Posted by forth meg on June 1, 2000, at 13:26:03
In reply to OTC MAOI ??, posted by johnturner77 on May 31, 2000, at 15:51:36
You know, I've always been baffled by whole DHEA/testosterone as an antidepressant thing, because I've had abnormally high DHEA and testosterone all my life (adrenal hyperfunction). At one point it was so high that my endocrinologist was concerned I had cancer.
But it's never seemed to protect me against serious depression, and MAOIs are the only medication that help my depression - so if testosterone acted like an MAOI you'd think that I wouldn't need to be on MAOIs.
The other thing is - women with polycystic ovarian disease - don't they have high testosterone too? And aren't they notoriously depressed?
Anyone have any insight?
> I recently ran across a study that said there was a AD effect from DHEA(Dehydroepiandrosterone,) the mostly harmless OTC hormone that is supposed to slow aging. The mechanism of action wasn't known for the AD effect. The AD effect seemed to take longer than SSRI's as short term studies(2 weeks) showed no AD effect. Testosterone has some MAOI effects as certain KamiKaze bodybuilders have found out. I wonder if DHEA might function as an MAOI also. I looked around for studies and only found one that correlated higher blood pressure with naturally elevated DHEA levels. A fairly crude assessment could be made of the MAOi effect by taking DHEA for a few weeks then challenging your system with tyramine or maybe just aged cheese. If there was some elevation (or perhaps a lot of elevation?)in your blood pressure it would constitute a smoking gun. Has anyone out there tried DHEA for depression? It seems to have some potential particularly in older people. I decided to try it after failing to get a useful response from yet another AD(EFfexor this time) Its been too short a time to tell if it will be helpful.
poster:forth meg
thread:35408
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000526/msgs/35543.html