Re: Webroot founder missing

["Michael Simpson" <mikie.simpson () gmail com>]

On 7/13/08, Alex Eckelberry <AlexE () sunbelt-software com> wrote:
> Interesting, I didn't know that Omega 3 was useful for the treatment of
> mental illness.  I had known about Dr. Hoffer's fascinating work with
> Linus Pauling on using B-vitamins to successfully treat mental illness
> (example: http://robwipond.com/?p=21).  It's a field that in my view,
> has been largely ignored by the medical profession in favor of more
> profitable alternatives.

If i had a penny for each time that doctors are ignoring something for
profit i'd be so rich that i wouldn't need to work anymore and could
spend my days lurking on irc and building rpms for CentOS rather than
trying to stop drug and alcohol addicted patients from hurting
themselves and others.


Evidence for omega 3 comes from 2 areas of hardish research:

1) reduced levels of recidivism in a study done in an american jail
2) increased dendritic connections at autopsy in people with MND who
were taking omega3

So might work, might not, worth a try, really needs a decent trial
(large multicentre placebo controlled randomised double blind yadda
yadda).

B-vitamins treating "mental illness"

It is true that if you are chronically starved of b vitamins then bad
things happen (cf Korsakoff's psychosis) so if you are then get some b
vits into you.

However
suggesting that someone who is having a psychotic break should take
supplements is about as useful as loosening someone's tie when they
are having a heart attack - nice idea but what you really need is a
cardiologist messing about in your coronary arteries or a nice big
dose of thrombolytic in the case of the MI or a nice big whack of
antipsychotic medication and a place of safety in the case of the
psychotic break.

Pharma companies tend to be profit oreintated to an unhealthy amount
but clinicians tend to work on evidence based practice as part of
clinical governance that we are meant to follow.

I my self tend to err towards exercise and CBT as treatments for
affective disorder without psychotic symptoms rather than prescribing
antidepressants but i will not f*ck about when a patient has psychotic
symptoms as that is when people die.

Please remember about placebo effect when reading of wonder cures that
the medical profession are ignoring and look at the evidence. I
promise not to trust home-brewed secret "encryption" that haven't been
published, peer-reviewed and tested if you promise not to do the same
with medical treatments.

This nice lady has written some really good books on how to weigh up
medical evidence.

<http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/315/7103/305>

<http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Read-Paper-Evidence-Based-EvidenceBased/dp/1405139765/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216035831&sr=1-1>

It always amazes me how IT is mirroring the development of medicine
over centuries in the space of a few years.

If it looks like snake oil and smells like snake oil then it prolly is
snake oil.

mike
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