Olive Leaf Extract for Mental Problems?

Mental illness encompasses a broad spectrum of health problems, from ADHD to mood disorders to depression and many, many more. To that end, there are plenty of drugs that doctors are willing to prescribe that relieve the symptoms of these sorts of mental problems. With the invention of pills to treat these types of diseases, it seems as if the number of diagnoses of these diseases have certainly gone up; it is shocking how many people in America today are on “mood-altering” drugs today than ever before. Those drugs, however are not without their side effects, which can sometimes be worse than the symptoms they are attempting to control.

One must wonder, where have these diseases been in years past? Are these just diseases of the modern age, or are we simply getting better at seeing the signs of these diseases? There is much speculation on all sides, from what we eat, to the array of stimuli people are subjected to on a daily basis, so on and so forth. But what if there was actually more to it than we realized?

Interestingly, there is an article on PubMed documenting the uses of olive leaf extract for the purpose of controlling yeast in patients attempting to recover from mental illnesses. The article, which is titled, “Could yeast infections impair recovery from mental illness? A case study using micronutrients and olive leaf extract for the treatment of ADHD and depression.” When treated with olive leaf extract and probiotics for yeast infections, patients involved responded better to treatment for mental illness with micronutrients. The article surmised that yeast infections in the gut severely impair the efficacy of micronutrients in the treatment of mental diseases such as mood disorders and ADHD. You can read the whole article here

It is interesting to think about yeast somehow playing a role in mental illnesses. What the scientists involved the study may need to ask themselves next is not whether yeast infections impair recovery from mental illness or interfere with the absorption of nutrients used to treat those diseases, but if those yeasts play a role in developing mental illness to begin with. Most doctors and researchers might disregard the notion. Regardless, when the yeast infections were cleared up, patients seemed to show improvement! The connection may be important.

Yeast infections are more likely to occur in the gut following rounds of antibiotic use, when beneficial bacterial cultures are eliminated in the gut. Antibiotics are fungal metabolites, essentially mycotoxins. What if it were, in fact, antibiotics that started the chain reaction that lead towards mental illness? With their wanton use over the past half century, it would be unsurprising that so many people would then go on to develop mental problems, if the subsequent yeast infections they can cause were at fault for initiating the chain reaction.

This is all speculation. It is, however, interesting watch more science come out implicating the role of yeast in a variety of diseases.

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