patients lacking energy with sleep issues need adrenal support. Use cortisol à la Jefferies 5 mg b.i.d. or q.i.d. and/or adrenal shots of cortisol, DHEA, and pregnenolone with methyl B12 and folic acid (see my previous columns). Amino acid precursor therapy for neurotransmitter rebuilding with 5-HTP, tyrosine, and cysteine is awesome although a little expensive and time consuming with a 4 times per day treatment regimen. Most magnificently, topical progesterone, an adrenal hormone precursor, at 50 mg per pump rubbed into the forearms blocks adrenaline and increases GABA in 3 to 10 minutes. Anxious, panicky, and psychotic patients often relax and application can be repeated every 5 to 15 minutes or hourly until the adrenaline response diminishes. Progesterone is not feminizing and can be used for men and children. (I have particularly loved the websites for transgender folks who say that progesterone is absolutely not good for developing breasts in males.) I have given it to a 3-week-old girl who was in agony from colic with her back arched and screaming. After a pea-sized dot of progesterone was rubbed into her forearm, she was calm and asleep in about 3 minutes. Patients who are going out of their skin with fear, hopelessness, difficulty concentrating and surety that they will never recover from their illness are immediately soothed by progesterone. Thanks, Dr. Michael Platt.

A Nice Case

A 39-year-old jeweler with a history of scabies and chronic skin conditions and who had been helped with homeopathic sulfur 1M had indulged in strong cannabis and/or psychedelic drugs that rendered him paranoid, insomniac, and anorexic for about 10 days. He was rambling with paranoid content (“My friends are trying to kill me at my local bar, they are poisoning me”), dilated pupils, and hair standing on end, which he described as a fashion statement. He was accompanied by his mother who is a craniosacral therapist and very supportive of her son. We began his therapy with our antipsychotic intravenous therapy of L-tryptophan, L-taurine, magnesium, calcium, vitamin C 25 grams, B complex, zinc sulfate , potassium chloride, FreAmine 8.5% 25 ml, aqueous hydrocortisone 0.2 mg/ml 10 ml, L-glutathione 200 mg/ml 2.5 ml. He received this for 2 days in the first week and then one more time until he stopped testing well for this IV. We gave our usual intramuscular injection of adrenal complex, as above with methyl B12 , and folic acid every other day for a week and then twice weekly. He was given high-dose vitamin C, B2 and inositol hexanicotinate. Topical progesterone cream was very helpful in the first 15 minutes. He resumed eating and sleeping and his paranoia was reduced markedly in the first week. Lachesis 200 C homeopathically was most helpful for symptoms of nervousness; excitability; great loquacity; rambling; frequently jumping from one subject to another; delusions of thinking himself under superhuman control; feeling pursued, hated, and despised; fears going to sleep; having no desire to mix with the world; insane jealousy and suspicion; and feeling full of poison.¹

He is now back to work, sleeping and eating normally, and not exhibiting paranoid symptomatology.

Notes

1. Murphy R. Homeopathic Remedy Guide. H.A.N.A. Press; 2000.