Posted by notfred on April 18, 2007, at 20:55:15
In reply to Do our neurotransmitters control our thoughts or t, posted by Meri-Tuuli on April 17, 2007, at 10:24:18
> Is depression simply a lack (or fall in particular ratios) of neurotransmitters?
>
>Nope, at least not the the context of simple. AD's do not make more NT, they slow the turnover of NT's in some areas of the CNS, keeping the NT's active longer at specific sites. As the CNS is a complex system, if you change one thing the system adjusts upstream and downstream. These adjustments
take some time whereas reuptake ihibition happens at once on starting an AD. Perhaps this is why there can be a 4-8 week lag in the AD really starting to work.This also might account for side effects being bad at first but improving as the system adjusts and seeks a new level. This "adjustment" is theIf you do not get enough vit. C you get scurvy. It is impossible to not get the building blocks for NT's, provided you eat food. I have seen info on people who are very malnourished, such as homeless alcholics, who improve significantly with amino acid supps. So if you totally deprive someone for the building blocks for NT's, the essential amino acids, they get depressed. But amino acids are common in all foods, as protein.
We only talk about NT's because we discovered AD's by accident and reuptake inhibition is the best studied effect they have. Racers requirsive logic. But now we have AD's that are not reuptake inhibitors or do not effect NT's at all. Now we also know some AD's improve the process by which
neurological tissue is made. Anyway, "learning from the meds" is how we have come to understand
a lot of illness. The meds helps, study what the med really does, and develop theory about the illness based on how the med works.That is all very interesting but still we do not know how it really works. These are theories as we have no way to measure NT's in the CNS. And we are no where near understanding how the CNS does its complex functions, like memory and mood, Till the basics are well understood it is hard understand what goes wrong in illness.
AS to your question, "Do our neurotransmitters control our thoughts", I would say no. NT's are
perhaps better thought of as the messengers of thoughts. They are one way your body controls, communicates across, and regulates the CNS. There is more NT in your gut than in your brain, NT's do a lot in your gut. Noradenergic NT is often mentioned in the context of AD's and mood but it also very entwined in all things cardiac. The noradenergic AD's often have cardiac side effects.
So if you were deficient in NT you would be a mess with depression as the least of your problems.
poster:notfred
thread:750639
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070413/msgs/751180.html