
A bone-marrow transplant treated a patient’s leukemia – and his schizophrenia - sajid
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/schizophrenia-psychiatric-disorders-immune-system.html
======
DoreenMichele
_When penicillin was first used to treat syphilis, thousands of cured
schizophrenics were released from mental asylums._

[https://www.newsweek.com/diseases-
mind-133263](https://www.newsweek.com/diseases-mind-133263)

I've apparently submitted this article three times, the last time 18 days ago.
It's never gotten traction.

I have a long history of viewing mood issues and the like as somatopsychic
side effects of medical issues. I tend to ask my sciency son to "Look up X"
when I'm having an issue. I'm talented at asking the right questions. He's
talented at getting back to me within an hour with the info I need, plus
supporting links. Then I typically go eat a thing and stop being such a
fruitcake.

Some things I've done:

Consumed foods containing rosemary or sage to calm extreme anxiety because I
was clear it was brought on by withdrawal.

Consumed beef with potatoes to mediate the salt-lithium connection and prevent
both woke bi-polar like mood swings and suicidal tendencies.

Consumed oranges for the vitamin c to put a stop to out of the blue rage.

See also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16607422#16608139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16607422#16608139)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140867](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140867)

~~~
stef25
> When penicillin was first used to treat syphilis, thousands of cured
> schizophrenics were released from mental asylums

Syphilis itself produces psychosis and those "schizophrenics" were most likely
never schizophrenics in the first place (shame on you Newsweek)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11186166](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11186166)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1521109](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1521109)

If those diet based treatments work for you then that's great but,
respectfully, I think everyone should take those statements with a serious
pinch of salt (no pun intended)

Edited 2x for brevity, grammar

~~~
perl4ever
Anecdotally, I've heard of and seen nursing home patients and other elderly
people that have seriously altered mental states, with anger and/or
disorientation, that recover immediately with antibiotics, where the medical
people describe the infection as a UTI. And also in my experience, even once
it's repeated a couple times, they can be obtuse about inferring the mental
changes are a sign that they _should_ treat with antibiotics.

I've also seen a cancer patient on chemo with symptoms that resemble some
forms of psychosis, and of course that is someone who is immuno-compromised
and susceptible to opportunistic infections.

So I think that probably syphilis is only one example of an infection that
leads to an altered mental state, and there's no reason to assume that because
something is treatable with penicillin, that is is necessarily syphilis.

~~~
therein
> So I think that probably syphilis is only one example of an infection that
> leads to an altered mental state, and there's no reason to assume that
> because something is treatable with penicillin, that is is necessarily
> syphilis.

I don't doubt this at all however:

> I've also seen a cancer patient on chemo with symptoms that resemble some
> forms of psychosis, and of course that is someone who is immuno-compromised
> and susceptible to opportunistic infections.

this might simply be due to the stress of a life changing, life threatening
event. Couldn't it be?

~~~
perl4ever
No. I'm not talking about something like shock moments after being diagnosed,
I'm referring to cognitive issues that developed later, in someone who was
terminally ill and suffering the effects of both the cancer and the chemo.
And, you know, people get worse and better and then worse so the contrast is
clear. Especially when the treatment is massive amounts of antibiotics,
vancomycin among others, I think?

------
karmakaze
Thoughtbytes:

> a growing body of literature suggesting that the immune system is involved
> in psychiatric disorders from depression to bipolar disorder

> Austrian physician Julius Wagner-Jauregg developed a method of deliberate
> infection of psychiatric patients with malaria to induce fever. Some of his
> patients died from the treatment, but many others recovered. He won a Nobel
> Prize in 1927.

~~~
stenl
Julius Wagner-Jauregg specifically treated neurosyphilis, an infectious
disease, not just any ”psychiatric” disorder. That makes it perhaps less
surprising that activating the immune system should have an effect. Today
neurosyphilis is treated with antibiotics.

------
Jugglerofworlds
I've long suspected that my depression & OCD were caused by some immune
response. It all started very suddenly when I had a very bad illness.
Unfortunately I have yet to find a doctor that believes me and is willing to
do anything other than giving me the standard medications.

~~~
WalterSear
I treat my treatment resistant depression by inducing 101+ fever for half an
hour each day. I started when I had to stop an allergy to the EMSAM patch.

There are also medications that you might not have heard of. If you want, I
can write more when I'm not on mobile.

~~~
solveit
How do you induce a fever?

~~~
DoreenMichele
You can easily induce a 102 degree fever with a very hot bath.

~~~
WalterSear
Not for half an hour, unless you have someone patient with a kettle.

I have seen one journal abstract where that that was used, but I don't know
the details. There are better methods though, if you have the budget of a
hospital or research center, such as IR lights filtered through water. There's
also a article outlining various methods of inducing hyperthermia.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Well, perhaps not by itself .

I used to take an ear thermometer in the tub with me, dunk my head, check temp
in both ears to make sure I hit 102, then wrap up in bedding, fully covered,
for 20 minutes or so.

Edit in reply to your edit:

Yes I also preheated water on the stove and had assistance from a family
member, though technically no kettle was involved.

There are no doubt better methods if you have scads of money. If you don't, a
bathtub and big pot on the stove, plus blankets, can readily get you there for
cheap.

~~~
WalterSear
I've spent ~$200 on this.

~~~
DoreenMichele
For some people, that would be a lot of money.

------
Nasrudith
Reminds me of the surprising cause of narcolepsy - not anything sleep cycle
related, energetic as one might expect but auto-immune causing the body to
periodically attack its own wakefulness hormones producers.

Unfortunately all of our immune system tools are very coarse even when doing
something groundbreaking as cancer immunotherapy which is basically farming
ones we know attack the cancer and reinserting them - very labor intensive for
something individualized with highly educated workers.

It almost makes one wish for reverse vaccination to specify things as harmless
- until you realize how horribly exploitable it would be by nature - let alone
anybody twisted enough to use it for biological weaponry.

------
perl4ever
Something I ran across in a newsletter about medical research recently was
that a doctor examining patients with treatment-resistant depression
determined that there were (treatable) metabolic abnormalities apparent in
cerebrospinal fluid. Normally, blood tests are all that is done to rule out
such things, but that may not show the problem.

------
torpfactory
Just a friendly reminder not to get medical advice from anonymous strangers on
the internet. There are some pretty serious interventions described in the
comments below as things you could try at home.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Just a friendly reminder to also not confuse conversation on the topic with a
recommendation that "You should do X!"

Some of us are just talking and that's it.

