Sometimes our brains are on acid—literally. A main source of these temporary surges is the carbon dioxide that is constantly released as the brain breaks down sugar to generate energy, which subsequently turns into acid.
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[A] growing body of work has suggested that for some people, even slight changes in this balance may be linked with certain psychiatric conditions including panic disorders. New findings this month provide additional evidence that such links are real—and suggest they may extend to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.…
Tsuyoshi Miyakawa, a neuroscientist at Fujita Health University in Japan and his colleagues recently decided to scour the 10 existing datasets from post-mortem brains of over 400 patients with either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
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These findings, published in Neuropsychopharmacology this month, collectively provide the most convincing evidence to date that the link between brain acidity and psychiatric disorders is real, Miyakawa says.
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Even as it becomes clearer that brain acidity may be a key characteristic of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, whether it is a cause or an effect remains an open question. According to Miyakawa, one possibility is that the increased acidity results from higher-than-normal neuronal activity in the brains of people with these disorders.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Are Some Psychiatric Disorders a pH Problem?
