Alternative treatment for mental illness offered at Bloomfield practice

It seems like nearly everyone now takes some sort of prescription medication to manage mental illnesses ranging from depression to anxiety. Data from the Centers for Disease Control finds that 3.4% of American adults have suffered serious psychological distress with the past 30 days. Additionally, medical practitioners log nearly 60 million visits a year from patients with mental disorders as the primary diagnosis. However, popping a pill is not always the solution. A Bloomfield-based medical office offers an alternative approach that focuses on how you nourish your body.

“I don't treat the name of the illness, but treat the underlying cause,” said Eileen Comia, MD, Medical Director of Advance Biomedical Treatment Center, LLC. “In functional medicine, we realize that underlying causes of chronic illnesses are likely from a combination of hundreds, if not thousands of toxins and chemicals we imbibe over time.”

Dr. Comia explains chronic exposure to toxins such as nitrates in bacon or sausage, additives, preservatives and heavy metals affect people by destroying enzymes and blocking metabolic pathways. One example is the DPPIV enzyme which breaks down gluten and dairy, causing the need to remove gluten and dairy from the diet. Dr. Comia advises for those with psychosis, mood swings, insomnia, OCD, ADD and tics, that a gluten- free, dairy -free diet is imperative.

The COMT enzyme is another set of important enzymes that are likely destroyed and mutated in the methylation of neurotransmitters. When the COMT enzyme is disabled, this leads to neurotransmitters not being activated in the gut and therefore you have low levels of taurine, mostly GABA and sometimes serotonin in the brain, which leads to mental instability or illness.

“We are able to test for these neurotransmitters in the urine. So by increasing the good neurotransmitters that are low and decreasing the bad neurotransmitters that are too high, we are able to stabilize a person’s mood no matter what the diagnosis is,” said Dr. Comia. “There are no sets of patterns of neurotransmitter imbalances that are specific to each mental illness, however, most of the time, taurine and GABA are low and glutamate is too high.”

For people with depression, Dr. Comia notes that the single most effective natural way to improve their sadness is to give Methylated B12 injections, a preservative-free and activated form of Vitamin B 12. It is not the same as the regular Vitamin B 12 that most hospitals and doctor's offices offer as these are specially compounded and computed based on patient's body weight. Next to MB12 is zinc, taurine and GABA for depression. There are many other supplements and nutrients that are very effective for mood stability no matter what the diagnosis is, such as omega 3 fatty acids 5 HTP and L THEANINE.

“Important to point out, I always overlap their current prescription medications with our functional medicine approach,” said Dr. Comia. “I will never just discontinue a medication they are currently taking.”

The center treats an array of mental illnesses including Schizophrenia, bipolar, obsessive compulsive, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, insomnia, TIC disorder, ADD and autism spectrum disorder.

Advance Biomedical Treatment Center has great overall success in patients with the exception of those such as vegans and vegetarians, who have low protein diets. For this group, it typically takes a few months to respond substantially to neurotransmitter manipulation. Typically, patients at the center get better in 1 month.

Comment
This piece of news was published on May 3rd 2013 in the newspaper The Simsbury News and was written by Maurice Colgan.
This piece of news starts denouncing the abuse of medication for mental diseases such as depression or anxiety. Eileen Comia, MD, Medical Director of Advance Biomedical Treatment Center, affirms that there are other methods for treating these illnesses, alternative methods. These methods don't treat the illness but they cure the cause of it. There are natural methods that eliminate the toxins that produces these diseases, like depression, and in this way the disease never produces.  

This alternative treatment also avoid the excess of medication which can create a dependence problem in the patient. 

But we can't confuse alternative medicine with real medical treatments. These natural methods are not used alone, they are used as a complement for the medication. As Dr. Comia says, the medication which is taking the patient can't be discontinued for proving these methods. 
This method is not as effective in vegans and vegetarians as it's in people who realise a normal diet. This happens because the diet of these people is low in proteins and it causes mismatches in their bodies.
To sum up, we can say that it's important to make this kind of research because it helps to make us less dependent of medication which can be really toxic.