Howard Hughes & the Possible Roots to His OCD

Undermethylation, Childhood Experiences, Neurosyphilis, Autoimmunity, Candida, Mold, High Activity at the NMDA Receptor, Head Trauma, Pyrroles, Malnutrition

Thank you for your feedback regarding conditions you’d like to learn more about. One of those was Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Recently, I’ve been reading about Howard Hughes, known to have had OCD, so I thought I’d use his life to share some points.

For those unfamiliar, Howard Hughes was a famous business magnate, aerospace engineer, pilot, and film producer. In his day, he was one of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world.  

If you’ve seen the movie “Aviator,” you know that Hughes's OCD symptoms were severe and progressed over time. Part of this progression was due to his wealth and a staff of assistants.  He insisted they carry out extreme rituals consistent with his contamination fears, such as elaborate hand-washing routines, wearing white gloves, and handing him items inside a specified number of Kleenexes. 

There is a great deal known about Hughes’s life, in part because after his death, a psychological autopsy was requested by his estate to determine his mental health in the last years of his life and to understand its origins. The root cause of his OCD has mainly been attributed to him having an overly protective mother who feared germs. Certainly, we can do better than that.  

What if we looked at his life and illness from a more holistic and root-cause perspective?  In this newsletter, I’ll discuss the potential role of genetics, early life experiences, microbial sources, autoimmunity, disruption to the microbiome, head trauma, addiction, and his ability to pay staff to participate in his illness.

Family

Hughes’s father was also inclined towards mechanics and engineering and was a businessman and inventor.  He died young of heart disease.  Given this vocation and even medical history, I would highly suspect he was undermethylated. 

Hughes’s mother was described as having a quiet demeanor and being excessively fearful of her son catching polio. She, too, sounds undermethylated.  But in her case, it sounds like she also had limbic system dysfunction, which resulted in fears about her only child’s health that she regularly communicated to him. What caused her to have limbic system dysfunction? Was she born with a propensity and wired for danger (as per RCCX theory)? Did she have a history or early trauma that left her feeling unsafe?  Did she have mold toxicity - a common cause of limbic system dysfunction and a toxin that could have even crossed the placenta?  

There are rumors that Hughes’s mother wasn’t his biological mother. This is based on reports that no one saw her showing before his birth, and his birth certificate doesn’t give a place of birth.  It is questioned if a 14-year-old who became a prostitute while trying to flee an alcoholic father was his biological mother. If true, that certainly could have fueled his mother’s fears about his health and well-being. Hughes's mother died at 39 while having minor uterine surgery (for an ectopic pregnancy), never regaining consciousness from anesthesia.  

Like both his parents, Hughes likely came into the world……