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.
-----------------------------------------

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. 
------------------------------------

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.
-----------------------------------------------

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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