Nutrient therapy for mental illness

The science of epigenetics may hold the key to our understanding of mental illness and behavioural disorders, Dr Bill Walsh tells Aoife Connors

I’m so excited about epigenetics,” Dr Bill Walsh told Irish Medical Times, ahead of his visit to Trinity College last week (17 July) for a conference on ‘Nutrient Therapy Protocols for Mental and Behavioural Disorders’.
Dr Walsh was set to address the Dublin Outreach Conference, focusing on the emerging science of epigenetics. In 2008, this chemical engineer founded the Walsh Research Institute in Naperville, Illinois, which is organised exclusively for research, educational and charitable purposes.
“This is the most exciting thing that’s happened [in medicine] in 40 years. It appears many of the diseases we thought were genetic are actually epigenetic,” he said. “Epigenetics has the advantage that it can lead to therapies that can reverse what genes are doing.”
This scientific field, explained Dr Walsh, is the study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression, caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence. Epigenetics “provides a roadmap to more effective therapies for mental and behavioural disorders, because the primary method for helping these kinds of problems over the last 30 to 40 years has been psychiatric medications”.
“I think our next step will be to use our knowledge of molecular biology and brain chemistry to find ways to directly correct neurotransmitter and receptor problems,” he said. “We’re getting closer to understanding exactly what goes wrong and reversing how this occurs. If you look at the science of epigenetics for various disorders, methylation appears to be the most powerful factor in epigenetics and genes expression.” Methylation contributing to epigenetic inheritance can occur through either DNA methylation or protein methylation.
Cure for all cancers
Epigenetics is also on the threshold of revealing why people develop certain cancers, said Dr Walsh: “We know in many cancers that numerous suppression genes are shut off, but this is just the beginning. I think we’re very close to a cure for all cancers.”
The scientist says he has treated some 25,000 people with mental and behavioural disorders in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Europe, accumulating a significant database with biochemical information on people with mental and behavioural disorders.
In 1982, he founded the Health Research Institute in Warrenville, Illinois and in 1989 set up the associated Pfeiffer Treatment Center (HRI-PTC) there, where he was president until 1998. Following this, he became HRI-PTC Director of Research until June 2008, when he established the Walsh Research Institute. Dr Walsh has since concentrated on research and practitioner training in advanced nutrient therapy methods to treat mental and behavioural disorders.
He firmly believes nutrient therapy can be the key to treating such disorders. “There’s a belief that you need a powerful drug to treat a problem like schizophrenia, a chronic mental-health condition or bipolar disorder. But I think a lot of doctors have forgotten what they learnt in medical school – where do our neurotransmitters come from and then what controls them? What factors affect neurotransmitter uptake and the process of synapse?
“When you dig into the molecular biology of this, you find nutrient factors are extremely important. If a person had a genetic disorder that caused them to be very deficient in vitamin B6, well, this is the major core factor in the production of serotonin. So if a person has a major B6 deficiency, you can be sure they’ll be low in serotonin and will suffer from depression, or at least have a tendency for it.”
The solution could be to prescribe fluoxetine, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medication, to help with the side effects. “But it seems a lot more scientific, if a person is depressed, to simply normalise their B6 levels. If you do a complete metabolic analysis of any human, you’ll find they’ll probably be low in five or six important nutrient factors because of genetics and epigenetics. If you could identify those, the person may benefit from many times the RDA of those nutrients, because they’re fighting genetics,” Dr Walsh explained.
The treatment weapons he uses are amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals, focusing on the nutrients that have a powerful impact on the synthesis of neurotransmitters or what happens when an electrical impulse crosses the synapse, he explained.
Prison study
Over 30 years ago, Dr Walsh studied a Chicago prison population while the offenders integrated back into society. Doing chemical analysis of blood, urine and tissue samples, Dr Walsh and his team found most of the prisoners had major deficiencies in copper, zinc and manganese levels. “There are about 35 different metals in the body. As a group, the offenders had very abnormal metal metabolism. We found many different forms of behavioural disorders, but the anti-social personality group had a distinct pattern.”
The study showed each of the offenders had high blood histamine, zinc deficiency and were under-methylated: an abnormal combination of chemical imbalances. The offenders needed nutritional therapy, not medication.
Another study looked at more than 10,000 adults and children with severe behavioural problems. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder, oppositional-defiant disorder or seasonal depression had completely different chemistry. “They fit into very different classifications: not only are their biochemistries uniquely different, but also their symptoms and traits are very different.”
People with these conditions tend to be under-methylated – low in serotonin levels, calcium, magnesium, methionine and vitamin B6. “We found a lot of the children studied had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or insulin deficiency. Families reported that not only did the children’s behaviour improve, but their school work got dramatically better when nutritional therapy commenced.”
He has conducted many studies on the relationship between biochemical therapy and behaviour outcomes. In 1989, Dr Walsh opened a clinic to treat behavioural disorders, ADHD and later schizophrenia. In ten years, this has become the largest clinic of its type, having treated over 35,000 patients. “We had the highest population of autistic patients, so we did a combination of scientific research and clinical protocols aimed at normalising the nutrient factors that impact on brain chemistry. Our clinical goal with a patient was to normalise their blood levels and their brain-chemical levels.
“It seems to work very well for certain populations, but unfortunately we failed to help children with Down’s syndrome because they had particularly unusual brain and body chemistry. We did a careful study of Down’s kids and found the treatment didn’t help. But every time we’ve done an outcome study on behaviour, depression, eating disorders, autism or schizophrenia, we got positive results on the individual’s behaviour and the family reports.”
Methylation
Dr Walsh has studied the methylation status of over 25,000 people with various mental and behavioural disorders. He believes that methylation has a powerful impact on epigenetics. “If a person is over-methylated or under-methylated, it affects which genes are turned on and off. This has a lot to do with production of proteins within the brain and body and where that has gone wrong.
“In early foetus development, a number of decisions are made and these get ‘bookmarked’,” he explained. “Some genes are turned on in certain tissues, while others are turned off. Although a natural process, for some people, things can go wrong and people can end up with a pre-disposition for depression, a mental illness or behavioural disorder.”
Many of these conditions have perplexed scientists for years, because illnesses like depression run in families. “The problem is these illnesses violate the classic laws of genetics. I think we now have the answers because it’s really epigenetic and not genetic. The conditions don’t involve changes in the DNA, but the changes involved are alterations or modifications – or errors, you might say – in gene expression,” he explained.
Dr Walsh hoped that his presentation at the Dublin conference would succeed in its aim of getting ten to 20 Irish doctors interested in nutrient therapy. “We’re hoping to start a week-long Walsh Outreach Training Programme for doctors and medical practitioners in Ireland. This would be similar to the existing Australian scheme, where we now have more qualified physicians in nutritional therapy than anywhere else in the world.”
Dr Walsh has also expanded his therapy training programme to Norway and is currently working on establishing the programme in the Philippines.