Infection ..links with mental illness & metal toxicity

[Guest guest]

This is part of a discussion a couple of days back from another forum on

the link between infection and mental illness, metal toxicity I thought I

would repost it here.

The person I’m exchanging mail with, has a medical background..By

coincidence he lives about five miles from me , and no we’ve never met up …

I first encountered him some two years ago , both he & his daughter were

self treating a yeast infection ..

Re: Is my depression candida

From: UK

Date: 7/17/2006

Time: 1:07:22 PM

Remote Name: 88.105.91.254

Comments

Almost certainly your depression is linked to infection ...Yeast is the

catalyst for bacterial infections ,the resultant yeast dominant gut

dysbiosis is the reservoir for systemic infections This latest research

tells the story ...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3540627/site/newsweek/

Diseases of the Mind

Bacteria, viruses and parasites may cause mental illnesses like depression

and perhaps even autism and anorexia

By Janet Ginsburg

Newsweek International

Dec. 1 issue - Olga Skipko has had the good fortune to live most of her

adult life in the Polish village of Gruszki, in the heart of the Puszcza

Bialowieska, one of Europe's most beautiful forests and home to wolves,

lynxes and the endangered European bison. Unfortunately, the forest is also

a breeding ground for disease-carrying ticks. Skipko, 49, thinks she was

bitten about 10 years ago, when she began having the classic symptoms of

Lyme borreliosis, a tickborne nervous-system disease: headaches and aching

joints. She didn't get treatment until 1998. " I was treated with antibiotics

and felt a bit better, " she says.

That was only the beginning of her troubles. A few years later, she began to

forget things and her speaking grew labored. It got so bad that she had to

quit her job in a nursery forest and check herself in to a psychiatric

clinic. " I hope they will help me, " she says. " I promised my children that

when I come back home, I will be able to do my favorite crosswords again. "

Doctors ran a battery of tests and concluded that her mental problems were

the advanced stage of the Lyme disease she had contracted years ago.

Scientists have long known that some diseases can cause behavioral problems.

When penicillin was first used to treat syphilis, thousands of cured

schizophrenics were released from mental asylums. Now, however, scientists

have evidence that infections may play a far bigger role in mental illness

than previously thought. They've linked cases of obsessive-compulsive

disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia to a variety of infectious

agents, and they're investigating autism, Tourette's and anorexia as well.

They're beginning to suspect that bad bugs may cause a great many other

mental disorders, too. " The irony is that people talked about syphilis as

the 'great imitator', " says University of Louisville biologist Ewald,

" but it may be the 'great illustrator'-a model for understanding the causes

of chronic diseases. "

Mental illnesses constitute a large and growing portion of the world's

health problems. According to the World Health Organization, depression is

one of the most debilitating of diseases, on a par with paraplegia.

Psychiatric illnesses make up more than 10 percent of the world's " disease

burden " (a measure of how debilitating a disease is), and are expected to

increase to 15 percent by 2020. Much of this may be the work of viruses,

bacteria and parasites. Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, of the Stanley

Medical Research Institute in land, has found from studying historical

asylum records that hot spots-higher-than-normal incidences-of mental

illness can shift, much like infectious-disease outbreaks, which lends

credence to the notion that infectious agents play a big role. " Mental

disorders are the major chronic recurrent disorders of youth in all

developed countries, " says Harvard policy expert Kessler, who directs

the WHO's mental-health surveys.

Perhaps the most well known disease that's been linked to mental disorders

is Lyme disease, which is caused by the Borrelia burgdorferi germ. First

identified in the mid-1970s among children near Lyme, Connecticut, the

disease has long been known to cause nervous-system problems and achy joints

if left untreated. Now scientists are finding that Lyme disease can also

trigger a whole smorgasbord of psychiatric symptoms, including depression.

One New York man (we'll call him Joe) found out firsthand how debilitating

the disease can be. When he began having bouts of major depression back in

1992, he had forgotten all about the tick bite he had gotten four years

earlier. He spent two years in a blur of antipsychotic drugs, mental

institutions, jails and suicide attempts. On a hunch, a doctor at a

psychiatric hospital in New Jersey had Joe tested for Lyme disease. After an

intensive course of antibiotics, Joe's improvement was dramatic and

immediate. " I started to have this fog lift, " he recalls. Still, he will

probably have to be on psychotropic drugs for the rest of his life.

Some psychiatrists fret that there may be thousands of people suffering from

Lyme-induced depression without knowing why. Not only is Lyme disease tricky

to diagnose-not everybody gets the circular rash, and lab tests still aren't

wholly reliable-it can take a decade or more for mental disorders to set in.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says that nine out of 10 cases of Lyme

diseases remain unreported. There are 15 species of borellias-making them

the most common tickborne disease-producing bacteria in the world.

For its part, the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which can be found in

undercooked meat and cat feces, can lead to full-blown psychotic episodes.

Some studies suggest that the parasite stimulates the production of a

chemical similar to LSD, producing hallucinations and psychosis. Even when

the parasite lies dormant in muscle and brain tissue, it can affect

attention span and reaction time in otherwise healthy people. Researchers at

University in Prague have discovered that people who test positive

have slightly slower-than-average reaction times and-possibly as a

result-are almost three times as likely to have car accidents. That's a

disturbing prospect, considering that the disease is so widespread: billions

of people are thought to be infected.

Even a simple sore throat can lead to psychiatric problems. Few children

avoid coming down with a streptococcus infection, also known as strep.

Scientists now think that one in 1,000 strep sufferers also develops

abrupt-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in a matter of weeks. Strep

bacteria trigger OCD by igniting an overzealous response from the immune

system, which attacks certain types of brain cells, causing inflammation.

Symptoms generally die down after a few months but can flare up again,

especially if there's another bout of strep, says Swedo, a

childhood-disease expert at the National Institutes of Health. The most

effective treatment, still experimental, is to filter out the misbehaving

antibodies from the blood. Best is to treat strep early on.

The specter of a depression germ or contagious obsessive-compulsive disorder

is unnerving, but it also opens up many more treatment options-antibiotics,

vaccines, checking for ticks. Geneticists believe that diseases may trigger

the onset of inherited mental illnesses by activating key genes. Avoiding

and treating infection may be just as important as the genes you inherit,

and a whole lot easier to do something about.

----------------------------------------------------------

With Joanna Kowalska In Warsaw

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

From: Steve

Date: 7/19/2006

Time: 1:32:06 AM

Remote Name: 217.207.120.66

Comments

At the very basic level, our body is all about chemistry. Digestion,

respiration, central and peripheral nervous system and the endocrine system

all function based on chemistry. In order to function properly, the body

requires aa huge variety of molecules and trace elements. With the exception

of Oxygen, all other chemicals are provided by the food that we eat. Our

digestive system is responsible for converting that food into forms the body

can utilize, while ridding the body of metabolic waste products and harmful

toxins.

The digestive system is based on a series of chemical compounds and enzymes

(proteins) that break down the chemical bonds in food so that the more basic

building blocks of carbohydrates, fats, amino acids, vitamins and minerals

can be absorbed and utilized by our metabolism to provide energy, build new

proteins, repair cells etc. Certain vitamins and trace elements present in

food cannot be absorbed directly and need to be converted into other forms

before they can pass through the intestinal walls. This conversion is most

commonly carried out by bacteria in the gut. The various bacteria’s' own

metabolism acts on the vitamins and minerals, appending organic molecules

which changes the solubility of the compounds and allows them to pass

through the intestine and into the blood stream. These symbiotic bacteria

have a further function of protecting the intestine from pathogenic bacteria

and yeast

When a pathological state exists, this finely balanced symbiosis may be

damaged and cease to function normally. Several different states in the gut

may exist. Symbiotic bacteria may be damaged, causing the malabsorbtion of

critical vitamins and minerals. If the damage is extensive and/or long

lasting, pathogenic yeast and gram-negative bacilli will begin to fill the

vacuum left by the healthy bacteria. The metabolism of these pathogens is

different and foods are no longer broken down in the same way. Proteins that

previously would be broken down to their constituent amino acids are only

partially digested, leaving long chains of amino acids called peptides. Our

entire body is built from proteins, which are themselves built from chains

of peptides. Certain peptides are extremely bioactive i.e they interact

strongly with other proteins in the body. Another side effects of dysbiosis

(incorrect gut microorganisms) is that the gut becomes leaky i.e it passes

larger molecules than would normally be the case. Thus peptides, which

should normally be broken down to amino acids, leave the gut and enter the

blood stream intact, where they are delivered to other organs. Casein and

Gluten, a protein and mixture of proteins common in many foods break down to

form very potent opio-peptides when acted on by certain pathogenic bacteria.

As the name suggests, these peptides have a narcotic action and act on

opiate receptors in the brain, triggering major changes in brain function.

These are only 2 examples and very little work has been done on identifying

the structure and function of peptides created by dysbiosis.

The above example is a nice illustration of how the presence of gut

dysbiosis can directly effect brain function. Given that depression has its

roots in biochemistry, its not too wildly imaginative to suppose that your

problems are indeed related to gut dysbiosis.

Good explanation , appreciate it ..In simple terms metabolic pathways are

decommissioned by pathogenic flora ..The long held belief that spillage if

you like, from mercury in amalgam teeth fillings is the cause of accumulated

mercury in the body is completely wrong It's the bodies inability to

metabolise and excrete mercury because of inappropriate gut flora ..

Detoxification is hugely impacted by dysbiosis.

Detoxification is, to a large extent carried out by the Liver. Toxic

compounds are first oxidized or hydroxylated (Stage I), while Stage II

reactions prepare the Stage I metabolites for biliary excretion by

covalently conjugating them with highly polar ligands like glucuronic acid

or glutathione. These detoxification reactions require vitamin and trace

elemental co-factors to provide electrons for chemical bonding. In cases of

Dysbiosis, these co-factors may be missing, due to malabsorbtion in the

intestine. In addition, the pathogenic bacteria in the gut may metabolize

the conjugated toxins, changing their form and allowing them to be

reabsorbed into the blood stream.

Mercury is usually excreted via the gut in its divalent elemental form. In

Dysbiosis it is thought that certain pathogenic bacteria have the ability to

methylate the metallic Mercury to its organic form, which would be

reabsorbed into the blood stream and carried to target organs like the

kidneys and brain.

Very well explained, What a pity there is almost no research on this endemic

condition ...It's true to say that with dysbiosis it has a knock on effect

...A cascade of symptoms ensue ,,the metabolites of yeast are incredibly

toxic, add those to the mix and the situation becomes more complex. One such

complication is, those with poor gut flora an reduced ability to metabolise

metals. ..Well at least in this mouse model ...If this is true with us it

answers the question of the inability of Autistic children and many yeast

victims to metabolise metals efficiently ..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed & cmd=Retrieve & list_ui

ds=6524959 & itool=pubmed_docsum & dopt=abstractplus & dr=abstractplus

Hi , Bear in mind that the Mercury has to come from somewhere. No

exposure.... nothing to excrete. Dysbiosis impairs the detoxification

mechanism but there still needs to be a source of Mercury for there to be a

problem.

Dental amalgam is a proven source of mercury toxicity. Dysbiosis compounds

the problem by impairing the detoxification system

BTW, Mercury is strongly anti-microbial so there's even the possibility that

excreting high levels of Mercury may cause dysbiosis

Steve, Yes , but the point I'm making is that we all encounter

mercury/metals from the environment ,be it from amalgams or pesticides or

whatever ..In the normal course of events we deal with the amount we

encounter ..Now take away the metabolic pathway and the amounts of metals

accumulate ..How we deal with metals [as you point out] is like a biological

symphony genes express in sequence Genes control enzyme production. The more

genes are activated, the higher the production capacity of certain enzymes

Food can trigger gene activation [expression] and of course gut flora so the

appropriate gut flora is vitally important.

Correct. However, the presence of dental amalgams may actually cause

dysbiosis in the first place so dental amalgams may well act as 'a' trigger

into a downward spiral of illness.

The long held belief that spillage from mercury in amalgam teeth fillings is

the cause of accumulated mercury in the body is probably correct, in that

Mercury has the ability to damage the gut flora and potentially trigger the

inability to metabolise and excrete mercury.

Your point that anything else that damages the gut flora can trigger mercury

accumulation is also in all likelihood correct. In summary, dental amalgams

may trigger the illness or simply act a source of Mercury when something

else like antibiotics damages the gut flora and sets off the downward spiral

It’s certainly a possibility ,but it’s clear that the metal toxicity that

Autistic children [there are not many autistic adults] experience stems from

inappropriate gut flora. .They haven’t been around long enough to have

dental amalgams..

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