What is the Walsh Protocol? To summarize, it’s a nutritional approach to treating mental illness. A Walsh Protocol Practitioner can prescribe vitamins and minerals to rebalance the body’s nutrients. Around 75% of cases show symptom improvement in anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, OCD, ADD/ADHD, and behavior issues without medication. Dr. Walsh describes five basic subtypes that cause mental illness. The subtypes do not map directly to a diagnosis, though some have more prevalent connections than others. What do I mean? If one is undermethylated, one does not automatically have depression. In fact, many undermethylators need no treatment at all. And if you have depression, that does not mean you’re an undermethylated. Below I describe the different subtypes and how they can present.
Pyrrole Disorder or Pyroluria: What is pyroluria? We aren’t really sure. But it’s a sign of oxidative stress and inflammation that can cause many problems in the body. Biochemically, patients are functionally low in zinc and Vitamin B-6. This means their blood levels of both may be normal but they are unavailable for use in the body. Symptoms may include light or sound sensitivity, explosive tempers, frequent infections, poor dream recall, and a tendency to stay up late. Or this could present as learning issues or behavioral disturbances. Pyroluria patients generally respond really well to the treatment for symptom relief. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily remove the reason why it’s there in the first place.
Methylation is a process that the body uses to send messages within and between cells. Some people are undermethylated while others are overmethylated. Symptoms can be mental, emotional, or physical but not everyone who is undermethylated needs treatment. I have had patients who had symptoms that came from other imbalances though they were undermethylated. I have had patients with no mental illness but allergies. Treating the undermethylation helped resolve the allergies without side effects. This is why an experienced practiioner can help.
Other times, mental or emotional imbalances come from a copper/zinc imbalance. One is copper overload and is probably more common than originally thought. People with this imbalance may have issues with hormone imbalances and issues with pain. They can have difficulty with anger management, get a lot of headaches, and have the peculiar trait of their skin turning black or green when wearing cheap metals. For women, a clue that copper overload is an issue is that they felt awful except when they were pregnant. The developing fetus takes most of the copper through the placenta (but not breast milk.)
Finally, many people have mental illness simply from having low zinc. This may mimic the problems of copper overload and/or pyroluria but really comes from a deficiency of zinc rather than an excess of copper.
This is a basic overview of the Walsh Protocol. If you want to learn more, start by listening to my podcast about the Walsh Protocol too. To learn more about scheduling with Dr. Gil, a Walsh Protocol Practitioner, click here. Dr. Gil has over 15 years experience using the Walsh Protocol and has attended multiple trainings, including the advanced training.
