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Medicine Science

B Vitamins Reduce Schizophrenia Symptoms, Study Finds (newsmax.com) 90

A new study published in the journal Psychological Medicine finds that high doses of B vitamins reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia. Researchers found that using B vitamins, including B6, inositol, and B12 as an adjunctive with antipsychotics significantly improved symptoms of the debilitating condition. Newsmax reports: For the new study, researchers identified 18 clinical trials with a combined total of 832 patients receiving antipsychotic treatment for schizophrenia. They found that B-vitamin interventions which used higher dosages or combined several vitamins were consistently effective for reducing psychiatric symptoms, whereas those which used lower doses were ineffective. The evidence also suggested that B-vitamin supplements were most beneficial when they were added to medicine regimens early after diagnosis.
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B Vitamins Reduce Schizophrenia Symptoms, Study Finds

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  • by harvey the nerd ( 582806 ) on Friday February 17, 2017 @07:13AM (#53885083)
    Megavitamins and orthomolecular medicine have a scientific basis that is more targetable than this indicates. Merely they've been under "fake news" attacks since at least the 1960s, when the psychiatric establishment of that time attacked with rigged results. Then the severely iatrogenic oncologists of the 70s and 80s attacked.

    Both of these self anointed establishments' actions and statements then, when viewed by today's information, to me look like quacks with criminal intent
    • Very large doses of some vitamins can actually make you very sick or significantly increase your cancer risk. The most common thing is people that think that LOTS of antioxidants are good for them. The problem is that if you take too many your body can no longer destroy cancer cells with free radicals generated by macrophages. If you take antioxidants too far you significantly increase your risk of cancer and your risk for bacterial infection.

      There are also some fat soluble vitamins that are toxic if you ta

      • You look like an intelligent person with some common hearsay opinions contaminating your information base. Because of the structure of how these have been implanted over generations in the medical fields, most PhDs and MDs don't even begin to recognize their problem on accurate megavitamin information. Or where to start with the original scientific and medical papers. ...Very large doses of some vitamins can actually make you very sick or significantly increase your cancer risk Clearly not dealing with pre
      • There are also some fat soluble vitamins that are toxic if you take too much (like D).

        Yes, in general fat soluble vitamins have a higher potential of toxic accumulation. But how toxic is it?

        You can use about 50 000 IU per day for a long time with out symptoms.

        Taking 50,000 international units (IU) a day of vitamin D for several months has been shown to cause toxicity. This level is many times higher than the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for most adults of 600 IU of vitamin D a day. http://www.mayoclinic.org/heal... [mayoclinic.org]

        And even this information is old and the 600 IU RDA seams to be lacking. http://articles.mercola.com/si... [mercola.com]

        New recommendations are at about 7 000 to 10 000 IU per Day with no access to sunlight at a UV-Index above 2.

    • by swell ( 195815 )

      Add to that the fact that vitamins and natural supplements can't be patented. This creates an immediate bias against them when pharmaceuticals become available for similar symptoms. Drug companies are known to influence the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the medical community to discourage the public from using natural supplements when there are prescription drugs available.

      Additionally, nobody can afford to invest the millions of dollars to prove the value of a particular vitamin, in the way that m

  • but a balanced diet reduce many symptoms.
  • Pooled effects showed that vitamin B supplementation (including B6, B8 and B12) reduced psychiatric symptoms significantly more than control conditions [g = 0.508, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.01–1.01, p = 0.047, I2 = 72.3%]. Similar effects were observed among vitamin B RCTs which used intention-to-treat analyses (g = 0.734, 95% CI 0.00–1.49, p = 0.051).

    The confidence interval indicates the level of uncertainty around the measure of effect (precision of the effect estimate). Confidence intervals are used because a study recruits only a small sample of the overall population so by having an upper and lower confidence limit we can infer that the true population effect lies between these two points. Most studies report the 95% confidence interval (95%CI). If the confidence interval crosses 1 that implies there is no difference between arms of the study. As

  • A B-Complex supplement is a good idea anyway, as B vitamins get peed out and don't stay in the body for too long.

    So it is really hard to end up with not enough of them over a very short period of time and minor changes in diet can mean missing out.

    B-12 is also depleted by certain medications like Metformin, one of the main Type 2 Diabetes treatments. If you take Metformin, you are automatically low on B-12 and you will need to take more every day. You cannot eat enough food to reach the level you need.

    Cos

    • B vitamins get peed out and don't stay in the body for too long.

      B-12, one of vitamines mentioned, is stored in the liver for years.

  • And is smoking [slashdot.org] just a way of getting nicotinic acid as a byproduct (aka Niacin aka Vitamin B3)?

  • I recall that many, many years ago vitamin B12 was recommended as a rescue for a bad LSD trip. I don't know of any actual studies that tested its effectiveness though.

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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