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WARNING: I am not a medical professional or nutritionist so please speak to either or both before stopping or starting any prescription medication.

I said in my previous post I’d expand on my theory of the mind and body relationship and I intend to do this below as best I can.

Having discovered that dopamine is produced in the gut and adrenal glands I started wondering what foods would help the body produce dopamine and which wouldn’t and the action of sunlight and vitamin D and nutrition in mental illness, both depression and mania/psychosis.

First I looked for foods that are rich in dopamine producing compounds and here are some of the results:

Lean protein, dairy, eggs, leafy greens and seeds, legumes and nuts

My theory was eating more of these types of foods would help with the depression inherent in much mental illness, perhaps in conjunction with getting more natural sunlight and even vitamin D supplements.

Then I wondered what foods were low in dopamine producing compounds for the mania/psychosis if someone is prone to mania/psychosis and found the following list:

Beef, eggs broccoli, chicken, oily fish

But the way I arrived at the second list was purely by chance when searching on a new drug treatment for schizophrenia which is a type of acetylcholine agonist which also suppresses dopamine which is what makes it work.

The point is all of the foods in the second list are rich in cholene, a building block of acetylcholine.

A lot of this is simply established science but what doesn’t seem to have been suggested before is changing the diet seasonally according to the traditional harvesting and availability of each type of food before mass importation out of season or based on the severity of symptoms, particularly in parts of the world with pronounced summers and winters.

So my theory is it is better to eat more of the first list in winter and the second list in summer. Coupled with careful regulation of natural light, covering up in summer and getting out more on a fine winters day a diet based on traditional seasonality as well as good nutrition may help alleviate the worst symptoms of even the most serious mental illness.

I won’t go into the reasons why I think we love a traditional British Christmas feast so much but it’s not just because mum made it.

Robert David Jackson

WARNING: The below post is just my theory of the potential causes of mental illness based on the limited research I have done. If you suffer from any diagnosed mental health condition please speak to your health professional before acting on anything you have read in this post.

I’ve been reading a lot about the hormone dopamine recently and its role in mental health conditions such as schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder and have come to the conclusion that it may be possible to alleviate or even cure altogether these illnesses with changes in diet and lifestyle or that mental illness may simply be the result of an underlying physical health condition or hormonal imbalance that could be treated without the use of powerful antipsychotics.

Firstly I would state that I am convinced that dopamine, it’s excess or deficiency in the body is the cause of these illnesses having been placed on way too high a dose of antipsychotic medication for a couple of years.

I also believe that dopamine may be a far more important hormone in the overall functioning of the body than currently seems to be considered.

I’ll go into more detail and try to back up my argument with science.

I first started with where in the body dopamine is synthesised, it seems obvious that if you have too much or too little the body is either producing too much or too little and I found two key areas: the gut and the kidneys or adrenal glands.

Dopamine and the kidney – PubMed

Role of Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis in Regulating Dopaminergic Signaling – PMC

Knowing about seasonal affective disorder and the fact that this can be treated with sunshine and hence vitamin D I wondered whether bipolar disorder is also a seasonal illness and it appears that it often is.

Bipolar Disorder Changes in Winter and Summer

Then I wondered about vitamin D and what parts of the body it is produced in, and once again I found the adrenals via the liver, the adrenals are also where dopamine is synthesised.

Vitamin D – Health Professional Fact Sheet

Vitamin D: A potent regulator of dopaminergic neuron differentiation and function – PubMed

And then I started thinking is schizophrenia just a different presentation of these illnesses, the symptoms of bipolar and schizophrenia are so similar that they may just be two presentations of the same imbalance in my opinion. Even seasonal affective disorder and psychotic depression are on this spectrum.

So to make a brief conclusion, it seems possible that poor diet and nutrition and vitamin D and possibly a poorly functioning liver or kidneys may be behind the diagnoses of the most commonly recognised mental health conditions.

In my next post I’ll go into what I think could help in terms of diet and lifestyle, not just eating healthily and living well, but eating the correct foods at the right time of year.

Robert David Jackson