Live data from Hacker News

Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

scientificamerican.com

21–30 of 53 posts

Re: Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

#21
post #16

We know recurrent episodes of apnea, over months and years, may cause an increase in carbon dioxide levels that can change the pH of the blood enough to cause a respiratory acidosis. We also know sleep apnea may be prevalent in patients with bipolar I disorder. It would be great to see a comparison study of patients with OSA versus CSA (specifically REM-related sleep apnea) examining acidosis, mood disorder prevelenc…

Can you share any studies around this? Especially about sleep apnea and bipolar 1.

Re: Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

#22

Wim Hof Method, baby.

I was going to say the same thing. I don't know the veracity of the claims regarding ph levels but it's the one tool in my toolkit that consistently gives me an immediate positive return in my mental health. It'd be great if this is something that has far reaching clinical effects.

Re: Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

#23
post #11

More evidence for the health benefits of an alkaline diet.

I wouldn't make that conclusion. The alkaline diet is based on some really suspect science. Testing the pH of your urine in order to determine the overall pH of your body is flawed. Believing that your body even has an overall pH is flawed.

Re: Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

#24
> Other research has revealed that the brains of people with panic disorders produce elevated levels of lactate—an acidic source of fuel that is constantly produced and consumed in the energy-hungry brain.

For me, this further confirms that metabolic problems are causally-associated with 'mental disorders'.

  Lactic acidosis is a medical condition characterized by   
  the buildup of lactate (especially L-lactate) in the body, 
  which results in an excessively low pH. It is a subtype of 
  metabolic acidosis, where excessive acid is due to a 
  problem with the body's metabolism.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactic_acidosis

I used the courts to get the mental health system to reduce the harm they were perpetrating upon my friend, who they thought had a 'persistent mental disorder'. Really she was just self-medicating depression with the street pharmacy. (Cocaine and the amphetamines are not very good for people's mitochondria/metabolism, which is why they're illegal.)

In response to my bullying, the treatment provider did a genetic test, and decided that she needed Folate (Vitamin B-9), as she can't convert folic acid like most people. She's doing much better on the reduced dosages of tranquilizers ('anti-psychotics')/etc.

Re: Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

#25
This reminds me of research from a while back suggesting schizophrenia was related to an ancient retrovirus that entered our DNA millions of years ago and occasionally causes problems (Discover mag, "The Insanity Virus," June 2010). Reseach is ongoing: (http://discovermagazine.com/2015/sept/6-insanity-virus).

From the 2010 story:

> Sixty million years ago, a lemurlike animal—an early ancestor of humans and monkeys—contracted an infection. It may not have made the lemur ill, but the retrovirus spread into the animal’s testes (or perhaps its ovaries), and once there, it struck the jackpot: It slipped inside one of the rare germ line cells that produce sperm and eggs. When the lemur reproduced, that retrovirus rode into the next generation aboard the lucky sperm and then moved on from generation to generation, nestled in the DNA. “It’s a rare, random event,” says Robert Belshaw, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford in England. “Over the last 100 million years, there have been only maybe 50 times when a retrovirus has gotten into our genome and proliferated.”

>...Perron in 2008, found HERV-W in the blood of 49 percent of people with schizophrenia, compared with just 4 percent of healthy people.

Re: Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

#26
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to analyze lots of brains of dead schizoids until we had a methodology to diagnose, permission to analyze them, and then looked closely enough. http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v9/n7/full/4001511a.html?fo... Sometimes lots of theories come out of a minute variation correlation and sometimes it's just a sampling coincidence (like it's just how schizoid brains break down). I'm VERY sure, someone has altered a schi…

I've never heard someone refer to a schizophrenic as "a schizoid". Schizophrenia and schizoid personality disorder are distinct disorders with different symptoms.

not in the field, but I think it's both somewhat slang for schizophrenia (see also woody allen movies), also somewhat antiquated or at least highly specific term from (iirc freudian) psychopathology

Re: Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

#27
Contrary to what the article states, elevated levels of lactic acid per say do not cause acidification. In fact, the increase in lactic acid correlates to but is not the causation of acidosis. According to Robergs (2004) [1], it is the hydrolysis of ATP outside of the mitochondria (ATP produced in glycolysis) that increases the concentration of H+ and lowers pH. Yet, still, if the concentration of lactate increases it's a good indicator of acidosis from oxygen deficiency.

[1] Biochemistry of exercise-induced metabolic acidosis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15308499

Note: During low oxygen levels in tissue, metabolism becomes anaerobic -> lactic acid is produced. Lactic acid lactate + H+.

Re: Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

#28
>researchers continued to puzzle over if the increased acidity seen in schizophrenia and bipolar patients was truly disorder-related—or the result of other factors, such as a person’s history of antipsychotic drug use

Excuse my ignorance, but I don't see how they ruled out the possible link between antipsychotic drug use and increased acidity?

I'm also puzzled by how they can confidently diagnose rodents with human social disorders based solely on "genetic indicators" when the links between genetics and disorders like schizophrenia are still far from understood.

Re: Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

#29

Wim Hof Method, baby.

I'm not interested in paying for the online video course - does this article http://highexistence.com/the-wim-hof-method-revealed-how-to-... capture the gist of it? Does the book include anything else that's significant?

Re: Increased acidity found in schizophrenia and bipolar patients’ brains

#30
post #11

More evidence for the health benefits of an alkaline diet.

Isn't the body very good at maintaining homeostasis? Meaning you could eat an alkaline diet, but if your body composition is such that you have such a given acidic composition then your body has processes to maintain whatever it's 'normal' is.

Exactly. And many home remedies that actually work rely on the opposite technique.

In this case, you'd try an acidic diet in order to coerce your body's natural processes to bring yourself to a more normal pH.

Obviously I don't know if that would work, but nobody can really say one way or the other without doing some proper research.

Post reply on HN