What You Can Do About ICDs and OCDs

Both impulse control disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorders are extremely complex and require professional medical (psychiatric) treatment. That doesn't mean that there's nothing that you can do to make dealing with these life-altering conditions easier. In fact, there are many things that individuals and people who live with and care for them can do to make managing these psychiatric conditions easier.

• While there are no nutritional supplements that cure either impulse control disorders or obsessive-compulsive disorders, the antioxidant supplement N-acetylcysteine (NAC) can make managing impulse control disorders easier. Part of the "buzz" in the brain that occurs after an impulsive act is generated by the release of a chemical called glutamate, which travels between neurons. Taking N-acetylcysteine increases the overall amount of glutamate in the brain, and makes it less likely that neurons will release glutamate, so there is less of a brain change after an impulsive behavior. Both cocaine addiction and pathological gambling have been found, in some studies, to be more easily manageable in people who take N-acetylcysteine. Several studies have found that N-acetylcysteine is also helpful in managing obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• Certain foods can make dealing with binge eating, binge drinking, impulsive gambling, and cocaine addiction more difficult. In these problem behaviors, the brain's dopamine receptors tend to be "burned out" or unavailable. Foods that contain dopamine tie up even more receptors so that there is more a compulsion to eat, drink, gamble, or snort cocaine to feel good again. High-dopamine foods include most beans, almonds, blueberries, and spirulina. Avoiding these foods isn't a cure for impulse control disorders, but it can sometimes help. Conversely, eating more of these foods may help in obsessive-compulsive disorders.
• Stressful life events usually activate the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. When this happens in individuals who have impulse control disorders, chemical changes in the brain make it quicker to release the pleasure chemical dopamine. The more stress someone who has an impulse control disorder undergoes, the more relief they get from their problem behavior, such as gambling, compulsive eating, compulsive sex, shopping, talking, lying, mutilating their skin, picking at their skin, or pulling their hair. Stress increases obsessive-compulsive disorders through a different hormonal mechanism, but both kinds of psychological problems are worse during stress. Avoiding stress makes managing these problems easier.

Not everyone who has an impulse control disorder or an obsessive-compulsive disorder responds to stress, life situations, medications, food, and nutrients the same way. What seems to be a miraculous cure for one person may not work at all for someone else, and life histories determine how people will respond to "temptation".

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However, what is sure about all of the disorders on the impulsive-compulsive spectrum is that more that personal character and personal decision making is at work. People who lead unsheltered lives in the "real world" sometimes have genetic predispositions that make it very difficult for them to act in ways that make their lives better. Blaming them for their genetics doesn't help. Assisting them in finding professional treatment and in avoiding actions with especially serious consequences does.