The UltraMind Solution (36 page)

It helps produce PC, the major fatty fluid component of cell membranes.

Is the Major Antioxidant System

It lowers homocysteine (an unhealthy compound that can damage blood vessels and brain cells through oxidation).

It is critical in controlling oxidative stress or the rusting process common to almost every disease through the production of glutathione (see page 238)

Is the Key to Detoxification

It helps recycle molecules needed for detoxification (namely, the body’s major detoxifier, or glutathione—see page 238).

Cools Inflammation

It controls and reduces inflammation by producing glutathione and reducing oxidative stress (which triggers inflammation).

Is the Link to All Chronic Disease

It prevents dementia, cancer, heart disease, and almost every known age-related disease.

It’s easy to see why breaks in the tracks on which the methylation train runs lead to many of the mental and physical health problems people suffer with every day. Let’s look at some of the research on how this process is linked to so many mental illnesses and brain disorders specifically. This is only the tip of the iceberg, but it gives you a sense of how huge this problem is.

Overwhelming evidence links low folate, B
₁₂
, and B
₆
levels to depression and mood disorders. Deficiency or insufficiency of these vitamins is very common. And remember, it is these deficiencies that cause the methylation train to slow down. These special nutrients keep the enzymes going that run the methylation train.

Victor Herbert first discovered the consequences of this deficiency in 1962.
³⁷
He used himself as a study subject, consumed a folate-deficient diet for four and a half months, and experienced progressive insomnia, forgetfulness, and irritability. All these symptoms disappeared within two days of taking folate. In another study of 2,682 middle-aged men in Finland,
³⁸
those with the lowest dietary folate intake had a 67 percent greater risk of depression.

One remarkable study in the
American Journal of Psychiatry
³⁹
found that 27 percent of severely depressed women over sixty-five years old were B
₁₂
deficient. This was found
not
by blood levels of B
₁₂
, but by the functional indicator of whether B
₁₂
was doing its job—
methylmalonic acid
. If you think about it, this suggests that more than one-quarter of all severe depression can be cured with B
₁₂
shots!

Doctors are now using a “prescription” folate called Deplin to treat depression and to improve the effectiveness of antidepressants.
⁴⁰
In fact, if you have folate deficiency, it is unlikely that antidepressants will even work.

What’s remarkable is how backward the thinking about depression is. Doctors tend to only use vitamins
if
the antidepressants don’t work.
⁴¹
They should be prescribing the vitamins in the first place and then supplementing with antidepressants only
if
vitamins and lifestyle changes don’t work.

People with a low folate level have only a 7 percent response to treatment with antidepressants. Those with a high folate have a response rate of 44 percent. That’s six times better. In medicine, if we get a 15 to 30 percent improvement we are happy; but a 600 percent improvement should be headline news.

Supplementing with methylation vitamins is part of the miracle cure that turned lifelong depression around for my patient Joe.

No matter what he did Joe could not get out from under his dark cloud of depression. He came to see me at fifty-one years old, after a parade of psychiatrists and psychiatric medication for bipolar disease—mood stabilizers like Lithium, Depakote, and Abilify; antipsychotics like Zyprexa and Clozaril; antiseizure medication like Lamictal and Neurontin, and stimulants like Provigil, Adderall, and Ritalin; and even Parkinson’s drugs like Requip to raise his dopamine.

Even with a multidrug cocktail he couldn’t overcome his depression. He complained that his depression stole his life. Many days he could not get out of bed, go to work, or focus. He had no energy and needed daily naps. The depression also affected his marriage—he could not make plans or go out.