1. ARI
Now I am speaking with Dr. Bill Walsh, who is the author of nutrient power and also the founder
of Walsh research institute. Dr. Walsh, thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
BILL
Good morning.
ARI
So first of all, tell everyone what nutrient power is, how did the book come about and what is
your area of study from the most part?
BILL
Well my area of study basically is brain science and how to help people with problems like
depression and anxiety and severe mental illness, using the natural methods especially nutrients.
ARI
One of the things that I found really fascinating about when I heard the interview you did, it was
talking about basically criminals and stuffs and you didn’t believe that they are really like a bad
seed.
BILL
Well that’s true, these all began for me like 35years ago when I was working as a scientist that
has a national laboratory, I became a prison volunteer and I actually started up a next offender
program, trying to reduce crime and violence in a small way by helping prisoners readjust back
to the society, I got to know a lot of criminals and I got to know their background and I
eventually came to find out that they were quite different from the rest of the population and
talking to their families, the parents, I found out that most of them said they knew there was
something wrong with this child by the time they were three years old and so we started a sort of
do-gooder prison volunteer effort and we had up to 125 volunteers at one time and we sort of
move into science and we started studying death row criminals, and we started studying ex-convicts
and violent children trying to see if they were different bio-chemically, whether they
had differences in their body chemistry or brain chemistry.
So that’s how it all began and its now 35 years later and it actually led to quite a bit, we have
now got a proposal for reducing crime and violence in the USA and I think it's something that
would work if only we could get everybody to do it.
2. ARI
What are the things you have obviously found very different from the person with how you treat
those deficiencies I guess.
BILL
Well deficiencies but also overloads, we found that overloaded in nutrients could cause mischiefs
than deficiencies, but yes, what we need to do is to identify what the person's basic chemistry is
and find out where nutrient levels that have gone wrong and especially those that have a lot to do
with neurotransmitters and brain function and then simply to a medical procedure, then to adjust
the normalizing these levels and we've had great success especially with behavior and depression
and anxiety and even with autism and schizophrenia.
ARI
Okay so now, and first of all, how do you test them for these deficiencies or overloads?
BILL
Well even though there are more than 300 important nutrients in the body, we have learnt that
there are only about six or seven that have a really direct important effect on brain function and
mental health and so we have to do specialized lab test, blood and urine tests to identify what a
person and individual chemistry is, so think of a violent child and we worked with really about
10,000 of them over the years, my own children are adults, most of them have pretty striking
abnormalities in biochemical nutrition, that have a lot to do with their ability to control the
behavior.
ARI
So can you talk about what those are, the primary six?
BILL
Well probably number one is an unusual case if we don't find length deficiency in a person with
a behavior problem and many of them have trap overload or trap deficiency, sociopaths for
example, those with antisocial personality disorder and almost all of them are very low on
copper, where people with what psychiatry called intermittent explosive disorder, people who
have a wild temper and they tend to have extremely high copper levels and so it's a matter of
finding out who a person is biochemically and then just normalizing the chemistry and
normalizing the brain function.
3. ARI
Okay, that’s really interesting about zinc and the copper particularly, so now do you see certain
populations for instance, I am just curious how somebody will get a copper overload, you know
is it parts of the country for instance, or personally where people get a lot of copper in their diet
or is anything you are seeing?
BILL
Well copper basically is so important to mental health, that there is homeostatic control of the
body which means the body has a system for normalizing at no matter what, so even if you chew
on copper bars your blood levels will be normal if that systems is working, but that works for
certain people and of the genetic issue usually, some people are born without the ability to
normalize copper and silver levels can get all sky high or very low and disaster can result from
that, but if I can I like to mention this, not just metal metabolism but also there are methylation
disorders that are important, people can be under methylated or over methylated, they might have
payroll disorders, B6 deficiency is another deficiency that we see really often in troubled people
and B6 has everything to do or a very major part in the synthesis of neurotransmitters especially
serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, so if a person has a major chemical imbalance in one of
these key nutrients that have to do with brain function, they are going to have a problem and
many of them do and the good news is most of them improve beautifully once we normalize
their chemistry.
ARI
I mean to say this is amazing, so now but again, if you see somebody with an overload of copper
for instance, they're not processing copper properly, what is the dietary change are you doing see
relation or was it is the dietary or nutrient therapy for that?
BILL
Well actually there is a protein that is genetically expressed called Mattel finding that regulates,
that supposed to be regulating copper and stimulate it and really by zinc, so a person with
overloaded copper, for one thing, we have to keep them away from sources of copper, I mean we
want to make sure they don't get exposed to copper, these people would get worse if they took
multiple vitamins with copper for example, these people, but usually just by normalizing zinc
levels, that gets your genetic expression of this protein normalizing broken going and it takes
about 60 days to do that and yes we have to make sure that they don't get expose, for example
swimming pools are loaded, most of them are loaded with copper sulfate to kill the algae, well
people with this problem needs to avoid those pools and they need to avoid foods that have, that
are really high in copper, some people who have this problem might be allergic to shellfish for
example because that is really high in copper.
4. ARI
Obviously this is not just like an allergy of course, because it's a totally separate pathway that we
are talking about there, they're simply not producing or they are not activating the protein to
break these foods them correctly, these nutrients right?
BILL
That's right and most people are born with either the ability or the inability to manage this and so
it's something that I would say it's a problem which some people are born within, the good news
is that its correctible.
ARI
Right okay, do you see similar pathways that are leading to violent behavior as are leading to
depression and anxiety was like opposite in the back of the spectrum?
BILL
I just got back from the American psychiatric Association annual meeting and I was invited to
give a talk on depression and basically the psychiatric world unfortunately still have a
misconception about the pressure, they think about depression as a single disorder involving low
serotonin activity and throughout the world, if a person has depression, they are probably going
to give Prozac or pack for one of these SSRI antidepressants, but I got probably the world's
biggest chemistry database for depression and over more than 3200 cases and what we learned
was that, depression is an umbrella term that is used to describe completely different disorders
and there are and so I reported that the APA to the psychiatrist there, was that, really they need to
identify what type of depression a person has, there are at least five completely different bio
types of depression and each one needs a different therapy, because there's different
neurotransmitter abnormalities involved, one of these types of depression are 20% of them
actually are people who get dramatically worse if they take an antidepressant drug and so I urge
psychiatrist to do simple inexpensive blood tests to determine who would be a good candidate or
a robust avoid SSRI antidepressants.
ARI
Yeah I mean I actually know I'm a friend who’s brother they believe died of serotonin syndrome
actually after being put on antidepressants, so it's really interesting to see that breakdown and the
fact is, I was recently at a conference in Dr. Daniel Amen was there and he's written about other
seven different types of ADD and it is a very similar thing too, if you prescribe certain things to
somebody with certain type of ADD, it is going to make it worse.
5. BILL
That’s correct, Daniel Amen is someone who I have connected with over the years and he
focuses on brain scan and structural differences in people with disorders, but yeah you have to
find out what a person specific biochemistry is and a person with depression might have any of
you know one of five completely different disorders and so you have to find out what their
biochemical individuality is and that’s the key to all of this.
ARI
Is there a similar breakdown when it comes to anxiety, because I hear a really elegant description
actually today about the difference in depression and anxiety, which is the depression, is a
basement obsession with the past and anxiety is obsession with the future, do you see a
breakdown of anxiety to that way?
BILL
That’s actually an interesting way to try to describe anxiety and depression and their differences,
but there is really a wide variety of types of anxiety, for example: People with under methylation
have extreme internal anxiety behind the tummy exterior and nobody can see it, whereas there
are other forms of anxiety where everybody can tell it if somebody is anxious, we all have seen
people who are just still wired and very anxious and in one case, low serotonin activity can cause
the first kind of depression I mentioned, high internal anxiety that most other people can see, but
most people with the opposite kind of bio-chemistry with extraordinarily high norepinephrine
levels and high serotonin levels, they may have a different form of anxiety, but most of it is
based on unique biochemistry and body chemistry and yes there are drugs that can assist some
people, over using the side effects, but we are finding that nutrient therapy if done carefully and
scientifically can very often correct the problem without having to use a drug.
ARI
And so your info on using therapy is more typically in the form of supplements or foods or both?
BILL
Well we would rather do with food, if we could, but the person, but the probability is about that
easily so profound that you could need that much food and so we have to do it with supplements,
for example: We have a lot of patients who might be taken as much as 75 or 100 mg of zinc a
day, whereas most people don't need zinc at all because they get enough from their diet, but if the
person has a tendency for zinc deficiency, we can normalizing the supplements and the same is
true whether to a methylation disorder or prior disorder, some people have mal-absorption, with
them are glucose control, but basically it's a medical procedure, the way to do this right is to go
6. to a doctor who has experience of this kind of work, knows how to do the testing, evaluates the
results and then put you on a supplement program that will normalize your chemistry.
ARI
So now I want to back up to the different kinds of depression, the treatment action, because one
of the things that I have heard you talk about before and also was the sort of prevalence of either
the person is being prescribed as teenage boys actually have side effect of suicidal thoughts
which is unbelievable to actually listen as a side effect, but you have talked about that as well.
BILL
Yeah I do and I said 20% of people are totally battling depression, 20% of all people with
depression, thousands that we have seen have this you might call a serotonin syndrome, but
basically they get worse if their serotonin level is increased, research on activity and there have
been 50 major school shootings over the last 20 years and having study that and meticulously
this, what we find is that these people are different, they are not like other behavior disordered
people, I have seen, I've worked on more than 10,000 cases of people with violent behavior and
most of them are having problems by the time they are 4, 5, 6 years old , the school shooters
were different, they're just different and what typically happens when more than 45 of the 50
cases, these are kids who did not have problems in their formative years, they did not have
violent problems, they didn’t show any behavior disorder, but around the age of 14, 15 or 16,
they developed anxiety usually with some depression, they were diagnosed with depression, they
were given SSRI antidepressants and unfortunately these are people who are intolerant to them I
believe and so they develop homicidal ideation and suicidal ideation and disaster happened and
everyone knows that the possibility is anybody who were bought Prozac or given a prescription
for an antidepressant, you get an insert that warns you saying that in some cases it can cause
suicidal ideation or homicidal ideation and especially with teenage boys and so like what I
propose to the APA doctors, to the psychiatrist was that they'd never give an antidepressant to a
teenage boy, unless you first do some inexpensive lab work to find out whether they are
intolerant to it. I think that’s the answer to school shooting, it’s going to take forever to ever get
rid of the guns, because we have close to 300 million of them and trying to identify people with
mental problems who should not have a gun, I don’t think that’s going to work, it would take
forever and probably couldn't really be done efficiently, but I think this is a simple solution for it.
ARI
In a way that is very profound, it’s also kind of scary to think that that's been happening, so for
some people then it sounds like possibly multivitamins could have really bad effects as well.
7. BILL
Exactly, you are right, you can't do a one-size-fits-all and because nutrient overloads can cause
more mischief than deficiencies, if you just stuff a person full of vitamins, minerals and amino
acid, you might be making them a lot worse, for example: If a person has an iron overload or
copper overload or assert over methylated, there's a number of nutrients that is in excess can
really mess up your brain function and cause all kinds of disorders.
ARI
Now how quickly do you see results from the therapeutic interventions that you have been
trying?
BILL
Depends on the imbalance of a person who have a payroll disorder, people usually get better
within a week and especially if they have behavior problems, we've had many violent children
who just transformed quickly to the amazement of their families, however if they have a metal
metabolism disorder, metal metabolism, they usually start getting better by a week, three and the
job is done around after six or eight weeks. A methylation disorders are more difficult and
slower response and very often takes three or four months to normalize a methylation disorder.
ARI
Okay, so and what is a payroll disorder, if you can just summarize that for people?
BILL
Payroll disorder is something that most people have never heard of and however its getting more
and more press lately, because so many people have this, it is a genetic disorder that have to do
with the biochemistry something going wrong in your spleen and in your bone marrow and now
everybody has some payrolls, payroll is a complicated molecule which everybody has in their
body, it's a chemical that is a byproduct of important reactions like when your body makes
hemoglobin it might be A+ B makes hemoglobin plus payrolls, for you that’s a simple example,
but payrolls have no real purpose in the body, so if just cleared out of the body and we all have
some of it, we know the normal level of it, but some people because of a genetic problem might
have 10 or 15 times too many payrolls and what they do is they strip D6 and zinc out of your
bloodstream and that can cause extreme mental and physical problems and that’s the payroll
disorder events president about 10% of human beings and people with schizophrenia for
example, it's around 30%, we now know that autistics is around 35 to 40% in autism, depression
from 18%, so there's different is fairly high incidence in a lot of mental disorders.
8. ARI
I mean yeah, it’s incredible, it's really incredible, like nowadays what is your focus on really, are
you focusing on treating, I know you are doing a lot of research, what's in focus in your work
right now?
BILL
Well we are doing research and were focusing on epigenetic which is a new extraordinarily
exciting science, really told a lot about how to help people with these problems and how to
regulate neurotransmission, but my main focus now is in training doctors, when I left the APA, I
was deluged with a number of psychiatrist who heard by though, they want to know how to do
this, next month in October in Illinois, my group will be training 46 doctors, including more than
dozen psychiatrist and training them how to do these blood tests and how to normalize chemistry
with nutrients, now nutrients work in harmony with drugs, they work in harmony with
counseling which is you’re really convenient and we often have people who do both together, but
training doctors is something we have been doing for 15 years, we've trained doctors in
Australia, in Norway, we were international training program for physicians to learn how to do
these kinds of therapies, basically natural therapies, how to help people with brain disorders
which might be as simple as a person who has a big temper, obsessive-compulsive disorder,
anxiety depression and schizophrenia and how to do it, how to how to help people by balancing
their brain chemicals without using drugs and it works really nicely together with drugs. For
example: Schizophrenia, we are scientist not advanced to the point where we can do it
completely with nutrients, so what we do is we insist they stay on some level of medication and
do our treatment and do both treatments together and many of these people can get their
medication level so low that they don't have side effects, and that’s not a bad way for them to go
through life if they can become okay again.
ARI
And of course that make sense to me too, because there are so many factors that can affect
nutrients in your body other than what you're eating, your environment, toxics in your
environment, even traumatic experiences, all that stuffs can affect how your brain's processing,
and how your body's processing, so I would assume that in the modern world there is got to be in
a lot of cases a limit to what you can do with natural stuffs. So that's great though, because if you
can work in a symbiotic relationship and it's when I'm dealing with people who have Crone's
disease, I always tell them it’s like, if you can do your diet yourself, it’s not going to affect the
medicines that you are taking on your own time if you want, you can decide to try to lower the
medicine and lets just see what happens, but I think that it's really good that you're not out there
saying like, oh don't take any medicines, like just do it the natural way.
9. BILL
Actually antidepressant SSRIs that help millions of people, I have had hundreds of people tell me
that antidepressants help them greatly in a few cases save their lives, so it's just that I think
there's a better way to do this and as brain sciences advances, we are learning how to fix these
problems without having to resort to a drug and I'm convinced this as brain science advances, the
need for psychiatric medications is going to fade away and we will learn how to normalize the
brain without using foreign molecules, not putting foreign molecules in the brain that we have
had to normalize the brain without doing that.
ARI
I like that label foreign molecules, so thank you for all these amazing information. So the last
question I always like to ask on this interview is, what would you say is your top three pieces of
advice for people who want to be more effective in whatever they are doing, anything that you
can give us, three piece of advice?
BILL
First of all, I think people need to have a really healthy high-quality diet, nutrient dense foods,
they need to make sure they exercise their bodies and also exercise their brain, especially as they
get older and I think if they have a problem that have to do with their brain function, whether it's
memory or it’s a temper problem or depression or anxiety, I think they need to learn what their
basic biochemistry is, I would recommend they would go to a doctor specialist position who can
identify what might've gone wrong and correct that in a natural fashion.
ARI
Can you just at one point, can you say if you're going to your doctor, what test would you ask
for?
BILL
Well, it would have to be a doctor that knows how to interpret these tests, but it would include, I
would want to do a payroll test, I would want to do plasmid zinc serum, copper serum, I just
want to study my methylation and that can be done with a couple of methylation test that can
determine whether a person is over methylated or under methylated, we are now learning that
have so much to do with human functioning especially with the advances in the field of
epigenetics, which is dominated by methylation, I think that there is a lot can be studied about a
human being, but really you have to find out who you are, who you are biochemically and also it
helps socializing with people to recognize the people are intrinsically different, some people say
why can’t I be like we are wired like that and most people can’t help it, they act out who they
are, if they have a bad temper, even obsessive-compulsive disorder, some people are narcissistic
10. in this biochemically and don’t choose to be selfish the biochemistry and a lot of things can be
corrected.
ARI
I think I cut u off at two, so you have a third one.
BILL
I thought I did three, diet exercise for the body and brain and the third was to try to identify
biologically if you have a problem.
ARI
Wonderful.
BILL
I can give you five or six if you want.
ARI
That's wonderful so the best place for; we are going to put all these links across, what’s the best
place for people to find out more about the work you're doing and of course we will look to the
book, but what's your best website?
BILL
The website is www.walshinstitute.org we are public charity, we are very dedicated group and
we have a lot of information there and that would give you a link to a lot of other websites and
other information, you would see a lot of lectures, a lot of information, but I wrote this book,
Nutrient Power couple of years ago and it's been a bestseller on amazon at times and really the
title Nutrient Power, I slipped at that carefully, because I think that's what doctors and scientists
in the population needs some knowledge that nutrients that have great power at helping people is
stunned very scientifically interpolate and the impact of the nutrients on brain function is
massive and it’s just about learning how to do it and so the book Nutrient Power is something I
wrote both for scientists, but also for the general public, I tried to write it in such a way that
scientists and medical people would be interested in it, but also that the general public can read it
and learn a lot from it too.
11. ARI
It is a really good book and it's not a difficult read, so I have to recommend everybody to check it
out and Dr. Walsh, thank you so much for your time, this has been really amazing and I really
appreciate that.
BILL
Thank you Ari