--- Eirikur Hallgrimsson <eh@mad.scientist.com> wrote:
> The stimulant analogy connects for me to the "Prozac poop-out
> effect"
> that many people experience at around seven years on SSRIs.
> Seemingly SSRIs are hard for the body's homeostatic mechanisms to
> work around. Maybe it even takes seven years. Which would make a
> heck of a lot of sense because the speculated mechanism whereby you
> develop a tolerance for SSRIs is that you actually prune
> connections,
> losing synapses to get the data rates (where?) back to where they
> want to be. Scary stuff. There just aren't any long term studies.
Can you please provide refs on this ?
I don't even like the idea of a bad hair cut!
> Exactly how bad do the drug companies want to prove that you lose
> synapses?
Don't understand this, wouldn't they want to *disprove* it?
> I was pretty worried about being expected to be a good
> sheep and take high doses of SSRIs as permanent maintenance for
> life.
I think they should be used only temporarily if this synaptic
business is true.
[...]
> St. John's Wort, an herb available as capsules at most any health
> food store, has significant SSRI effects. For some reason, that
> fact doesn't seem to get into press much. Even the people who make
> the capsules tout the mood benefits, but not the Prozac connection.
> I like the fact that you don't have to deal with the AMA and the
> prescription drug establishment to gain access to the current state
> of the art in antidepressants.
This shows one of the risks of the "herbal vs chemical" mindset.
> Playing with your
> neurotransmitters is risky, and far from an exact science.
Especially as our knowledge is incomplete.
A true, not hypothetical situation known to me
Patient feels anxious.
Doctor diagnoses anxiety and related problems.
Doctor believes hypothesis of serotonin transmission problems.
Therefore as patient has anxiety, etc, they are prescribed SSRI.
Patient is never actually biochemically checked for serotonin
(admittedly this is difficult) before during or after use of SSRI.
So treatment is based on induction from other data without checking
the situation in the individual patient.
And meanwhile SSRI maybe has unknown side effects??
Mike
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