Mental and Neurological Disorders 105
calcium, and manganese. Magnesium and vitamin B 6 have a calming
effect on the agitated brain, but magnesium has an importance of its
own. This was pointed out by the French scientist M. L. Robinet in the
Bulletin of the Academy of Medicine originally published in France back
in 1934.^3 He found that more people commit suicide in regions where
the magnesium content of the soil is low. But it’s not only the lack of
minerals in the foods grown in mineral-defi cient soil that is responsible
for the low magnesium levels in the bodies of those with mental
disorders.
Excessive amounts of stress hormones circulating in the blood of
emotionally disturbed people deplete blood magnesium levels. But
when magnesium and/or other nutrients are supplied in large enough
quantities—provided energy levels in the brain are suffi cient—symp-
toms of mental disorder can disappear. Magnesium in combination
with B 6 is effective in alleviating learning disabilities and emotional
disorders in children. Megadoses of niacin (vitamin B 3 ) cures pellagra,
a vitamin B 3 defi ciency disease that causes such symptoms as paranoia
and hallucinations, as well as elevated blood levels of porphyrins. The
latter is found in the blood of schizophrenics. In 1956, Dr. J. McDonald
Holmes wrote in the British Medical Journal about a number of studies
that showed that individuals who have a defi ciency of vitamin B 12 suffer
memory loss, hallucination, paranoia, and epilepsy—until they receive
injections of B 12.^4 The B vitamins are vital to brain function because
the myelin sheathing covering the neurons in the brain contains greater
concentrations of B vitamins than any other tissue in the body.
Dr. Abram Hoffer, a pioneer in the holistic treatment of mental dis-
orders, was successful in curing schizophrenia with vitamins B 3 , B 6 , B 12 ,
and C.^5 The effectiveness of these B vitamins stems from their ability
to eliminate porphyrins, the alien chemical that causes hallucinations,
paranoia, and delusions in schizophrenics. Hoffer typically starts out
adults with schizophrenia and/or severe depression on 3 g of B 3 in the
form of niacin and an equal amount of vitamin C and goes up depend-
ing on need to as high as 22 g of niacin. Beyond that amount, he stated
there was no improvement. No sooner did he make that statement than
he met a woman with schizophrenia who couldn’t eliminate her symp-
toms until she took 60 g of vitamin B 3 a day and an unspecifi ed amount
of vitamin C. In individuals with long-standing cases of schizophrenia