$13 Psychiatry : also the Warburg’s effect

Psychiatry is another great failure of modern medicine. New drugs such as Prozac, to the difference of the older antidepressant, have been widely marketed. Prozac is among the first “blockbusters” and delivered huge profits for the shareholder of Eli Lilly. For the patients, these new and expensive drugs have not changed the course of the disease. Psychoanalysis can help adapt to the difficulties of life. It is of limited efficacy in the treatment of psychosis. In psychiatry, there is also a need for a radical change.

The cause of psychosis remains elusive. We are still to blame the unfortunate parents for the dreadful diseases of their children.

Like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, analysis of the brain at the time of autopsy reveals extensive brain inflammation. For Anorexia Nervosa, Autism, Schizophrenia, there is an infiltrate of the brain by immune cells with an inflammatory reaction (Table 2). The presence of inflammation has led many physicians to believe, rightly or not, in the presence of an infectious agent.

In fact, inflammation always results in the Warburg effect. One cannot test such Warburg effect in the laboratory because we do not have cells, which present the stigma of Schizophrenia or Autism. But we can measure the concentration of lactic acid in the spinal fluid. In every psychiatric disease, there is an increase concentration of lactic acid in the spinal fluid. This lactic acid can also be seen in MRI.

Lactic acid is the key to anxiety

Anxiety is very common. It can be overwhelming and impairs the daily life. During the anxiety crises, there is increased concentration of lactic acid, a stigma of the Warburg effect. To prove that lactic acid is the key to anxiety, researchers in the 1960s injected that molecule in the blood of mice. The mice showed the signs of anxiety.
Pitts Jr, F. N., McClure Jr, J. N. (1967). Lactate metabolism in anxiety neurosis. New England Journal of Medicine, 277(25), 1329-1336.

This is in line with the fact that a decreased oxygenation of the blood (hypoxia) causes anxiety. A crisis of anxiety can be stated when the respiration is superficial, leading to a marked increase in the breathing rate. The respiration is ineffective and the oxygen does not reach the brain in sufficient concentration. The physician asks the patient to calm down. The breathing rate drops and sufficient concentration of oxygen reaches the brain and the anxiety crisis fades away.

 Table 2:

Legend: Every disease has an inflammatory component associated with malfunctioning mitochondria and increased secretion of lactic acid resulting from metabolic rewiring

Schwartz, L., Devin, A., Bouillaud, F., & Henry, M. (2020). Entropy as the Driving Force of Pathogenesis: an Attempt of Diseases Classification Based on the Laws of Physics. Substantia, 4(2)).