Posted by SLS on October 2, 2006, at 7:45:55
In reply to Re: Returning to antidepressants? Above for, posted by musky on October 1, 2006, at 23:11:46
> > > > >First of all, diabetes and high blood pressure are KNOWN diseases.. they have blood tests SPECIFICALLY for measuring levels of blood glucose and blood pressure. The drugs developed for these conditions are SPECIFIC and then shown to work by further measuring these levels.
> > Ok.
> > > Antidepressents are NOT specific and affect MANY downstream pathways in the brain...
> > How do you know whether they are upstream or downstream? Scientists haven't decided that yet.> * Exactly my point .. they dont know ...
I was just curious how you came to identify downstream pathways when scientist had not done so yet, that's all.
I think this will help a lot:
It is not the objective of medicine to understand biology. It is the objective of medicine to get people better. Very often, this means using a drug that it doesn't understand how it works. Actually, this has been the whole history of medicine up until the last 50 years or so. People couldn't wait around for biological science to figure out how penicillin worked when it was first discovered by accident. That wasn't to happen for many years. There are still many, many drugs for which the exact mechanism of action is not understood. Just open up the PDR and have a look. Should people wait around and die while these medical discoveries are researched by biologists?
Very often, people want to discontinue medication precicely because it has worked. It is not the proposition upon the initiation of drug treatment that it be for a lifetime. It is often agreed that a patient will discontinue drug treatment after he feels well for a certain number of months. Of course, we are going to see so many people wanting to discontinue their antidepressants. They worked.
> > If it works, it works. Right?
> ****If it worked we wouldnt have so many people still trying meds on and on.. and we wouldnt be here debating on this post.
As we could also say of psychotherapy.
Of course, there are treatment failures. 30-40% of people will need to discontinue their first drug to go on to a second drug. 30% of those will need to go on to a third drug or have drugs added as combination treatments. Still others who are extraordinarily treatment-resistant end up here. These people switch drugs frequently in a desperate effort to find something that works for them. This is unfortunate, but it is not unprecedented in the field of medicine. Even antibiotics are sometimes applied in a trial-and-error format.
That a series of drug therapies fail to treat an ailment does not prove that the ailment doesn't exist. I believe that my ailment is biological. There is finally overwhelming evidence to demonstrate this, in my opinion. Although I didn't need to see this proof, it does help to know that it helps fuel research into finding biological cures for a biological illness.
You are entitled to believe differently.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:689668
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20060809/msgs/691110.html