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FOOD FOR THOUGHT

John Exell, 12th November 1999

I am diagnosed with schizophrenia. Sometime ago I read a book by Dr Carl Pfeiffer on Nutrition. I strongly recommend him. My first reaction was to buy up half my local health shop. My second was to see a Nutritionist at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, Putney, SW London, they have nutritionists nation-wide. She recommended me to cut out or drastically reduce all stimulants, such as sugar, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, etc., and eat better and wiser. She also did some tests to identify what type of schizophrenia I had, and a hair mineral

analysis. From these tests she prescribed certain vitamins and minerals. The previous five winters I had suffered from suicidal depression, last winter I remember being in the wind and rain with completely overcast sky and realising that it was fantastic to be simply alive.

As our bodies need Nutrition, it is obvious that our brains do too. My nutrition supplements not only feed my brain, but the whole of my body too, so I also feel more physically well. Nutrition can work very slowly and subtly. NHS psychiatrists were working on nutrition shortly before anti-psychotics became available, but anti-psychotics worked much quicker and nutrition was forgotten. As our diet and food supply is so bad, nutrition is possibly the medicine of the present and foreseeable future.

I do recommend seeing a nutritionist, her fees plus nutritional supplements cost me about £5 per week on average. If not as a standard dose for everyone, I recommend a very good multi-vitamin and mineral supplement about 5Omg of Zinc plus large amounts of Vitamin C. I take 4gm daily. If you get the "shits"; you're taking too much. Plus Linseed (Flaxseed) Oil, or Concentrated Fish Oil, if you eat fish.

I still take a low maintenance dose of anti-psychotics, but I seem extremely well.