In the foreign literature of recent years, the influence of nutrition on the propensity to alcoholism. So, in the book of American psychiatrists E. Cheraskin and U. Ringsdorf "Psychodetics. Nutrition as a key to emotional health "A special chapter is devoted to the role of rational nutrition in the prevention and treatment of alcoholism. Let us try to state some of the essential points put forward by these psychiatrists.

Cheraskin and Ringsdorf write: "If we manage to convince many people to feed brain cells with healthy food, mineral salts, vitamins, amino acids, which will help people keep themselves in working order, we will make more mental illnesses (including alcoholism) more Than if we opened another miracle medicine, "wrote sunhome. En.

Organizing a healthy diet and teaching healthy lifestyles should be used as a very effective aid in prevention and especially in the treatment of alcoholism.

Psychological roll during the study of the roots of alcoholism completely ignored the way the patient behaves, neither what he eats nor what biochemical changes he has in the body. Biochemical studies in recent years have shown that uncontrolled drunkenness can often be a consequence of a metabolic disorder that can be treated using dietary therapy.

Dr. Roger Williams in the book "Nutrition against Disease" argues that none of those who adhere to the rules of rational nutrition, has never yet become an alcoholic. The experience of numerous health clubs, wellness run, rhythmic gymnastics and swimming, where "dry law" is mandatory and almost everyone eats healthy food, confirms this. Doctors, of course, know that alcoholics often suffer from malnutrition, but Dr. R. Williams emphasizes that the wrong nutrition of brain cells has so far simply not been considered as one of the significant causes of alcoholism.

Dr. Williams went further than the theory - he, together with his colleagues, put a number of experiments with experimental animals and proved that an erroneous diet can even make rats alcoholics. Rats, in whose food did not have enough nutrients, preferred alcohol to water, and in those cases when missing nutrients were added to food for experimental animals, the habit of consuming alcohol disappeared from them.

A group of researchers from the University of Loma Linda in California duplicated this experiment, causing a passion for alcohol in rats that were kept on a diet high in refined carbohydrates and low in vitamins, mineral salts and proteins. These rats were not subjected to "psychological stress", they were not brought up by "drunk" parents, but they eagerly attacked the drink when they were deprived of healthy food.

For 16 weeks the experiment with thirty experimental rats continued. One group of rats were fed food with a high carbohydrate content, in another group rats were given the same food, but with the addition of vitamins and mineral salts, and in the third group, the experimental animals were on a balanced healthy diet. What are the results of these experiments? Rats that received a lot of carbohydrates, when they were offered a choice of water or a 10 percent solution of ethyl alcohol, drank an average of 50 ml (which is equivalent to 1 liter of whiskey per day per adult). Rats, which in addition to the abundance of carbohydrates added vitamins and mineral salts, drank alcohol three times less, and those experimental animals who received a balanced healthy diet preferred simple water.

Researchers, with the help of diet changes, managed to turn experimental animals from teetotalers into alcoholics. 20% of the animals from the number of rats that consumed large amounts of carbohydrates did not take alcohol for five weeks until sugar was added to the alcohol solution. These rats later became the most inveterate drunkards. When the rats were transferred to a balanced full-fledged diet, they gradually stopped drinking diluted alcohol and became ex-alcoholics.

Dr. Register and his colleagues conducted another study with experimental rats to find out how the typical diet of American schoolchildren works on rats and how it relates to alcohol consumption. Rats received products borderline in terms of nutritional value, and not completely deprived of vitamins. In addition, the experimental animals were offered a choice of pure water or a 10% solution of alcohol. The main diet of rats consisted of glazed donuts, sweet rolls, sausages, Coca-Cola, spaghetti, meatballs, apple pie, chocolate cake, white bread, green beans, lettuce with mayonnaise, sweets, cakes. This "diet", terribly familiar to most parents of Western countries, is borderline in terms of nutrition and has a deficiency of natural proteins, vitamin A, thiamine, riboflavin, nicotinic acid, iron and calcium. This "diet" also lacks vitally important trace elements and other important nutrients in sufficient quantities.

A control diet consisting of vegetables, nuts, pulses, wholemeal flour, vegetable oil, sugar and milk powder, contained an adequate amount of all nutrients in accordance with the norms necessary for the adolescent. The control group of rats consumed diluted alcohol in small doses. And those experimental animals. Who were fed the "borderline" diet, characteristic of modern school children, consumed alcohol in large doses. When they were added coffee or caffeine, the experimental animals became even more addicted to alcohol. Vitamin supplements, on the contrary, greatly reduce the need for alcohol in rats. Thus, the experimenters managed to get rid of drunkenness or, conversely, to strengthen it, changing the diet and vitamin saturation.

Diets offered to experimental animals in this series of experiments may seem normal if you do not know that the abuse of refined carbohydrates (sugar, white bread, buns, sweets, etc.. ) Leads to sharp fluctuations in blood sugar levels, causing so-called functional hypoglycemia (ie, low blood sugar). Disrupted metabolism creates a biological need for alcohol. The pathological metabolism of sugar, which can "smolder" for many years before the problem of alcoholism erupts, occurs, according to experts, from too much insulin, which is secreted by the pancreas in response to the rapid rise of sugar circulating in the blood. This sharp rise is the result of the use of refined sugar and products containing a large amount of refined sugar or other refined carbohydrates (white bread made from flour of higher grades, cakes, pastries and t. Caffeine, contained in medicines, in coffee, in chocolate and soft drinks such as Coca-Cola, also (along with nicotine from tobacco) promotes the development of functional hypoglycemia.

Although alcohol alone does not directly stimulate the release of insulin, large doses are released if the alcohol is supplied after taking refined carbohydrates. In this case there is a strong effect on the pancreas.

Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) causes craving for alcohol, caffeine, nicotine or sweets. Correction of hypoglycemic state brings significant improvement.

The statistics, published in 1972 by the National Institute for the Study of Alcoholism and Abuse of Alcohol, showed that in the US 95 million. Drunkards and about 9 million. Registered alcoholics. Therapeutic treatment mainly focused on psychological factors, drugs, electroshock. Such an important reason, which causes a tendency to alcoholism, as a deficit of a full-fledged healthy diet and a violation of the chemical equilibrium in the body, has been taken very little into consideration. To include a strong-willed impulse and cause the alcoholic to stop drinking, it is often necessary to change the chemical balance in the body not only with medicines, but also with the help of a diet.

It turned out that from the point of view of biochemistry, alcoholics and schizophrenics are twins. In extreme conditions, they have strikingly similar hallucinations, having a similar chemical origin. Both types of patients have abnormal carbohydrate metabolism, hormonal imbalance, nutritional deficiencies, liver dysfunction, allergy to wheat flour products and functional or metabolic disorders in the brain.

With alcoholism, the status of certain vitamins and minerals. Clinicians found that the combination of diet and megavitamin therapy, which successfully helps schizophrenics, turned out to be surprisingly effective in practice for alcoholics.

Thus, studies of the therapeutic properties of nicotinic acid, conducted by Dr. R. Smith, medical director of the Michigan Special School for Youth, found that 86 hard-to-treat alcoholics, when used, received active relief. Doses of niacin (vitamin B3), that is, nicotinic acid, ranged from 4 to 20 g, depending on the need, an average of 6 grams per day, and the dose was divided 4 times - after meals and before bedtime. According to Dr. Smith, his patients in the past for a long time did not respond to treatment, and their medical history included all types of treatment. They were hopeless alcoholics, always sticking out at the doors of the pubs. A comparison of the results of Dr. Smith's treatment and other methods of treatment for alcoholics has shown that megavitamin therapy using vitamin B3 in megadoses is much more effective. Especially when you consider the fact that many of the drugs used in the treatment of alcoholism are toxic and can lead to addiction.

Of the group in 507 patients, only 70 failed to save - they either returned to drinking, or died. The fact that only three had a myocardial infarction showed that nicotinic acid also acts favorably on the heart. Patients suffering from alcoholism for a long time are much more susceptible to heart disease.

The study also involved over 5,000 alcoholics at all stages of the disease, including several hundred teenagers with acute toxin and chronic organic brain damage. These patients, as a result of the treatment with nicotinic acid, improved their health indicators: the sleep became stronger, the level of anxiety decreased, the mood stabilized, their ability to contact others was improved, sometimes memory and ability to adequate judgments became clearer. These patients became more successful in coping with work, and their relations in the family were corrected.

The use of vitamin B3 in therapy also has a positive physical effect: symptoms of withdrawal have decreased, there has been less "dry intoxication" (shivering and sweating due to sobriety), the likelihood of heart attacks and heart rashes, as well as of strokes decreased, cholesterol level decreased and blood pressure decreased.

Dr. Smith emphasizes that his treatment program did not require patients to exert excessive will. They managed to maintain sobriety with little psychological distress. They were able to abandon psychotropic medications and voluntarily avoid risky situations that encouraged increased binge drinking.

Dr. Smith, showing in practice that therapy involving the use of vitamin B3 in megadoses, helps prevent a relapse of alcoholism, believes that this vitamin affects the physiological mechanism of alcohol dependence.

Vitamin B3, judging by the effectiveness of its effects on the body, can be considered as a hormone rather than as a traditional vitamin. In any case, it seems that the use of the vitamin (along with drug therapy and diet) can provide reliable abstinence from alcohol.

It is important to take into account that the purely chemical presence of the vitamin does not ensure its biological activity. Biochemist A. Parsetti found that when cooking food on fire above 54 ° C for any amount of time, the biological activity of the products is lost. It seems that the life-giving elements disappear and only the chemical skeleton remains. That is why natural products containing biologically active substances are preferable: honey, nuts, juices, fruits, vegetables, greens, unrefined grains, etc..

Director of the Mental Health Center in North Nasau D. Hawkins cited additional evidence in support of the megavitamin approach, saying that according to his treatment program based on megavitamin therapy, most alcoholics he treated in 1966. , Now completely cured. During treatment, patients adhered to a hypoglycemic diet in order to correct low blood sugar, and also received 1 g of vitamin B3 (nicotinic acid), 1 g of vitamin C (ascorbic acid), 200 international units of vitamin E. All four times a day, after meals and 50 mg of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) - once a day.

Naturally, having received 71% of successful treatment, Dr. Hawkins had every reason to rejoice. Many of his patients were not only alcoholics, but also suffered from schizophrenia, and almost all of them in the past were treated in clinics, some even for twenty years. Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, used for some patients, were in themselves ineffective.

Several hundred doctors in the US and Canada are using the megavitamin approach in their clinical practice, and various aspects of treatment by this method are being seriously investigated in many countries.

Dr. Frank Butler fed hospitalized alcoholics by injecting into the stomach a probe through which all the known vitamins, basic minerals, proteins dissolved in the nutrient fluid. Dr. Butler found out that an alcoholic whose diet is not complete from the point of view of saturation with essential nutrients is not able to calm his shattered nerves and, in order to raise a dying self-esteem, drinks more and more, while increasing the doses of alcohol his body receives Fewer nutrients, since alcohol contains only one empty calorie.

# Begun-default-css {display: none! Important; } In the clinic, experiments were conducted, the purpose of which was to develop a "sobriety pill", based on a set of vitamins. Carrying out experiments on rats, the researchers found that injections of vitamins B1 and B6 can reduce the time of intoxication, as the level of alcohol in the blood decreases and the body's ability to absorb vitamins.

Swedish doctors have shown that vitamins, which were given before taking alcohol, reduced the person's need for taking alcohol.

The California researcher, Dr. Leonard Goldberg, administered large doses of B vitamins to a group of subjects, and the other, a control group, received a placebo. All subjects received alcohol in sufficient quantities. Those subjects who received B vitamins claimed that they felt less drunk than usual from the same portions of alcohol and they gave higher scores during the witty tests than those who received the placebo.

Since the introduction of nutrients and vitamins in food helps reduce alcoholism, it allows alcoholics who would like to recover, have additional chances for self-help. The combination of the optimal diet and therapeutic doses of vitamins can eliminate the deficiency of vitamins and mineral salts caused by alcohol abuse. Consuming healthy food, an alcoholic or a candidate for alcoholics should exclude foods and medicines containing caffeine: coffee, strong tea, chocolate, coca-and pepsi-cola, caffeinated drugs. These drugs not only increase hypoglycemia, but also increase dependence on alcohol. In addition, nicotine prevents the body from absorbing vitamin C, the deficiency of which delays the recovery of alcoholics.

It should always be remembered that under unusual or psychologically difficult circumstances, when the body falls into a stressful situation, the habits of eating foods, poor vitamins, can increase the propensity to alcoholism.

Dr. Goldberg proposed the simplest rule of a healthy diet: "It's very simple: within a day, no more than 10% of the calories consumed by a person should be empty". If 90% of calories consumed are introduced into the body in the form of "live", natural, not processed by factory and chemical products, the wrong, unhealthy diet will not become a part of life. Such people will not develop a period of "preparation" for excessive consumption of alcohol as a result of an unhealthy lifestyle and nutrition, which is a prerequisite for future alcoholism.

Offering an optimal diet and vitamin megatherapy as a means of preventing and treating alcoholism, psychiatrists Cheraskin and Ringsdorf write: "Anyone who got on the merry-go-round by himself or with drinking companions will hardly believe in our simple means of getting rid of, but the world is always full of skeptics. If you find that alcohol has become a problem in your life, and alcohol plays a more significant role in your life than you would like, you should make sure in practice that what is between you and your emotional well-being is simply the need to change the diet and Add vitamin preparations to your diet, and daily. Over the past ten years, thousands of people began life anew. The fact that there is such a wonderful hope for the treatment of alcoholics should help end the frustration that surrounds alcoholics who are considered "incurable" or who are difficult to cure ".

It remains to list the main products containing active substances in large doses. These include: honey, citrus, cranberries, cranberries, apples, especially antonovka, sea-buckthorn, sauerkraut, fresh and dry greens, onions and garlic. Sea kale contains 39 trace elements. Flower pollen is a whole pantry of vitamins, trace elements and amino acids and is used as an additional remedy for hypovitaminosis in different countries, particularly in France, in psychiatry. Royal jelly (in pharmacies is sold in the form of apilac) - a source of pantothenic acid and an active biostimulator. It should also be called dry brewer's yeast and fithin (rice bran), nuts of all sorts and t. On the recommendation of the doctor in winter, you can connect artificial vitamins: aerovit, Aevit, glutamevit, nicotinamide (vitamin B3), pyridoxine (vitamin B6), ascorbic acid and other vitamins.

Prevention of alcoholism includes several factors that individually may not achieve the desired effect, and together they will play a decisive role. This is a rational diet with a high saturation of vitamins in the form of natural, live foods, vitamin therapy under the strict supervision of a doctor, psychotherapy and mandatory physical activity.