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Integrative Psychiatry

Copper, Zinc, Pyroluria and Histamine by Bill Billica, MD

By April 13, 2021March 6th, 2024No Comments

Watch this video as Dr. Bill Billica talks about Copper, Zinc, Pyroluria and Histamine.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Pfeiffer, he was orthomolecular, you know, supply cells with the right nutrients. The big thing is, in a lot of these conditions you need to give it time. You can’t necessarily expect to see an effect in a very short period of time. Although with Kryptopyrroluria, you can. You can see a phenomenal result in a week or less.

Pfeiffer’s the big guy. Again, Princeton Brain Bio center, 20,000 patients, 29 causes. His five main causes:

● Histapenia and high copper he found in 50%
● High histamine, Histadelia and low copper in 20%
● Kryptopyrroles with low zinc, low B6 in 30%.
● And then for the 95% of he also looked at gluten and hypoglycemia – blood sugar issues.

So those five conditions he found in 95% of the patients, of 20,000 patients, and basically working with nutrient based therapies added significant benefit to our improvement and/or recovery in 95%. So it really can be a big support.

Histapenia: Classically have anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations.
High copper, low zinc and low histamine can look the same. You can certainly have copper zinc disorders without a histamine disorder. The classic presentations are these people have anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations and seizures.

Histadelia Treatment or Nutrients
Alright, so other parts of the treatment:
● A lower protein complex carb diet – still not a lot of sugar and refined foods.
● Calcium and magnesium. Use both of those. Magnesium and vitamin C help modulate histamine. Calcium releases the histamine so it can be broken down.
● Inositol. Inositol is great for calming the mind in most of these high histamine people. Inositol helps them get to sleep. But Inositol can also make them tired.

Histadelia Prognosis
These people are driven, want their own control, tend to believe they do not need support.
These people are driven. They want their own control. They don’t tend to think they need support. A lot of the people who relapse in the addiction program are the high histamine ones. They go out. They think they can do it on their own. They think they can control their lives. They don’t need help. And so, after a month or two, they stopped taking the supplements. And then in only a month or two later, they’re back on their drugs and alcohol.

When I sit down with these people at the exit, I’m just reassuring. We’re not trying to make you a couch potato. We’re trying to just help take the edge off so that you don’t have to use the drugs to control your wired mind so that you can sleep so that you don’t need the drugs or alcohol.

Kryptopyrroluria or Pyroluria
Comes and goes with stress on the patient.

We all have Kryptopyrroles in our bodies, all of us.

It is a waste product of making our blood and our hemoglobin. It’s when it gets high that it causes problems. It is an inherited trait. So, this is also genetics. In the general population, it’s found in about 10 to 11% of the population.
In Pfeiffer’s testing, it was 30% of schizophrenics. In the addiction program over the 15 years, we’ve seen it in about 20% of our population.

On taking supplements
Being on supplements, being on medication, being on an antihistamine before doing histamine test and stuff, they can affect it. If somebody is taking a multi or taking them, try and stop them for a couple days.

Again, is that enough?

Most of the people who come in and are doing poorly usually aren’t taking supplements and things so you’ve got a free shot at it.

Sara Reed, MS, LMFT

Sara Reed is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and CEO of Mind’s iHealth Solutions, a digital health company that provides evidence based and culturally responsible mental health services for underserved groups. As a mental health futurist and clinical researcher, Sara examines the ways culture informs the way we diagnose and treat mental illness. Sara’s prior research work includes participation as a study therapist in psychedelic therapy research at Yale University and the University of Connecticut’s Health Center. Sara was the first Black therapist to provide MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in a clinical trial and continues to engage in ongoing advocacy work around health equity in psychedelic medicine.

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Jeffrey Guss, MD is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and researcher with specializations in psychoanalytic therapy and the treatment of substance use disorders. He was Co-Principal Investigator and Director of Psychedelic Therapy Training for the NYU School of Medicine’s study on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of cancer-related existential distress, which was published in Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2016. He currently is a study therapist in the NYU study on Psychedelic-Assisted therapy in the treatment of Alcoholism, a collaborator with Yale University’s study on psychedelic-assisted therapy for Major Depressive Disorder and a study therapist with the MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) study on treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy. 

Dr. Guss is interested in the integration of psychedelic therapies with contemporary psychoanalytic theory and has published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality and Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He has published (with Elizabeth Nielson, PhD) a paper on “the influence of therapists’ first had experience with psychedelics on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy research and therapist training” in The Journal of Psychedelic Studies, August, 2018. He is an Instructor and Mentor with the California Institute of Integral Studies’ Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Supervisor in NYU’s Fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry. 

Dr. Guss maintains a private practice in New York City.

Will Van Derveer, MD

Will Van Derveer, MD is Co-Founder of Integrative Psychiatry Institute and Integrative Psychiatry Centers. Dr. Van Derveer was co-investigator on a phase 2 MAPS study of Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for treatment-resistant PTSD, and co-authored the publication of this study in 2018. He has also provided Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in two MAPS training studies. An active provider of KAP at his clinic in Boulder, CO, he has been teaching others KAP therapy for several years. Dr. Van Derveer contributed a chapter on mescaline in the 2021 "Handbook of Medical Hallucinogens" (edited by Charles Grob and Jim Grigsby). He is co-host of the Higher Practice Podcast.

Dr. Van Derveer regards unresolved emotional trauma as the most significant under-recognized root cause of psychiatric symptoms in integrative psychiatry practice, along with gut issues, hormone imbalances, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and other functional medicine challenges. He is trained in Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and other psychotherapy techniques. His current clinical passion is psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which he mentors interested doctors in providing. An avid meditator, he has been a meditation instructor since 2004.

For the past several years Dr. Van Derveer has taught psychiatrists and other psychiatric providers integrative psychiatry in a number of settings, including course directing the CU psychiatry residents’ course as well as with Scott Shannon and Janet Settle at the Psychiatry MasterClass.


Scott has been a student of consciousness since his honors thesis on that topic at the University of Arizona in the 1970s under the tutelage of Dr. Andrew Weil. Following medical school, Scott studied Jungian therapy and acupuncture while working as a primary care physician in a rural area for four years. Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy became a facet of his practice before this medicine was scheduled in 1985. He then completed a psychiatry residency at Columbia program in New York. Scott studied cross-cultural psychiatry and completed a child/adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the University of New Mexico.

In 2010 he founded Wholeness Center in Fort Collins. This innovative clinic provides cross-disciplinary evaluation and care for all mental health concerns. Scott serves as a site Principal Investigator and therapist for the Phase III trial of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD sponsored by (MAPS). He has also published numerous articles about his research on (CBD) in mental health. Currently, Scott works extensively with psychedelic-assisted-psychotherapy. He lectures all over the world to professional groups interested in a deeper look at mental health issues, safer tools, and a paradigm-shifting perspective about transformative care.

Will Van Derveer, MD is co-founder of Integrative Psychiatry Institute (IPI), along with friend and colleague Keith Kurlander, MA. He co-created IPI as an expression of what he stands for. First, that anyone can heal, and second that we medical providers must embrace our own healing journeys in order to fully command our potency as healers.

Dr. Van Derveer spent the last 20 years innovating and testing a comprehensive approach to addressing psychiatric challenges which transcends the conventional model he learned in medical school at Vanderbilt University and residency at University of Colorado, while deeply engaging his own healing path.

He founded the Integrative Psychiatric Healing Center in in 2001 in Boulder, CO, where he currently practices. Dr. Van Derveer regards unresolved emotional trauma as the most significant root cause of psychiatric symptoms in integrative psychiatry practice, along with gut issues, hormone imbalances, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and other functional medicine challenges. He is trained in Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and other psychotherapy techniques. His current clinical passion is psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which he mentors interested doctors in providing. An avid meditator, he has been a meditation instructor since 2004.

For the past several years Dr. Van Derveer has taught psychiatrists and other psychiatric providers integrative psychiatry in a number of settings, including course directing the CU psychiatry residents’ course as well as with Scott Shannon and Janet Settle at the Psychiatry MasterClass. In addition to his clinical work and teaching, he was co-investigator in 2016 a Phase II randomized clinical trial, sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He continues to support this protocol, now in a Phase III clinical trial under break-through designation by FDA.

Dr. Van Derveer is a diplomate of the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine (ABoIHM) since 2013, and he was board certified in the first wave of diplomates of the new American Board of Integrative Medicine (ABIM) in 2016.