CHAPTER 17

Mental Health

What’s good for the body is good for the brain. With an ongoing mental illness epidemic in the Western world, bone broth could help. The numbers are sobering. One in four American adults now suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder. That’s nearly fifty-eight million people altogether, with twenty-one million adults suffering from depression and other mood disorders, forty million afflicted with anxiety disorders, fifteen million with social phobia, six million with panic disorders, more than two million with obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), and almost eight million with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Add in the millions of adults and children with ADD/ADHD, anger issues, and other behavioral problems who have not been diagnosed, and it’s clear we have a problem of disastrous proportions.

Our ancestors instinctively understood the importance of making broth from bones, cartilage, and skin and not eating muscle meats alone. Muscle meats are high in methionine, a sulfur-based amino acid needed for just about every process in the body and brain. But as discussed in chapter 5, too much of this essential amino acid can lead to excessive methylation in the body, contributing to mental distress and other health problems. The solution is eating muscle meats rich in methionine along with skin, cartilage, and bones rich in proline, glycine, and glutamine. Eating the skin and gnawing on bones will do the trick, and so will sipping old-fashioned broth.

Not enough methylation leads to brittle mental states in which change does not occur easily. Such people may get stuck in their ways until the frustration erupts in sudden bursts of anger or violence. Too much methylation, on the other hand, can lead to the excessive flexibility and malleability found in persons who bend and sway with others’ agendas and fail to effectively shape their own lives. As Chris Masterjohn, PhD, wrote in his article “Meat, Organs, Bones and Skin: Nutrition for Mental Illness,” “Our goal is not to increase methylation or decrease methylation, but to provide our brains with the raw materials they need to regulate the process properly.”

In some mentally ill people, the extremes of rigidity versus flightiness and spaciness may both be present, varying from day to day or even moment to moment. What’s wanted is the right balance of stability and flexibility. While genetics certainly creates predispositions to mental illness, right diet, including broth, can help.

“ Nerve Pain and Depression

My husband has virtually cured his sciatic nerve pain with bone broth. That’s true for him unless he severely abuses his body. I’ve been diagnosed with copper toxicity, candida, and leaky gut. Fermented food has helped, but when I consistently add more bone broth, my energy level and depression improve too. Pills don’t fix the problem, only cover the symptoms. I’ve gone through a lot of stress in my life, and I’m thrilled to say what a difference three to four cups of broth a day have meant for both of us.

—Ann Parker, St. Jacob, Illinois ”

Physicians have recognized the value of broth for mental illness since at least the twelfth century, when Moses Maimonides prescribed it. Although the Egyptian Jewish physician and philosopher is best known for recommending chicken soup for respiratory infections, he also touted it for mental disorders, most notably “melancholy.” In his book On the Causes of Symptoms, Maimonides recommended the meat and broth of hens and roosters to “rectify corrupted humors, especially the black humor” (that is, black bile), an excess of which was thought to cause melancholy. He thought soup from turtledoves was the best for improving memory and intelligence, though the soup from any form of fowl would turn around feeblemindedness or senility. To treat anxiety and frustration, Maimonides was a big fan of schmaltz (rendered animal fat), especially chicken fat.

In traditional Chinese medicine, broth is a key component of many brain therapies. Because it’s thought to nourish the kidneys, it is valued as the building block of bones, cartilage, tendons, ligaments, and also the brain. From the Chinese medical perspective, broth is a yin tonic that both fuels and lubes the body. As explained by Rebecca Schwartz, ND, LAc, “When our yin is replete, we feel like we are a well oiled machine. We also feel like we have plenty of calm energy to draw upon. When yin is low, we feel ‘burned out,’ or running on empty. When we feel like this, we need to replenish ourselves and rest. Winter is a perfect time to nourish our yin.”

To date, most of the scientific research has focused on the amino acids and other fractionated components of broth. One exception is a 2003 study entitled “Effect of taking chicken essence on stress and cognition of human volunteers.” Malaysian researchers from the Hospital Kuala Lumpur tested a condensed broth that contained higher levels of amino acids and other components than would be found in a bowl of homemade chicken soup. The team concluded that this concentrated broth quelled test anxiety because students who consumed it fared “significantly better” than those taking either a placebo or carrageenan. Given that carrageenan is a toxic ingredient that causes gut inflammation and other health risks, it would be good to know how “chicken essence” would fare against a more appropriate control.

“ Mental Health and Clarity

Around 2007, I realized that many traditional people who didn’t use dairy products did bone broth daily, and decided to be more regular in my use of bone broth. I started a weekly ritual of making a large amount of bone broth–based soup each weekend and having it at work five days a week and also on the weekends. There were days in the summer I felt silly, sweating after having my bone broth soup for lunch. Regardless, I kept going with it.

After three months of daily broth, I started noticing a profound sense of strength—mentally and emotionally. What was unusual was that this wasn’t coming from better brain function. It was very clearly a feeling in my abdomen. This continued for about a week, and then over the course of a day I realized that what was becoming clear in my gut was that the relationship I’d been in for almost twenty years wasn’t working and I finally had the courage—the intestinal fortitude? the guts?—to realize it. My partner and I decided to separate, and we are both happier for it. I mentioned this to friends who’d been struggling in their relationships, and they had exactly the same experience after three months. The difference was they found the intestinal fortitude to finally commit to their relationship and save their marriages, which were now happier than they had been for years.

My take on this is that our brains can rationalize all sorts of delusions, but our gut generally speaks the truth. At the very least, a strong gut seems to be necessary for the big choices, the hard decisions with which every life is presented. Without a strong sense of strength in our gut, we’re at risk for poor decisions when courage and clarity are challenged.

—Kevin F., Chicago, Illinois ”

Gelatin and Mental Health

Nathan Gotthoffer, PhD, turned up surprisingly few studies on gelatin and mental health during the eighteen years he spent researching Gelatin in Nutrition and Medicine. The few he found were carried out by his contemporaries in the mid-1930s. They wanted to know whether gelatin could help with the malnutrition, weight loss, and weakness typically found in schizophrenics and other mentally ill patients, not with healing the mental illness itself. In 1935, Isidore Finkelman, MD, announced in the American Journal of Psychiatry that he’d found gelatin helpful for the weight loss that accompanied manic-depressive psychosis and dementia praecox. Dr. W. F. Dutton in Clinical Medicine and Surgery observed gelatin solutions were helpful not only for patients with severe psychoses but run-of-the mill hysterias, hypochondriasis, and neurasthenias. Archie D. Carr, MD, writing for Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, reported attempts “made to feed a solution with large quantities of gelatin” to patients with a variety of mental and physical symptoms, including headache, visual disturbance, convulsions, weakness, fatigue, memory loss, and undesirable mental changes. At the end of the experiments, the “entire picture was so striking” that Dr. Carr decided to continue feeding the gelatin.

“ Return to Health

From about the age of fifteen, I had constantly and consistently experienced deteriorating health. My health history included immune dysfunction, eczema, asthma, and stress, and was exclusively treated with allopathic medicine. This finally resulted in a nervous breakdown and eight to ten years of chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, at eighteen months, my son had developmental and behavioral issues and extreme eczema. It was because of him that I discovered the Weston A. Price Foundation and then the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) diet. I began making bone broths and eating good-quality lard. Our butcher is fantastic, and our beef comes from the pristine pastures of Tasmania (it is not certified organic, but that is quite unnecessary in this part of the world). My health and my son’s health are now pretty much fantastic!

—Sarah N., Melbourne, Australia ”

In the 1930s, Francis Pottenger Jr., MD, found gelatin had a very positive effect on digestion (see chapter 15). Although he didn’t say much about gelatin and mental health, he instinctively understood what is now known as the gut-brain connection and speculated that “better digestion in the presence of gelatin” could “relieve nerve irritation.”

Most of the recent science involves studies of the conditionally essential amino acids glycine and glutamine, two supplements known to relieve stress. Both have been linked to improved alertness, concentration, and energy as well as overall emotional stability and increased feelings of well-being.

Because of glycine’s role in glucose manufacture, people with low levels are more likely to suffer from hypoglycemia, metabolic syndrome, and other blood sugar issues marked by mood swings. Glycine may also help diabetics control blood sugar, bolster immunity, delay the onset and the progression of cataracts, and reduce the severity of other diabetic complications.

Glycine also improves sleep quality by assisting the body in the production and utilization of melatonin. One study even showed that subjects were better rested on 25 percent less sleep over three consecutive nights if dosed with 3 grams of glycine. Subjectively and objectively, people have also attained better sleep quality with the help of glycine than from sleeping pills.

Glutamine and Mood Disorders

Both glycine and glutamine are critical for gut healing. The gut—sometimes called our “second brain”—has more nerve endings than the spine and manufactures more neurotransmitters than the brain. Indeed, 95 percent of our serotonin is manufactured in the gut. With insufficient serotonin, we are more likely to experience insomnia, depression, and other mood disorders, and are targets for serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs like Prozac.

Most inhibitory neurons in the brain and spinal cord use either GABA (gamma amino butyric acid) or glycine as a neurotransmitter. Glutamine plays a key role in the glutamate-GABA-glutamine cycle involving either the release of GABA or glutamate from neurons and the uptake into the star-shaped brain cells known as astrocytes. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that has tranquilizing effects on both the physical and emotional body. The gifts of GABA include calming anxiety, lifting depression, improving overall mood, quieting a chattering mind, and improving sleep quality. It has shown promise for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), high blood pressure reduction, pain relief, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), and seizures.

In 1976, Renato Cocchi, MD, PhD, a neurologist and psychologist, reported “clear anti-depressive properties” for glutamine and clear patient improvement from the “slowed-down motor activity” of endogenous depression up to what he called a “vital level.” Whether glutamine alone or its role in GABA caused this beneficial effect is not known, but Dr. Cocchi has since included glutamine in numerous protocols along with antidepressants and other pharmaceutical drugs.

Not everyone has found glutamine so beneficial. Once glutamine from the diet or supplements gets past the blood-brain barrier, it is converted to either GABA, which has a calming effect, or to glutamate, which is excitatory. Both have important roles in brain function, but glutamate toxicity has become a major problem today because of the widespread use of MSG in processed, packaged, and fast foods. Manufacturers of commercial broths, soups, gelatins, and bouillons almost always ramp up the flavor with added MSG. On top of that, hydrolyzing and many other modern processing methods create MSG-like residues. Sadly, even the glutamine found naturally in homemade broth can cause problems for extremely sensitive individuals. For this reason, Natasha Campbell-McBride, MD, starts autistic children and other sensitive patients on the GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) diet with a lightly cooked meat stock that is low in glutamine (see chapter 6).

Glutamine supplements are widely recommended by alternative medical doctors to help cancer patients heal mouth sores, gut damage, and other adverse effects from chemotherapy and radiation. Far less known is the fact that glutamine can boost the mood of patients. In a study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, patients given bone marrow transplants were tube-fed either the standard total parenteral nutrition (TPN) or the TPN plus 4 grams of glutamine. The ones on glutamine reported greater well-being and less fatigue and manifested far less anger. The researchers stated, “This is one of the first studies to illustrate an improvement in patients’ psychosocial status associated with a nutrition intervention.” Typically glutamine studies have focused on objective outcomes, such as nitrogen balance, wound healing, or muscle strength rather than patients’ more subjective impressions of their quality of life.

Synergistic Effects

Few people will drink enough broth to get anywhere close to 4 grams in a day. But broth is not built of glutamine alone, and the synergistic effect of glycine, glutamine, collagen, and other components in broth should not be discounted. The bottom line is that broth has been helping convalescents feel mentally and physically nourished for thousands of years. With rates of depression, anxiety, paranoia, memory loss, attention deficit and hyperactivity, low self-esteem, and other mental health disorders at an all-time high, it’s time to put old-fashioned broth back on the daily menu.