Posted by bleauberry on April 21, 2018, at 8:51:57
In reply to Re: Sertraline is making me 'numb' and indifferent., posted by Hordak on April 20, 2018, at 13:31:05
I happen to disagree with the low-serotonin theory that the entire industry seems to have adopted as fact.
What makes more sense to me are theories of mood chemicals being contaminated or corrupted by environmental insults - their levels aren't deficient, their levels are polluted. Endotoxins from Lyme disease and other infections do that. The fallout from mercury in amalgam fillings can do that. Even just bad reactions to foods with gluten can do that. In all of these cases, neither the patient nor the doctor would have any clue any of this was happening. They would just assume low serotonin. Which makes no sense to me.
Another theory could be that environmental insults crowd out our mood chemicals from docking in their respective receptors. The receptors get clogged with endotoxins or heavy metals or other insults that have affinity for the receptors and compete with our mood chemicals. I know for sure this theory has some merit because Vicadin has stronger affinity for receptors than the lyme endotoxins do, and mood can be revived within hours, as it kicks out the intruders.
If mood chemicals were truly low, then we should respond immediately to increasing them. I've only seen that happen sometimes with 5htp, tryptophan or Ritalin.
Common sense says that if a drug immediately increases mood chemicals, but you have to wait 6 weeks to feel any benefit from it, then it wasn't a low-chemical situation to begin with. The add-on theories of up-regulating or down-regulating attempt to make a scientific sounding argument out of something that really goes against the grain of common sense and logic.
imo
> "I think that SOME cases of depression are caused by chemical factors in the brain, but it's not as simple as the serotonin-only theory (which was pushed hard by the SSRI manufacturers ever since Prozac was being developed and marketed). There are many other chemicals in the brain, and some cases of depression are no doubt related more to norepinephrine, dopamine, and others than to serotonin. There is almost no question that the MAOIs are more effective than the SSRIs, almost certainly because they increase not just serotonin but also norepinephrine and dopamine. Some of the tricyclics (amitriptyline, clomipramine, imipramine) are also regarded as more effective than SSRIs by clinical psychiatrists, once again because they increase norepinephrine in addition to serotonin (or more so) plus they have some dopamingeric & anticholinergic action."
>
> "Despite these facts, it is truly amazing how widespread the idea of 'low serotonin = all cases' of depression became entrenched in our society from the 1990's onwards, not just with doctors but with the general public. The SSRI drug companies truly utilized the power of selective study publication, "education programs" (i.e. drug pushing) for doctors, and mass media articles to make "depression = low serotonin" such a widely believed theory for so long."
>
> source: http://www.socialanxietysupport.com/forum/f30/serotonin-may-not-be-a-major-factor-in-depression-2029786/#post1090135186
poster:bleauberry
thread:1098205
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20180331/msgs/1098281.html