Toxins Damage The Immature Brain – A Review
The Brain is a highly sensitive collection of tissues about which much is known. However a greater proportion of understanding is yet to be elucidated. One of the areas of interest, especially as the burden of psychological problems continues to grow is in the effects of exogenous toxins on the formation and function of the brain.
The WHO recognises that the burden of mental ill health will continue to grow and may become the second biggest health complaint by 2020. The increasing data sets supporting the role of nutrition and toxicity being either causes or aggravants means that we as nutritional therapists will see an increasing number of patients presenting hungry for specialist knowledge to reduce the burden of their mental ill health.
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A Review of the Foetal Brain Cytokine Imbalance Hypothesis of Schizophrenia
Maternal infection during pregnancy increases the risk of schizophrenia and other brain disorders of neurodevelopmental origin in the offspring. A multitude of infectious agents seem to be involved in this association. Therefore, it has been proposed that factors common to the immune response to a wide variety of bacterial and viral pathogens may be the critical link between prenatal infection and postnatal brain and behavioural pathology.
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The immune system is prone to the same grave misfortunes as any defense system handling weapons: collateral damage that comes with the destruction of the enemy on one’s own territory and friendly fire due to mistaken identity. Whereas the collateral damage is the price we pay for clearance of infections, autoimmunity is a pathological process. Nevertheless, the effector mechanisms involved in both processes are the same. Whether environment can be a cause, a trigger or an amplifier of an autoimmune disease are questions that are being intensively investigated.
