Can eating make you crazy – the Nexus of Nutrition & Mental Health

Knowing what to eat can make you crazy, in the age of information overload – data roles in – minds change – it is hard to know what is best.

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It seems odd that the predominance of attention paid to mental illness and nutrition by our medical system is well after the pathogenic effects of poor nutrition are on display. The linkage between nutrition and mental illness is clear in many cases, Berry Berry – B6, medication absorption and B12 … the list goes on. Other linkages are less obvious, essential fatty acids & cognitive function and capacity or the complete amino acid complex for fetal brain development, for examples. In contemplating nutrition as it relates to eating one needs to think about the impurities and additives in food, and their effect on the human brain. Conventional western medicine is tardy here, in the world of nutrition – when the symptoms arrive often the damage is done.

Gut health, and the bacterial complex that resides in our gut play an important role in health in general; hence the growing interest in prebiotics and probiotics – so when I read recently that gut health affects mental health, it was no surprise to me. There are a number of factors at play here in the brains interface with the gut, but the scientific connection has been made. The first time I fasted, I experience a real sense of well being, oddly, I love to eat; after 3 or 4 days a general calmness came over me - having this experience affirmed for me the brain gut connection. I am in contact with people who fast regularly and they almost unanimously report the same sense of wellbeing once into a fast for a few days. This article The Emerging Field of Nutritional Mental Health: Inflammation, the Microbiome, Oxidative Stress, and Mitochondrial Function, will help you understand the linkages and functionality better than I would explain it, what is of interest to me is the absence of this consideration in health delivery in general.

The term “Madder than a Hatter” was used for people affected by mental illness, hat makers treated the beaver felt with mercury – mercury exposure causes a complex of systems related to depression and other illnesses. Lead exposure is blamed for ending the Roman Empire; lead causes a “weak mind” and a complex of symptoms like depression. Oddly however, Chelation therapy is absent in the conventional approach to treating mental illness in western medicine, we never test for it in British Columbia, much easier to push a pill.

Attention to holistic concern, the willingness to take the time to treat illnesses like mental illness is absent in government supplied medical care. We pay for illness in our system, we fail in every way to reward health. Medical doctors receive income solely for treating illness as opposed to the overall wellbeing of their keeps. There is testing available to identify many of the subtle medical occurrences related to mental health and nutrition, they’re left unused in most cases – or used once things have progressed. We need to do better in this regard, perhaps if people had the option to self-direct their medical spending, they would pick the modalities of treatment that promoted health, rather than waiting for illness to come.  

For more on this issue click the links below

EATING - Brief Overview Relative the Medical System

British Columbia Health System Reform

Child Killer Goes Free - BAD LAW

Bad Law  - BC Mental Health Act.

Discriminatory - BC Mental Health Act.

Vague - BC Mental Health Act.

Charter - BC Mental Health Act.

Review Panel Review - BC Mental Health Act.

Law, Legislation and Civil Liberty – BC Mental Health Act. (BCMHA) – Discriminatory

If one contemplates the application of this act in the context of Section 8 (1) b of the human rights code,

a.       Unlawful to discriminate against a person or class of persons regarding any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public because of the race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age of that person or class of persons.

Discrimination begins at the point of accusation and continues with the circumvention of due process and procedure.  In Canada, as per fundamental law, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the full breadth of Canadian Jurisprudence’s history and practice, one critical fundamental lies at the core of our law, we exist in a state of liberty and for that state liberty to be interrupted it must be proven justified in front of a justice and / or jury. The BC Mental Health Act denies this right, it permits an opinion of a layperson to have a person incarcerated, it then requires a doctor’s opinion to have you detained for 24 hours and another doctor’s opinion to have you detained indefinitely. If you object, a retrograde process in the form of a Review Panel is provided, a lawyer, a doctor, and another member preside over your future – no judge or jury like criminals get. So at the mere accusation of mental infirmity by a layperson or a police officer, absent imminent threat to self or others, you can be locked up and forced to treatment for an extended period of time; the subject in the subject case was detained under section 37 Leave or Extended Leave for 12 years.

Excerpt Section 22 BCMHA

(c) a statement, separate from that under paragraph (a), by the physician that the physician is of the opinion that the person to be admitted, or the patient admitted, under subsection (1)

(i)  requires treatment in or through a designated facility,

(ii)  requires care, supervision and control in or through a designated facility to prevent the person's or patient's substantial mental or physical deterioration or for the protection of the person or patient or the protection of others, and

(iii)  cannot suitably be admitted as a voluntary patient.

Absent a single act of violence, absent any threat of suicide, absent any objective evidence, absent any proof of a physical pathogen; the BCMMA can be activated and you can be incarcerated. People accused of mental infirmity are at the whim of medical opinion – see Section ii above – there is no requirement for imminent harm to self or others, no requirement of proof. “Patient’s mental or physical deterioration” has had the act applied if someone is appearing to be “irrationally” managing their money. If you choose to stop working and to sit on the side of a hill and meditate, and your spouse or other layperson deems this an irrational act, they could have the BCMHA actuated.

Discriminatory Elements of the Act.

1.       No judicial review before incarceration.

2.       A Review Panel process that makes rudimentary the incarceration and detention of people and flouts the traditions of Canadian jurisprudence.

3.      Reduced standard of review – the balance of probabilities vs beyond reasonable doubt (we extend criminals better protection), if complaints ever make it to court by people accused of mental illness.

4.       Reduced evidentiary standards:

a.       The “evidence” presented has no obligation to be based in fact.

b.      The “evidence” presented is written by the doctors and accepted by Review Panel as “evidence”, this is like the Crown Attorney writing “guilty” on a sheet of paper and the Judge accepting it.

c.       “Evidence” is collected from third parties, interpreted, and then entered into a judicial process – absent opportunity for review by the accused or incarcerated.

d.      There are no discovery obligations in the Review Panel process, the accused can be denied access to information that contributes to their incarceration.
e.   If the Review Panel Process is challenged in the Courts under Section 33, evidence that accumulated in a process that is substandard to Supreme Court proceedings is admissible and is the only Statutory avenue available to access the BCSC.

5.    The accused can be denied access to process altogether upon the recommendation of the accusing doctor.

6.    There is no more severe form of sanction than arresting a person’s state liberty in Canadian law, save the requirement to relinquish control over mind and body, people merely accused of Mental Illness are subject to both – WITH NO JUDICIAL REVIEW – accused criminals are only subject to incarceration and they have better treatment.    

    

This is intended to bring awareness to the inequity of the act, it is discriminatory make no mistake about it – grossly so. In an attempt to “have better ability to help”, a group of people have lobbied for this act, a group of people radicalized by bad experience – they have succeeded in convincing the government and in doing so have grossly damaged legal processes and permitted discrimination. As you read more of my posts on the subject of the BCMHA, it will come to light that what is even worse than the ill being discriminated against – which is bad enough – is the fact that the entire population is at risk of its abuse. Abuse does happen – it has and will again.  

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO REVIEW - VAGUE ASPECTS OF THE BCMHA