In every case allergies and inflammation are mentioned as re common allergies to certain grains, dairy, soy, latex and other household products. Abram Hoffer coned the term "cerebral allergy" for psychiatric patients that only became symptomatic upon contact with a specific allergen, in one mans case, after a near-fasting diet of fruit juice for a few days regular foods were introduced and the man remained fine, but when gluten was added in the form of a sandwich as wheat was introduced back into the diet, within mere hours the mans wife was calling the psychiatrist on an emergency ases proclaiming the man drunk. The man was fine in a diet of no wheat but because of an allergy to it he presented as schizophrenic "by the book" and indeed symptoms were profound - but fairly short term and easily remediated once their origin were found.

One possible cause of this is a similar food allergy; the inflammation from allergy symptoms is one of the most consistent causes given for these dark circles. Normally the body will make natural anti inflammatory agents but this is rate limited by ascorbate and NAD. Thus, a diet deficient in these nutrients or low serum levels because they're used up very quickly elsewhere in the body for whatever reason; this would be especially true if these two molecules were used up relieving general oxidative stress.

This would account for chronic subclinical pellagra and there is no clear warning between somebody with a minor vitamin deficiency and when it's gone on too long and too far and the often hysterical madness of dementia - one of the three D's characteristic of Pellagra - "Dementia, Dermatitis and Death" can and will manifest.

Abram Hoffer in a 1996 Interview:

"First of all, I pay little attention to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders put out by the American Psychiatric Association. It's an unwieldy, useless system of diagnosis. I suggest that for any kind of psychiatric behavior disorder doctors should follow these guidelines: First, determine if there is any physical disease. Does the patient have diabetes, hypoglycemia, a brain tumor, etc. -- rule out any physical condition. The next thing to tackle is whether there is a major nutritional problem. Is the person deficient, for example, in B(3), B(6), or zinc? Then you look at the family tree for allergy or environmental reactions. A large number of the patients I see are allergic to various foods, particularly wheat, milk, and eggs. I have seen many improve just on a four-day rotation diet. So you look at allergies. Then look to see if they are eating nutritionally sound food.

You use the same approach whether you are dealing with children or adults. I can recall a woman who brought her seven-year-old son to see me. I found him to be normal, and asked her why she brought him. She said, "Well, he was repeatedly diagnosed with infantile autism over the last several years. I heard about the importance of allergy and I asked about this at the clinic where he was being treated." She explained that they'd laughed at her, which annoyed her. So on her own she took him off all wheat and dairy products. And he's now normal. She took him back to the same clinic, and they at least had the grace to apologize to her.

Let's say a child comes to me and he's a very difficult hyperactive child. He has learning problems, the words are inverted when he reads and he doesn't sleep well -- it takes him a long time to get to sleep and he's having nightmares. When I see a child like that, my first question is, are there any allergies? For these children we are often looking at milk and sugar. I've had many kids who improved tremendously just by taking them off dairy products. That's a big group. The second group are those who need extra vitamin B(3) and B(6). That's a large group as well, and these kids respond well to the optimum dose of B(3) -- that's niacinamide or niacin, and also B(6). After that I add vitamin C. It has just recently been found that milk prevents the absorption of zinc, so people who depend heavily on dairy products are going to be zinc deficient. At this stage, I put them on a program based on the 1,500 neurologically disordered children I've seen since 1960. I would say ninety percent of them are well within the first six months.

You can take this same difficult child to ten psychiatrists and come back with ten different diagnoses. But no matter what the diagnosis is, they all put him on Ritalin. Psychiatry is the one branch where the diagnosis means nothing because it doesn't determine treatment.

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How do you determine the specific nutritional deficiencies?


We do that primarily by history and physical examination. And experience helps. We don't get all the information we need from lab work, though at times I use hair analysis or blood tests. Then, we do a therapeutic trial. It's certainly cheaper than running thousands of dollars worth of lab tests.

How do you know, for example, if someone is deficient in zinc?


You can see white spots on the fingernails, and both men and women can have skin stretch marks. Women may have PMS. Acne is common, as well as joint pain and complaints of cold extremities. Wounds may not heal well. Depression or other psychiatric symptoms can be present. A zinc deficiency also distorts the sense of taste. There are several other possible symptoms. Of course one doesn't need to exhibit all of them for a diagnosis.

You mentioned an optimal dose for B vitamins. What does that mean?


I define the optimum dose as the quantity that restores health without causing either unpleasant or dangerous side effects. The optimum dose required to restore health may be too high once the patient has recovered; the maintenance dose will probably be lower. The dose needs to be determined by trial and error, and I describe specifics for optimum doses for each nutrient in some of my books."

Quotes:

"Any food allergy can produce almost every known psychiatric syndrome, from infantile autism and schizophrenia to mood and behavioral disorders."

"As with vitamins and other nutrients, for each mineral there is an optimum requirement. Too little will inhibit many important reactions in the body and too much will be toxic."

"If we do not try to improve the nutrition of our children, not only of children clearly suffering from ADD but also of almost every child in our high tech society, we can look forward to another millennium of chronic illness, perhaps so severe as to threaten the species."

"One cannot compensate for a poor diet by taking huge quantities of supplements."

"I would support the idea that all dairy products be labeled with the warning sign applied to cigarette packages, something like Warning, This Product May be Hazardous to Your Health."

"The decade 1970 to 1980 marked the beginning of the mega-vitamin decade. The following decade saw the introduction of mineral supplements on a larger scale. The 1990s could be called the essential fatty acid decade."

"A double-blind controlled experiment is only a series of anecdotes arranged in a certain way to please purists who know little about clinical medicine. They are usually professors who see no patients, research investigators who are more interested in the Chi Sq test than in individuals, and editors and their committees who are interested only in keeping up to date with what is politically correct...A double-blind controlled experiment is loved by investigators with lots of money and little imagination."

Linus Pauling published the principles in 1968 in Science; only a couple of decades prior he'd identified the mathematics behind the structure of complex biological molecules and here in this paper he's saying it' snot fair to assume everyone's biochemistry is the same and that it's what is should be, for varying small amounts of naturally occurring chemicals in the brain can have a profound physical and mental effect.

"Varying the concentrations of substances normally present in the human body may control mental disease"
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/160/3825/265.short
And although it's used for positive effect, it's ignored or villified by the industry that sells tens of billions of dollars a year to control but not cure a disease that can be thought of as brain scurvy in need of the right vitamin.

Understanding the relationships between food, behavior, and learning ability.
Barbara J. Reed
Chief probation Officer
Municipal Court of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
http://customers.hbci.com/~wenonah/new/basics.htm