Posted by zeugma on June 24, 2004, at 19:29:25
In reply to Re: only one rule - *evenually everything poops*, posted by linkadge on June 24, 2004, at 17:01:49
> I have a few problems with tryptophan depleation
> with SSRI relapse. People that have the illness are significantly more prone to fall into depression than people who do not. Their whole brain is more fraile and sensitive. Also what causes depression on one person may not in another person.> Mental health is really a continuom. You can have extremely mentally healty people that may take a lot more than simple tryptophan depleation to get them down. They probably have stores of endorphens and PEA, and who knows what to keep them going.
>
> I think the chemical imballence theory is fairly sound. Remember the days back in the 50's when people were treated for high blood pressure with reserpine. This depleates all three monoamines, and has a very high propensity to cause depression even in the most mentally healthy.Reserpine did cause some suicides among people taking it for nonpsychiatric reasons, and this combined with the fact that antidepressants were either MAOI's or amine reuptake inhibitors led to the formulation of the amine theory of depression. So amines have a powerful effect on mood.
Simply taking an amine reuptake inhibitor, however, hasn't made me feel mentally well. Maybe my endorphins or what ever are abnormally low, and I remain subject to depressive moods even though I don't suffer from the full effects of melancholic depression. I think there are people who have episodes of depression and the antidepressant clears it up and they are fine again. The amine theory would be an adequate one if that were the case for all of us. I think that what happens in those subject to chronic depression is a tendency to dysregulate that is reflected in many systems, including the amine systems, and manipulations of the amine systems only succeed partially, because many other systems (many of which are in balance with the amine systems) interfere with these manipulations.
People who don't have depression often assume that because you're on an AD, you're fine, because it 'controls' the symptoms. I feel like my symptoms are 'controlled' to some extent, but that doesn't mean that I'm not depressed. In fact I feel that my treatment has made me better able to function but has left me in an emotional limbo where I almost feel worse than I did before, because aminergic manipulation gets me out of bed in the morning but doesn't make me feel like a healthy person at all. (maybe, after I'm done with the Provigil titration, I need to persuade my dr. to let me try Anafranil.)
>
>
>
>
poster:zeugma
thread:359514
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040621/msgs/359965.html