schizophrenia as a neurodegenerative disease...

Well..I don't know anything about neurology. But I was reading about neurodegenarative diseases, and their symptoms. And well, you lose brain cells at an accelerated speed. And in schizophrenia, my doctor said, I don't know if she was simplifying it too much, she said you lose brain cells, you have sort of a "shrinking brain". Doesn't it make sense then for schizophrenia to be categorized and treated as an accelerated aging disease then? Just my theory.

I wouldn't say that schizophrenia causes accelerated aging. I would say that it contributes to it, because aging is primarily caused by dying cells especially in the vital organs. If you die of old age, it most likely means that one of the organs failed. It doesn't have to be the brain.

If you could prevent this degeneration (by replacing your organs), you could live forever. Of course, replacing the brain is quite difficult.

Neurogenesis can prevent your brain from degenerating too quickly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis

There are scientific studies that show meditation, when done over many years, can actually change brain structure. Maybe meditation would be an effective method to slow or even reverse this degeneration. In my case it has helped me immensely with many things like voices, delusions, and feelings of excessive anxiety.

Me too. I meditate every day and seriously... it was the thing that saved me. Meditation lets you see into the very nature of the phenomena of voices and delusions. It unmasks the demons in your mind.

They turned out to be nothing but a very very over active imagination. An uncontrollable need for me to have someone to talk to. I had the power within me to turn the demons off. It was and is still a challenge but with this new knowledge all my fear is gone.

In Buddhism the voices in your head actually are recognized as part of human awareness. They are called Maras. They are phenomenal play of your natural human awareness. The Ying and Yang. The Other.

I really believe that it's very healthy for a schizophrenic to study philosophies like Buddhism and Zen. Especially for schizophrenics. They are naturally adept at grasping these concepts and putting them to practical use.

A schizophrenic's mind can be beautiful once he has the knowledge of Mind Essence.

I recommend all the books by Chogyam Trungpa - especially Crazy Wisdom and Orderly Chaos. A must read for anyone interested in taming your mind dragons.

Take it easy. Peace.