The more one reads the scientific and clinical literature, the more one
begins to realise that we really understand very little about the functioning
of the human body and the narrow-spectrum therapies that we sometimes become
fixated upon.
Here, for example, cited below are a few studies which show that water
imbalance characterises certain categories of schizophrenia. Who intuitively
would have thought that certain mental conditions are linked to small changes
of water balance in the human body? How many other subtle types of mental,
neural and biochemical idiosyncrasy are associated with the physical and
mental conditions that one deals with daily?
How did I come upon these references? Pure serendipity! I came upon them
while I was in the process of writing another article for this user group on
the relationship between 'abnormal' mental states and motor function as
revealed by biomechanical assessments with high speed video and force plates.
After my earlier article on the Mind & Performance, I thought back to my
early PhD days when I came upon research relating certain patterns of
movement to various mental states and diseases, so I went in search of my old
files on that topic.
Some of the studies showed that the deviations in balance patterns as
revealed by a patient simply standing on one or two legs on a force plate
differed significantly from those obtained from 'normal' subjects or when the
patient was more in control. I also recalled studies (when I was doing a
Masters in brain research) from the 1960s when LSD and other psychoactive
drugs were being studied as a possible means for controlling certain mental
disorders, by the CIA for mind control and for enhancing human performance.
Some of these studies involved administering these drugs to spiders and
studying the effect on their motor patterns as revealed by the webs which
they spun. Fascinatingly, the drugged spiders spun webs showed profound
disturbance.
So, I reasoned, since mental states are associated with the release and utilis
ation of certain endogenous biochemicals (including neurotransmitters), then
it might be reasonable to postulate that mental states might also
consistently affect the movement patterns of exercising humans and not merely
drugged spiders.
I then hypothesised that, if pathological and drug induced mental states may
reflect themselves in altered patterns of simple and gross movement, then
altered motor patterns and certain injuries may be associated with mental
states, emotions or thoughts. Consequently, the thorough diagnosis and
treatment of injuries would be facilitated by an approach which examines the
interaction between physical and mental factors, between motor acts and
mental acts or visualisations.
Thus, simple muscle testing (especially if passive) without examination of
simple and complex functional motor patterns (e.g., by various biomechanical
methods) and possibly related mental factors would not offer an adequate
approach to the long term resolution of injuries. In other words, physical the
rapy or physiotherapy would have to extend more formally into the realm of
the psychophysical rather than the purely physical.
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Here are the articles that I alluded to earlier:
PSYCHIATRIC STATES & WATER IMBALANCE
Goldman MB A rational approach to disorders of water balance in
psychiatric patients. Hosp Community Psychiatry 1991 May;42(5):488-94
Many mentally ill patients, particularly those with schizophrenia, have
idiopathic or medication-induced disorders of water balance, which include
excessive water intake, excessive water excretion, and impaired water
excretion. Patients with these disorders manifest polydipsia and polyuria
with or without symptomatic hyponatremia (low serum sodium concentration).
Other serious consequences include life-threatening water intoxication.
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Riggs AT et al A review of disorders of water homeostasis in
psychiatric patients. Psychosomatics 1991 Spring;32(2):133-48
Disorders of water homeostasis are common in psychiatric patients and include
compulsive water drinking, the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic
hormone secretion (SIADH), and the syndrome of self-induced water
intoxication (SIWI). Although water intoxication was recognized nearly 70
years ago, the physiological basis of these disorders of water metabolism
still remains elusive. This review will provide a historical overview,
critique current studies on compulsive water drinking and SIWI, discuss
possible etiologies, and present current approaches to treatment of these
disorders.
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Emsley RA et al Disordered water homeostasis and cognitive impairment in
schizophrenia. Biol Psychiatry 1993 Nov 1;34(9):630-3
To investigate a possible association between disordered water homeostasis
and cognitive impairment in schizophrenia, neuropsychological tests were
applied to 16 schizophrenic patients with severely deranged water homeostasis
and to 16 matched schizophrenic controls. The patients with disordered water
homeostasis tended to obtain poorer scores than the controls throughout.....
These results were not ascribable to differences in the duration of the
illness, premorbid IQ, medication, or electroconvulsive therapy received, or
prominence of any particular symptoms. The results suggest the co-existence
of disordered water homeostasis and cognitive impairment in a subset of
schizophrenic patients.
------------------------------------
Mel Siff
Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
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