Whole-Body Psychiatry: Nutrition for Mental Health

N-acetyl cysteine

Glutathione is a master antioxidant, and it’s produced within the body instead of being absorbed from food. Glutathione helps protect the body from metabolic wear and tear and is especially protective in the brain, a metabolic hot spot where 20 percent of the body’s calories are burned. Research shows that the brains of people with schizophrenia have dangerously low levels of glutathione. One of L.A. psychiatrist Jeffrey Becker’s first steps when treating a schizophrenic patient is to test glutathione levels. If they are low, he starts the patient on a supplement called N-acetyl cysteine, or NAC, an antioxidant molecule that provides raw material for the production of glutathione.

B6, B12, and folic acid

Many people with schizophrenia have malfunctions in a critical metabolic process called methylation, in which life-giving carbon is passed from vitamins to DNA, fats, proteins, or other molecules. Methylation is essential for health throughout the body and, among other things, affects the building of protein from amino acids and proper gene expression. In the brain, it provides some of the necessary building blocks for neurotransmitters, which are the chemical messengers that ferry signals among neurons as well as other cells in the body. Disruptions to methylation are caused by problems in a gene called methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR), which regulates chemical reactions involving folic acid. When people have two bad copies of this MTHFR gene, they suffer a wide range of problems, including schizophrenia, depression, cancers, spontaneous abortion, and others. Treated with the active form of folic acid — 5-MTHF or 5-methyltetra-hydrofolate — along with B6 and B12 (often injected), many people with schizophrenia feel relief from their symptoms.
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