Introduction Finding Answers in Nutrition, Not the Pharmacy THERE IS AN ENORMOUS crisis in America right now. Not just an economic crisis or an obesity crisis or an opioid crisis. A mental health crisis. Currently, one person in every five has some form of mental health issue. This is incredibly disturbing, because a mental health challenge in one individual affects an entire family, which means that the number affected is much higher. Yet for over fifty years, modern medicine has been trying--mostly unsuccessfully--to treat mental disorders with pharmaceuticals. For example: All indicators across all Western countries show that mood and anxiety disorders have not decreased over the last few decades--actually, they've gone way up --despite substantial increases in the prescriptions of medications, particularly antidepressants. Right now about 40 million Americans take some kind of psychiatric medication: that's equivalent to about one in six adults. According to an article published in the New York Times on April 7, 2018, 15.5 million Americans have been taking antidepressants in particular for at least five years. This rate has almost doubled since 2010, and more than tripled since 2000. Despite an ever-increasing use of antidepressants, recovery rates and relapse rates aren't any better now than they were fifty years ago before the advent of medications. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), suicide rates in the United States have increased steadily from 2000 to 2016. Conventional treatment helps some, but doesn't solve the problem. Many people remain shamed by the unfair social stigma around mental health issues, putting them at risk for even worse symptoms of depression and anxiety. In addition, the impact on healthcare budgets of these often ineffective treatments is huge. It costs the US economy tens of billions of dollars for treatments that just aren't working well enough. Not to mention the cost to consumers who can't afford insurance or copays. What if there is a solution to this crisis? What if the pharmaceuticals that are costly, ineffective for many, and laden with side effects were no longer the automatic go-to treatment for mental health issues? What if we could eliminate that social stigma by showing that many mental health symptoms in some people are simply caused by suboptimal nutrition and not by something being "wrong" with you? What if the right nutritional approach to treating mental health issues can save as much as 90 percent of society's mental healthcare budget? What if one solution to this crisis is as simple as changing how you eat? Nutrition matters, much more than you may realize. We all know that eating poorly can cause all kinds of physical illnesses, like obesity, Type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. But poor nutrition is also a significant risk factor for the development of mental illness. Why? Because when we eat, most of the energy and nutrients we consume are used by our brains. What you eat today will affect how you feel and think tomorrow. Most people don't know that. They might think that a healthy diet is needed for overall health, but not realize its importance for better mental health. The Better Brain is the first book that will tell you how and why nutrients can be used to treat mental health issues. We are scientists who've shown that many symptoms of anxiety, depression, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more are caused by suboptimal nutrition. In other words, what if a large part of the solution to this mental health crisis is as simple as changing what you feed your brain? This book is all about that solution. How This Book Came to Be After her first baby was born in 1992, a Canadian woman named Autumn Stringam had such a severe postpartum psychosis that she was admitted to the psychiatric ward at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. On the fateful day in late 1996 that Bonnie met her, along with her father Tony Stephan (a property manager) and their friend David Hardy (a nutrition consultant and feed formulator for farm animals), she described the auditory and visual hallucinations that she had had; the five psychiatric medications she was required to take; the fact that she was not permitted to be alone with her baby in case the voices in her head returned and told her again to kill her baby; her doctors' prognosis that she would never be well; and her determination to do whatever her doctors told her so that maybe she could have a better life. And then she told Bonnie what happened when she took a broad spectrum of micronutrients--the term we use for minerals and vitamins--as recommended by her father and David. She began to feel well, like herself again. She was able to gradually eliminate her medications. Her hallucinations disappeared. And her psychiatrist threatened to stop seeing her if she continued with micronutrients instead of medications. Autumn's family, the Stephans, had several members suffering from bipolar disorder, psychosis, and depression--serious mental health issues. Conventional treatment did not restore them to normal mental health, and there were many challenging side effects and constant relapses. In desperation, and supported by David Hardy's nutrition knowledge, along with Tony's children and others, they began using over-the-counter pills and liquids containing micronutrients. Much to everyone's surprise, they got better. A lot better! The idea of using micronutrients to improve emotional stability was well established in animals used in laboratory research, and in the 1990s supplemental micronutrients were used in farm animals across Alberta. In humans, the pioneering work of Saskatchewan-based Dr. Abram Hoffer in the 1950s showed clinical benefits in people given large doses of niacin, later leading to a strong orthomolecular community in Canada, which continues to this day to focus on nutritional treatments of mental health problems. When Tony Stephan's children improved sufficiently to be able to function normally without psychiatric medication, Tony and his friend David anticipated great interest within the psychiatric and scientific community. To attract the attention of a local academic neuroscientist, Bryan Kolb, David and Tony collected data from some friends whose children had ADHD and emotional outbursts. Dr. Kolb analyzed the data and sent the results to Bonnie in August 1996, because he knew she had published on nutrition in the past. Shocked yet intrigued, Bonnie knew she had to investigate this further . . . and that was what started her, and soon Julia, on the improbable path toward upending conventional beliefs about the treatment of mental illness. A dual American/Canadian citizen who earned her academic degrees in America as an experimental psychologist, with postdoctoral training in neurophysiology, Bonnie had been working as a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Calgary in 1993, studying neurodevelopmental disorders (such as dyslexia and ADHD), when Julia started her PhD under her supervision while also training to become a clinical psychologist. Like all students of psychology, and like all medical students at the time, we both had been taught that nutrition and diet were of trivial significance for mental health, and that only drugs or psychotherapy were of any value as treatments. After Julia earned her doctorate in 1998 (based on research looking at the psychosocial outcomes of women with ADHD), she moved first to Toronto for postdoctoral training at the Hospital for Sick Children and then in 2000 to New Zealand for an academic post at the University of Canterbury. She stayed in touch with Bonnie, who continued to study the biological basis of learning and attention problems. Bonnie's postdoctoral training in neurophysiology and her work in behavior genetics generated her interest in the underlying physiology behind human behavior and mental health, and along with some of her Canadian colleagues, she started studying the effect on mental health of the micronutrients used by Autumn. Bonnie began publishing data in 2001, with results showing that with micronutrients, these people not only got well, but stayed well, and with none of the horrible side effects that commonly occurred with psychiatric meds. After Julia nominated her for a visiting fellowship in New Zealand, Bonnie went to the University of Canterbury in 2003 to teach about the role of nutrition in mental health. When she presented her preliminary data, Julia was fascinated--but it was both the remarkable turnaround for people who were so severely ill and the replications observed across a number of different scientists and clinicians that really gained Julia's attention. From Julia's perspective--based on her own work and that of many others around the world--conventional treatments were not making enough people well. It is the role of scientists to be the critic and conscience of society. It's also our role to investigate new ideas, no matter how controversial, and no matter how much the idea might contravene the current way of thinking. So Julia thought, what do we have to lose? We either discover these micronutrients aren't helpful, which the public might like to know; or we find out they are helpful, which both the government and the public really should know. Julia began to publish the results of her own studies starting in 2009. And she observed exactly what Bonnie had seen already: micronutrients worked. Her first case was a teenager with OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) whom she had been treating for over a year with CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) with minimal change. He went on the micronutrients, and within a week, his symptoms had virtually disappeared. She observed others showing dramatic improvements. The micronutrients helped many people recover from what seemed like intractable and chronic conditions. Both of us continued to study the role of micronutrients and brain health, Bonnie at the University of Calgary in Canada, and Julia at the Mental Health and Nutrition Research lab at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Broad-Spectrum Multinutrients Our research never would have come to be without the astonishing discovery by Tony Stephan and David Hardy in southern Alberta. At the time, they knew that mainstream medical practitioners considered only two nutritional options when trying to correct brain dysfunction: treatment with a single nutrient at a time (the way nutritional research had been conducted since the 1920s), or treatment with a select favorite-few nutrients (the way many clinicians approach mental health even now). Tony and David's breakthrough--which in hindsight seems so obvious!--was their decision to provide all the major minerals and vitamins together, in balance, at appropriate doses, in one supplement, which we will refer to as broad-spectrum multinutrients. They only had to look at Autumn for proof, as she hasn't needed any psychiatric medication since she started taking micronutrient supplements in 1996. After that eureka moment, Tony and David quit their jobs and formed the first company, Truehope Nutritional Support, to manufacture a broad-spectrum multinutrient formula--meaning that it contained thirty or so dietary minerals and vitamins, along with some amino acids and antioxidants. It was initially called EMPower; over the years small modifications resulted in amendments to the name (EMPowerplus, EMPowerplus Advanced). We refer to it in this book as EMP. After working together for about fifteen years, David and Tony completed a planned business separation, where David started an independent company, Hardy Nutritionals. Their supplement, Daily Essential Nutrients, is very similar, containing the full spectrum of essential minerals and vitamins. We refer to it throughout as DEN. With this kind of broad-spectrum supplement in hand, Bonnie and Julia, as well as additional scientists, finally had reliable products to use in their research. Because EMP and DEN have been studied in academic settings in three countries, the government health regulators in all those countries have examined and approved the formulas for research. That approval affirms the quality and stability of the ingredients, which is required by university research ethics committees. EMP and DEN have been the subject of more than fifty peer-reviewed publications ever since. Have you ever felt frustrated when you read "vitamin D is good for depression" followed by "vitamin D has no effect on depression"? So often, the science is inconsistent because the studies used different formulations and different doses. This is why there is such a huge advantage in having a reliable product used for multiple studies, scrutinized by governments for the ingredient sources, purity, quality, and stability. Now, with the Alberta formulas, scientists around the globe have a way to study the full spectrum of micronutrients that every brain requires, and a way to compare their findings and replicate each other's work. The result: a clear message is provided for the public--and now, for you, in this book! On the other hand, there is nothing in this research that says that only EMP and DEN benefit mental health. What both David and Tony taught the researchers was that we'd all benefit from having more high-quality formulas for independent scientists to study. These two families didn't go into business to monopolize the field or to scam consumers, but to help them; their goal is to change the way people with mental health problems are treated, and to give them an alternative to prescription meds. When Tony and David realized that psychiatrists would rarely support patients desperately trying to decrease or get off psychiatric meds that had given them debilitating side effects, they set up telephone lines with product specialists to help people who wanted to try broad-spectrum multinutrients. We know of no other natural health product companies that have chosen to focus on developing this kind of product for mental health or support for families. Excerpted from The Better Brain: Overcome Anxiety, Combat Depression, and Reduce ADHD and Stress with Nutrition by Bonnie J. Kaplan, Julia J. Rucklidge All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
