"Living in an urban environment during childhood or as an adult has consistently been found to increase the risk of schizophrenia by a factor of two."[0] While city life is as complex of a confounding factor as anything, the fact that they found hunter-gatherers have practically no incidence of SZR is interesting. Is the modern megalopolis simply too intense of a stimulus for the minds of the sensitive to handle with…
This may be better explained by the Hygiene hypothesis - hunter-gatherers get exposure to all sorts of microbes and parasites early in their life while city-dwellers could be shielded from equivalent exposure. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
Fascinating. I self-diagnosed myself with schizophrenia once. A horrible 6 months locked in an alien world where all I could think about was time and space (at about a million miles a second). I would hear chatter in my head and was convinced I was overhearing random conversations people were having and was even certain of the locations they were having these conversations. The idea that we all shared one consciousne…
I have PTSD from extremely bad psychedelic trips and this comment made me cringe (my PTSD must be getting better because I think at one point it would have given me a panic attack). I don't think I could have handled 6 months of that.
Dang, this did give me a panic attack. The sort of thing OP describes is my greatest fear, and I have a hard time dealing with the fact that it really happens to some people.
It begun for me after smoking weed one night - in a flash I was outside my body with an extreme panic attack and the sudden belief that I was inside essentially a game. This first panic attack lasted around an hour or two. It was horrendous. Your PTSD is something you can manage, I have it too. It gets better and weaker as the years go on. For myself, this all happened 18 years ago but it made me a stronger person.
Marijuana actually triggers panic attacks in a similar way for me. None of the other psychedelics trigger it as bad as marijuana. Even then it’s a different type of management if it’s from shrooms or lsd. The marijuana one feels psychotic with short term memory loss vs just experiencing a different reality.
Any time you feel the onset of a panic attack, tell yourself it’s just a panic attack. Make yourself think of a happy thought and stay with it. Repeat a mantra in your head “Everything will be alright in the end, if it’s not alright, it’s not the end”. Try to go up and down the alphabet, maybe skipping letters - every 2 letters at a time; a, c, e, g… And backwards. Multiply numbers, etc. And do not smoke bongs, smoke only single skin joints which aren’t packed. These are a few of my techniques.
This seems consistent with Chris Palmer's hypothesis, that mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain, discussed in his new book Brain Energy[0]. He's done lots of podcast interviews[1], if you don't want to read the book. [0] https://www.chrispalmermd.com/ [1] https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=chris%20palmer%20md&so...
In what way is this consistent? The authors describe toxoplasma infection forming cysts in the brain as a result of immune response. The cysts then release neurotransmitters, primarily dopamine and glutamate, which presumably causes the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. What does that have to do with metabolism?
The idea that toxoplasmosis is a contributing factor to mental illness is decades old. This paper is merely an incremental restatement of that hypothesis. The abstract says, "Instead of just alleviating symptoms with drugs, the parasite x genotype x stress model emphasizes that schizophrenia treatment should focus on detecting and treating possible underlying microbial infection(s), neuroinflammation, gut dysbiosis, and chronic stress."
Chris Palmer's treatment emphasizes reduction of inflammation and dysbiosis via dietary means. This hypothesis is not limited to treatment of schizophrenia, but also other mental illness, such as bipolar disorder. The following two recent podcasts are illuminating.
Schizophrenia is a degenerative condition where positive symptoms start to be replaced by negative symptoms over the course of years. I've worked in acute adult mental health, and did a few shifts in the long term wards and the difference between people earlier on in the course of their illness versus the end stages are stark.
I would so love to chat with someone with your experience. I developed tourettes / ticking a few years ago when I was around 32 and I wonder whether it could be related to the psychosis I once had. When I researched sudden onset ticking I couldn’t really find much about it! There hasn’t been a day in past 4 years I’ve not ticked and it is worse than ever.
Wasn't schizophrenia identified as basically off-by-one (multiple?) error of the deletion algorithm in the brain that is garbage collecting more (glial?) cells in a row than needed during teenage years? And "overclocking" glial cells by adding large quantities of Niacin/NAD+ partially alleviates those symptoms?
It's a neurological disorder and is more complicated than a one off bit, especially when it involved the entire CNS because it's associated with the brain. Many of these issues can't be cured as easy as flipping a bit.
I mean if it is an unrecoverable loss of glial cells during puberty (AFAIK most diagnoses start during that time) then nobody would be able to "flip the bit" back anyway. As glial cells feed and protect neurons, their lack will likely have unrepairable consequences, unless the remaining ones are somewhat boosted to partially cover the functionality of the missing ones. I am interested in this topic because a cousin has inherited it from her father's family (super intelligent people) and their family life is destroyed from it. They basically just manage symptoms with regular crazy periods when one medication ceases to function and they have to switch to another one that might not work.
Wasn't schizophrenia identified as basically off-by-one (multiple?) error of the deletion algorithm in the brain that is garbage collecting more (glial?) cells in a row than needed during teenage years? And "overclocking" glial cells by adding large quantities of Niacin/NAD+ partially alleviates those symptoms?
At the very least there seem to be 10s of causes of schizophrenia and just as many different manifestations of it. Similar to cancer or depression in that regard.
Yes, so another umbrella diagnosis that can have 100s different reasons with the same outward symptoms. Like some people with pellagra exhibiting the same symptoms but when their nutrition improves long-term, they get completely cured from it. I only remember some Harvard/Stanford or similar article in the past five years about deleted cells because of a genetic defect akin to off-by-one error in programs.
I have PTSD from extremely bad psychedelic trips and this comment made me cringe (my PTSD must be getting better because I think at one point it would have given me a panic attack). I don't think I could have handled 6 months of that.
Dang, this did give me a panic attack. The sort of thing OP describes is my greatest fear, and I have a hard time dealing with the fact that it really happens to some people.
To be fair, I suffered anxiety since I was 7 or 8yrs old and had a shitty start at life. That snapping experience was a long time coming for me. Don’t be worrying it will happen to you, cause it’s pointless unless it has happened and it’s not worth the worry.
As someone formally diagnosed with schizophrenia, I would say the worst parts of it are anhedonia and stigma. Anhedonia means we can just rot in our apartments for days at a time getting nothing accomplished and stigma prevents us from working even when we overcome the mountain that is anhedonia. Honestly, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
My brother was diagnosed with same and certainty suffers from anhedonia to this day. You seriously think the public stigma is one of the "worst" things about it? Almost no one my brother encounters knows about his diagnosis and yet he suffers a lot. I sort of doubt other people's opinions are of primary significance in that, although perhaps his perception of how others see him does seem a bit problem
my dad had schizophrenia and he starved himself to death because he thought most food and water was poison. he was estranged from his family and was on the streets off and on, mostly because he was ashamed. he on some level knew he was delusional and was ashamed of it, which you would think would undermine his delusion, but i suppose fear comes first.