Metabolism and the Brain

[Northerner]

Historically, insulin-shock therapy, also known as insulin coma therapy (ICT), was a form of psychiatric treatment in which patients were injected daily for several weeks or even months with a large dose of insulin in order to induce a coma. After about an hour in the coma, the treatment was ended by the administration of glucose. Originally introduced in 1933 by Austrian-American psychiatrist Manfred Sakel, the method was soon adopted by other psychiatrists in the United States and Europe. ICT was used extensively in the 1940s and ?50s to mitigate psychotic and affective symptoms, primarily in patients with schizophrenia. But the induced hypoglycemia, or pathologically low blood-glucose level, that resulted from ICT made patients extremely restless, sweaty, and, after long courses of treatment, even grossly obese. ICT was also associated with death and brain damage, and there was no scientific explanation for ICT?s often successful mechanism of therapeutic action. As a result, its use was abandoned in the U.S. by 1970. But the experience provides a valuable lesson: an intimate link exists between the brain and the metabolism of sugar?one that has too long been overlooked by the fields of neuroscience and psychiatry.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33338/title/Metabolism-and-the-Brain/