…by gaining control over your brain’s biochemistry

Dr. William J. Walsh, PhD is the president of the Walsh Research Institute, an organization “dedicated to unraveling the biochemistry of mental disorders and [the] development of improved clinical treatments through scientific research”.  Dr. Walsh received his PhD in Chemical Engineering, but while working as a prison volunteer he was given the opportunity to study the brain chemistry of convicts and violent offenders and, because of the astounding discoveries made, decided to devote the rest of his career to Nutrient Based Psychiatry & Nutritional Medicine.  Dr. Walsh is very influential and highly regarded in his field, and has become a major proponent of treating depression naturally, as well as using Nutritional Therapy to combat many other mental and behavioral disorders.

Around 1965-1975, there was a revolution in mental health happening around the world.  Psychiatry was shifting its focus from a Freudian-based one, which speculated that children were born as a “blank slate” whose behavior and personality were then formed by their experiences and environment, into a paradigm which acknowledged family history, chemical imbalances, neurotransmitters, and the overall molecular biology of the brain as major factors in “bad behavior”, mental illness, #schizophrenia, etc.  Dr. Walsh wondered if this molecular biology could explain much of what was driving the violence and/or mental illness of the convicts that he was working with at the time.  This inquiry led to years upon years of experiments and the accumulation of massive amounts of data, all pointing towards a surprising conclusion… chemical imbalances, and improper levels of trace metals in particular, do indeed account for many of the tendencies of violent criminals and the expression of mental and behavioral disorders.

One example Dr. Walsh gives of a trace metal that has a huge impact on brain function is copper.  Copper is a key factor in the transition of dopamine to norepinephrine, so not having the right amount of copper in your system will lead to unhealthy levels of norepinephrine.  Additionally, it is very important that our bodies have the ability to regulate these levels by flushing excess copper from our system.  Some people do not have these regulatory abilities, and Dr. Walsh was surprised to discover that almost all of the convicts/offenders he was working had copper imbalances… those with who had episodic violent tendencies had very high copper levels, and the sociopathic types had very low copper levels.  This is just one example of the remarkable and pervasive findings of these revolutionary studies.

Additionally surprising was the fact that an entire group of convicts that Dr. Walsh had worked with, when subjected to blood tests in order to assess brain chemistry, returned almost identical results.  All the convicts had Pyrrole Disorder, were dramatically zinc deficient, and all were under methylated (high blood histamine).  Dr. Walsh recalls saying “they’re all the same!” upon receiving results.  This was incredibly surprising news… but also exciting, as these types of imbalances are easily treated with the proper Nutritional Therapy.  These discoveries and more prompted Dr. Walsh to initiate a study of over 500 people, starting with violent offenders and then eventually also taking on children who exhibited violent tendencies.  The treatments were extremely beneficial to the adults, but many would stop compliance after a period of time, thereby negating the positive outcomes.  The children, on the other hand, had extremely high levels of success, with very long-lasting beneficial effects.

One major focus of Dr. Walsh’s is depression.  According to Dr. Walsh, there is a major misconception around depression in the world of Psychiatry.  Depression is usually treated as a “single disorder” whose major foundational factor is low activity in serotonin receptors.  But not all depressions are alike, as Dr. Walsh’s data has shown him.  He points to “five completely different disorders called ‘depression’, only two of which have to do with serotonin”.  It is perfectly logical to conclude that treating depression naturally, thru Nutritional Therapy, could bypass much of the hardship and mishaps which are proliferated by treating each person and each brain as if it were the same… a dangerous approach, as it turns out that undermethylated patients respond very differently to SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, most often prescribed for depression) then overmethylated patients, who respond very poorly.  Dr. Walsh even points to school shooting as one of the devastating offshoots of this type of blanket treatment offered for depression, as 40 out of the 50 school shootings of the past 3 decades have been carried out by young men who had functioned quite normally thru life before being put on SSRI antidepressant medications.  Dr. Walsh speculates that a simple blood test may have helped guide the prescribing physicians towards more appropriate treatment, as it could indicate whether or not a patient was overmethylated and therefore at high risk for adverse effects from the SSRIs.

Dr. Walsh believes that “we’re on the verge of a new era of psychiatry where we’ll be able to fix all these psychiatric problems without foreign molecules.  We’ll be able to normalize the brain, without drugs.  That is the era that is just beginning… and my group is trying to speed that up”.  As a matter of fact, his group at one point studied 700 violent children and adults, treated their specific chemical imbalances thru Nutritional Therapy (thereby “normalizing brain chemistry”) and then published the resulting changes in their violent activity.  91% of the families said that violent episodes had diminished, and 58% reported that violent episodes had completely disappeared.  Astounding results.

Dr. Walsh is very clear in pointing out that he is “not opposed to drugs… psychiatric medications have helped millions of people.  It was the best they had for the last 50 years… but now we’re learning how to do things better and without side effects … normalizing the brain instead of putting powerful foreign molecules into the brain.  As science advances, the need for psychiatric drugs will fade away”.

Second Opinion Physician agrees! And we believe that need for drugs is already fading.  SOP is trained in the Walsh Protocol and can advise patients on ways to use Nutritional Therapy and Supplements to combat mental and behavioral disorders, including highly effective ways of treating depression naturally.