Expert: Jurriaan Plesman, Nutritional Psychotherapist - 10/19/2007

Question
We have the chance to adopt a 1 year old.  Mother was a cocaine user but in a treatment facility entire pregnancy and baby was healthy and not born positive for drugs.  Mother has been diagnosed at one point as schizophrenic (but that diagnosis is not being applied).  Then she was diagnosed as bipolar.  Whether these diagnosis stem from drug use, or she used diagnosis as a way to get assistance is unclear.

Is the baby likely to be bipolar or schizophrenic in your opinion, or do most of the mother's statements seem to be results of long drug use and manipulation of benefits?  Is bipolar something you can diagnosis at age 1?  Any thoughts are appeciated.

Answer
Dear michelle,

One can never ignore the possible genetic predisposition of an adopted child.

For a brief explanation of genetics please read:

Brief Explanation of Genes by Dr Chris Reading at:
http://curezone.com/upload/Newsletter/Hypoglycemic_He/HYPONL2006_12.pdf Go to page 4

It would be difficult to predict whether an adopted child is going to be schizophrenic of bipolar, but genetic influences can be beaten especially in the first ten year of the child's life. One would need to go back to the life of the child's parents and even grand-parents to detect genetic influences with any degree of accuracy.

Early signs are abnormal behaviours in a child, addictions, especially to sugar, and the presence of allergies and food sensitivities. Genetic influences can be beaten by nutritional means in the first ten years of a child's life. Most people with "mental" illness are hypoglycemic, thus if you see signs of this in early childhood, you can beat it by making sure that the child avoid excessive sugar consumption, or their allergies. Perhaps watch out for childhood addictive behaviour. These are treatable illnesses could trigger the more serious mental illnesses in later life. Thus genetics can be beaten starting from early life.

Please have a look of other articles dealing with the nutritional aspects of mood disorders at:

Index of Articles at The Hypoglycemic web site at:
http://www.hypoglycemia.asn.au/i-articles.html

I hope I have been of some help.

_______________________________________________
Jurriaan Plesman BA (Psych) Post Grad Dip Clin Nutr
Editor of
The Hypoglycemic Health Association of Australia.
www.hypoglycemia.asn.au
Author of "Getting off the Hook"
Freely available at Google Book Search