10 Ways to Keep Your Brain from Screaming “Ouch!”

By David Moyer

Whimsical? Yes. Serious? Yes. Practical? Yes! How does a person keep their brain happy and in good repair? This unorthodox, slightly irreverent book goes beyond the psychiatric labels and medications. It provides specific leading-edge interventions readers can implement in consultation with their health care providers to prevent and treat "screaming brains." Topics range from beets and the brain to bugs in the brain. In the final analysis, having a happy brain boils down to taking in what is good for it and avoiding that which is not good for it. In the eBook format, readers can access links that support the main ideas in the book.

This is the second of three books in The Transformation Trilogy, a series that challenges the current definition of mental illness and envisions a future where people can find definitive treatment for underlying biomedical disorders. The first book in the series, a medical memoir entitled Too Good to be True? Nutrients Quiet the Unquiet Brain, points out the limitations of current standard of care practice, using the author's family's history to illustrate. This book was revised in 2014 to an eBook simply called Nutrients Quiet the Unquiet Brain. The third, Beyond Mental Illness, envisions major changes in the mental health care system of the future when people can transform their labels so they can begin the process of transforming their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493167395

David Moyer

Licensed Clinical Social Worker David Moyer has served in clinical and administrative mental health positions at the federal, state and county levels. His experiences, both professionally and in his own family, led him to novel interventions to the problem of mental illness. Here he ventures into heretofore uncharted territory and invites you to do the same. He addresses the shortfalls of the current diagnostic system based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) series. In departing from from tradition he applies his extensive scholarship in an easy-to-understand manual for keeping your brain happy and in good repair.

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Copyright © 2014 by David Moyer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by an informational storage or retrieval system, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or the Internet unless with the permission in writing from the author. The information is educational in nature and shall not be construed to recommend a specific assessment or treatment option for the reader. The fact that a particular assessment or intervention has been safe and effective for many does not assure either safety or effectiveness for the reader. The author and publisher are not providing professional services or medical advice. Readers are advised to consult with a healthcare professional to assure currency and validation of any ideas contained herein. Neither the author nor publisher will be held responsible or liable for any harm or loss alleged to arise from information in this book. The author receives no remuneration from, nor does he have any vested interests in any of the companies whose products are mentioned in this book.

Rev. date: 01/07/2015

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Getting the Most from this Book

What are you getting yourself into?

Wanted: Heretics

How to use this book

1 Clean it

2 Feed it—or not

3 Inspire it

4 Rest it

5 Defend it

6 Tune it

7 Debug it—or not

8 Balance it

9 Sculpt it

10 Energize it

11 Keep Baby’s Brain from Screaming Ouch!

Appendix #1 Indentify biomarkers

Appendix #2 Know your drugs

Acknowledgements

In the years spent researching for this book I have been blessed and sometimes overwhelmed with information streaming to my computer from around the world. I wish to thank psychiatrist, Dr Robert Bransfield, past President of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, for establishing an email list called Microbes and Mental Illness. It consists of an international group of healthcare professionals and advocates who consult with each other regarding the latest research on the role of infections in mental illness. Thanks also go to Dan Stradford, founder of Safe Harbor and the Integrative Psychiatry email list. This also consists of healthcare providers who are interested in new paradigms for assessment and treatment of mental illness. Members of both these listservs have a vision of a future where those called the mentally ill are transformed, not just maintained by their care. These email lists consist of a dynamic and divergent group of physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, dieticians, nutritionists, advocates, patients, and researchers who daily exchange the latest research and insights pertaining to mental illness, a term that, if I ruled the world, would now be as obsolete as consumption, dropsy, or falling sickness, terms used by our forefathers. But I get ahead of myself.

Thanks to Tony Stephan and David Hardy, founders of Truehope, for the differences they have made in so many peoples’ lives. They and others like them have been willing to move beyond today’s self-limiting diagnostic paradigms that condemn so many to a life of chronic illness.

I appreciate the Lyme Literate Medical Doctors (LLMDs) who continue to treat those with Lyme disease and associated infections in spite of intimidation by various regulatory bodies. One of them, Dr Charles Jones, has successfully treated thousands of children afflicted with Lyme disease and associated infections. I have learned much from LLMDs at International Lyme and Associated Diseases conferences. The many professionals I met at Alliance for Addictions Solutions conferences, Orthomolecular Medicine Conferences, and the first Micronutrients and Mental Health Conference in 2009 have all contributed to this book. You have all stretched my mind and contributed to this and the other two books I have written.

Thanks go to the Nevada County and Grass Valley police, psychiatrists, mental health workers, judges and lawyers who have intervened to prevent the potentially disastrous consequences of psychosis. I hope the ideas in this book and the companion book Beyond Mental Illness will make their jobs easier.

To Chris, our son: Chris, you helped others to permanently leave the stigma of mental illness behind them by sharing your story in our first book. Even though your biological triggers are multifaceted and highly complex, you have made much progress. Many of the answers to your illnesses and the illnesses of others called the mentally ill have already been found. We wait for a tipping point when those answers are put into practice. Thanks for sharing your story with others in our first book and in our blog at www.beyondmentalillness.us.

Thanks also go to an unnamed colleague who has had to deal with healthcare providers who have put his symptoms into discrete diagnostic boxes, as if putting them there explained them. His doctors ignored that his periodic incapacitating symptoms were related to his lifelong infections from hundreds of tick bites in his youth.

I especially want to acknowledge the contributions of two men, who, sadly, are no longer with us. Dr Foster’s discoveries have implications for those called the mentally ill as well as for those with AIDS. Even though he died before fulfilling his dream for an inexpensive and effective international intervention for AIDS patients, the Foster Health Foundation he established is continuing his work. Dr Rich Van Konynenburg has helped chronic fatigue sufferers. His ideas are relevant for those with screaming brains. These men made significant contributions by looking at age old problems from a fresh perspective.

I am indebted to the members of the Sierra Writers Group for their supportive feedback and to Susan Conlon for her editing assistance.

Thanks to Michael Lierly, a talented artist and illustrator whose version of The Scream by Edvard Munch graces the cover and whose brain depictions introduce the chapters. Thanks to my wife, Gayle, for her significant editing contributions and for her willingness to be a writer widow. Finally, thanks to that entity I affectionately call Dr Google, Dr G. Without his help, this book would not have been possible.

I have no business relationship with any of the firms that make products discussed (or linked) in this book. I discuss the products because I am personally familiar with them and/or learned about them from others I trust. Other products may be as good or better. I receive no funds for any product placements.

This is the second book in The Transformation Trilogy, three books that collectively argue for a major transformation of the mental health delivery system at the individual and institutional levels. The first, Too Good to be True? Nutrients Quiet the Unquiet Brain, published in 2003, details my family’s four-generation bipolar odyssey and discusses novel ways to assess and treat. The third, Beyond Mental Illness, published in 2014, examines the evolution of psychiatric diagnoses in the culture, advocates for a biologically based diagnostic system, and provides a model for what such a system might look like. These books would not have been possible without the help of the above.

David Moyer, June 15, 2014

Getting the Most from this Book

Believe nothing, no matter who has said it . . . unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

Buddha

10 ways to keep your brain from screaming Ouch!? Yep, that’s the crux of it. Doesn’t sound very professional, does it? But really, does it take the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) with umpteen zillion diagnoses to know when your brain is starting to hurt? If you are depressed, you don’t need to hear that you have a mental disorder called major depression. You need to not be depressed anymore. If you are compulsively obsessed you don’t need to hear that you have a mental disorder called obsessive-compulsive disorder. You need to stop obsessing. Giving a condition a name may be helpful, but giving it the same name as the symptoms? We can do better than that. What if you experience brain fog, forgetfulness or low energy? Got a name for that one? How about brain fog disorder, forgetfulness disorder or low energy disorder. No, we don’t need more names. What we do need are solutions to restore our brains to health or, better yet, to keep them from going on the fritz in the first place. In this book, you and your healthcare provider have access to a cornucopia of solutions to keep your brain happy and healthy.

In spite of—or maybe because of—our diagnostic manuals and the drug treatments based on them, the number of brains screaming Ouch! is on the increase. Psychology professor Jean Twenge found that there is more depression and hypomania now than there was during the midst of the Great Depression in 1938, five times as much! In the 1980s the rate of autism syndrome was about one in 10,000. Now it is one in 100. Some say it is one in 50. What is going on here? Giving names to these mental disorders doesn’t appear to have been all that helpful.

What are you getting yourself into?

To keep your brain from screaming Ouch! is really pretty simple. You need to take care of it and, of course, the body in which it resides. Here are 10 ways to do just that: clean it, feed it (or not), inspire it, rest it, defend it, tune it, debug it (or not), balance it, sculpt it and energize it.

Pretty simple, huh? Well, sort of. You don’t have to be a scientist to benefit from this book, but it will be more helpful to you if you identify one or more interventions, investigate them with your healthcare provider, and then, if appropriate, implement them. We aren’t looking for cures for mental disease here, only ideas that, if implemented, may keep your brain healthy, maybe even happy. This book is a guide to help you prevent and/or solve the problem of a screaming brain for your client, your family member, or yourself. It grew out of a lifetime of frustration watching family members and my clients go from crisis to crisis while receiving standard of care treatment.

So-called mental illness is not as black and white as the diagnostic manual indicates. Rather than dividing us into two camps, those with and those without a mental disorder, why not say that we all have varying degrees of brain dysfunction?

When you awaken after a deep sleep and see things on the wall—it is called a hypnagogic episode—you are briefly experiencing what a person who has been given the label schizophrenic may experience throughout his day. When you get stuck on the same thoughts repeatedly, you are experiencing what a person diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder might experience. When you (husband) incredulously ask your wife how she can say she is right when you know you are, you may be experiencing a lack of brain plasticity, just like the person who consistently repeats the same mistakes even though he knows there will be bad outcomes. And yes, lots of people hear voices and they aren’t crazy. They have even formed an international support group, Intervoice. The mental patient who obsesses about the end of the world may simply be experiencing the consequences of similar, albeit more severe, biological processes as the normal person who obsesses about germs and washes his hands a lot. It is all a matter of degree.

With lab tests you either have infections or you don’t. You either have nutritional or enzyme deficiencies or you don’t. You have one or more single-nucleotide polymorphisms—don’t worry, we will get to that later—or you don’t. Similarity of symptoms does not necessarily mean similarity of causes or even the same mental disorder. Lab data can identify specific problems needing to be treated. The lab tests listed in this book in Appendix 1 may reveal biomarkers that can be treated effectively.

The companion book, Beyond Mental Illness, proposes that the term biobehavioral syndrome be used to represent symptoms without a clearly defined cause or causes, and the term disorders to represent known identifiable and treatable biomedical disorders. That book contains some invented names for these disorders. While many people, and particularly mental health professionals, think of a mental disorder as a disease, actually, even as described in the new DSM-5, it is just a term used to describe a syndrome, a list of common symptoms that run together. If we were to keep descriptors like obsessive-compulsive and bipolar, and replace the term disorder with syndrome, perhaps this would encourage healthcare providers to identify and treat the contributing biomedical disorders.

This perspective puts the onus on your healthcare provider to figure out what is wrong and help you to prevent or fix it. In the second decade of the 21st century, healthcare providers follow best practices to relieve symptoms, but these don’t necessarily restore brain health and often have harmful side effects. Using a best practice to treat a mental disorder that is not biologically defined may influence your brain to scream more quietly today, but what about tomorrow?

Multiple biomedical disorders can be identified and treated, thereby reducing symptoms currently given labels by the latest iteration of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the DSM-5. All of this explanation is to let you know that in this book the customary labels will not be used. The bottom line is this: The WAY your brain screams Ouch! is less important than the REASONS why. The way it screams Ouch! is not a diagnosis. The reasons for the screaming are the diagnoses. In this book the generally accepted mental disorder is replaced with syndrome. An example would be obsessive-compulsive syndrome rather than obsessive-compulsive disorder. The implications of the new DSM-5 definition of mental disorders as syndromes have not been incorporated into the DSM-5. The traditional behavior-based mental disorder remains intact. Beyond Mental Illness, and, to an extent, this book supports the revised DSM-5 definition of mental disorder-as-syndrome more than does the DSM-5.

The concept central to both books is simple. When treating biobehavioral syndromes, you fix what you find. But first you have to try to find something. If you are employed in the mental health industry and use the classic labels for mental disorders to fill out an insurance form, you will get paid for doing so. But will you understand what is wrong with your patient? Will you be able to definitively treat their condition, or will you simply ameliorate symptoms with medications? If you define different mental disorders, as the DSM series has for years, you already know that we really don’t know what causes schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Now, I don’t claim to have answered these questions—I’m not sure they can be answered given the limitations of the term mental disorder—but I do know that when the focus shifts to treatable biomarkers associated with underlying biomedical disorders, individualized solutions can be found.

Even if one person’s symptoms look exactly like someone else’s, even if they appear to have the same mental disorder, each person should have their own biomedical diagnoses. Your mechanic doesn’t treat your car’s low engine power disorder. He does whatever is needed, whether it is tuning the engine, replacing a blown head gasket or repairing the carburetor. Proper diagnosis is essential. We should expect no less from our healthcare providers.

This book contains some of the recommendations from Beyond Mental Illness and presents them without going into the scientific details. You might say