Posted by Elizabeth on March 26, 2002, at 18:44:40
In reply to Re: MAOI diet short list, posted by djmmm on March 25, 2002, at 17:31:49
> I couldn't agree more. When the "list" was originally created, all food that contained tyramine was restricted, regardless of content, etc.
It's even worse than that. There were also foods that don't contain significant amounts of tyramine (or other biogenic amines); they were included based on old and flawed techniques for measuring the tyramine content (such as Chianti), vague and poorly documented case reports (e.g., chocolate), etc., as well as foods that were simply related to foods that were known (or believed) to interact with MAOIs (for example, based on putative interactions with a few types of alcoholic drinks, the recommendation was made that people avoid *all* alcoholic drinks).
The effect of all this has been (not surprisingly) much like the effect of telling kids that marijuana is a highly dangerous and addictive drug: once people realize that they can "cheat" on the diet, they don't take *any* of the recommendations seriously -- even the ones that really should be taken seriously.
> The MAOI diet is based on poor scientific evidence, and shouldn't be a factor when deciding depression treatment.
Well, the old MAOI diets are (there are many, many different versions). That's why some Canadian researchers went and did the actual research to figure out which foods actually should be avoided. (This research is the main basis for my version of the dietary restrictions list.) There are still doctors out there who use one of those invalid lists that contain a lot of foods that shouldn't be included, though. Educate them, everybody! :-)
-elizabeth
poster:Elizabeth
thread:75408
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020322/msgs/100383.html