Posted by Reggie BoStar on January 26, 2009, at 3:07:45
In reply to Re: New med: Pristiq (desvenlafaxine), any comments?, posted by Garnet71 on January 11, 2009, at 1:34:05
Hello Garnet71,
Sorry for the delay in this response. I don't get all of your abbreviations, but I'll give it a shot:Endo = a gastro specialist, like the MDs who give colonoscopies and treat reflux disease? If so, yes, I do a lot of business with them. Since I turned 50 (7 yrs ago) I've had 2 routine colonoscopies, both passed with flying colors. I also have reflux disease and had to have my esophagus dilated in 1995. It had swollen shut from the inflammation and I couldn't swallowed. The fix worked, I've been on acid blockers since, and they work fine with me.
Neuro = Neurologist? Yes, I've suffered from terrible migraines since I was 14. The latest neurologist has done a pretty good job helping me with them. Along the way I've had at least one CRT and one MRI of my brain to make sure there were no overt problems there. They came back normal.
Pharmapsychiatrist = aren't they all nowadays? Around here, the psychiatrists handle the meds, ECT treatments, detox wards, and mental health wards. They coordinate with the therapists, who do the talking treatments. I'm keeping the same therapist, who is very good, but probably changing my psychiatrist soon. He had moved to a new clinic recently. Previous to that he was in the same clinic as my therapist. I followed his patient clientele to the new location. It's now an inconvenience to get to his office; with that and the lousy job he's been doing for me the last year or two, I may go back to one of the pdocs in my therapist's clinic.
Nutritionist = my MD coordinates all that. I get a lot of blood work done because I'm an alcoholic and they're forever checking my liver. The acid blockers I take can compromise nutrition in various ways, so he keeps an eye on that too. He checks my nutrient levels, vitamins, etc, and keeps me advised of things like the Food Pyramid and recommended diets if something in the blood panels doesn't look right. He knows what he's doing.
Nootropics = As far as the prescription meds go, I don't suffer from any organic brain damage or progressive disease like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc, so there isn't much need for me to be taking any of that stuff. There's no connection between them and treatments for migraines, either. As far as the over-the-counter stuff goes: since I don't believe any of them actually do anything to enhance cognition, they don't. In other words, the Placebo Effect doesn't work on me. A drug actually has to produce real results if I'm going to respond to it.
Magnesium = covered by my MD. My levels are OK. At one time a pdoc put me on higher than RDA levels to see if that would help with the depression. It did nothing at all as far as I could tell.
Fish Oils = It's actually not a very good idea to take too much of that stuff. People sometimes quote the Stoll experiment as proof that Omega-3 fatty acids can help with mood disorders such as bipolar depression. However, the differences between Stoll's control group (Placebo) and the group taking active Omega-3 acids were not statistically significant. For more rigorous studies, check out the links below. They used larger numbers of subjects and reported no significant differences between the control groups and the groups taking fatty acids.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/84/6/1308
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=1642264
In addition, taking fatty acids in the form of over-the-counter fish oils runs a risk of heavy metal and other toxic poisonings. This is because the fish from which the oils are taken are at the top of their food chain and thus are repositories of many toxins and heavy metal contaminations. The safest way to take over-the-counter fatty acids is to take them in the form of flaxseed oils. For those fatty acids, the risk of contamination is only as high as it is for any other unregulated over-the-counter medication.
As far as those "other unregulated over-the-counter medication" , many of these are now manufactured in China. No thanks. For my part, I've run numerous internet traces on the "Canadian Pharmacies" that purport to sell these products at discount prices. They do all that, but they're not manufactured in Canada. Guess where?
I use a shareware program called Visual Traceroot to do this. There's nothing magical about it; it's a good way to check out things like this.
For the time being, I take no unregulated over-the-counter drugs unless I can verify that they aren't made in China. This is not a diss on Chinese workers who are obviously among the most industrious in the world. They're having major QC issues, but the workers are not the problem.
You're right, I should try every possible option before resorting to ECT. I did so and none of it worked, which was why I wound up going into ECT the first time around.
I'm running out of options again. I'm not trying to shut down your suggestions out of nastiness; I just wanted to explain what I tried, how I tried it, and why I didn't try some other things.
Besides, as I commented in one of the other threads on Pristiq, I'm climbing the walls tonight. I can't stop typing!
Now if you can think of something else, I'm all ears, believe me. Also, I'm sure I probably got some of your abbreviations wrong. If I did, let me know...
Take care,
Reggie BoStar
poster:Reggie BoStar
thread:871129
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090104/msgs/876253.html