Posted by bleauberry on November 23, 2008, at 19:40:20
In reply to Re: Tell Me All About Parnate » bleauberry, posted by uncouth on November 22, 2008, at 18:27:05
> where did you get the genetic test? how much did it cost? was it yoru dcotor's idea or yours?
Doctor's idea. $500. A lab in Maine that specializes in it.
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> also -- it's very likely not the nicotine which your addicted to. i realized this when i quit with the patch and started feeling like sh*t for a week. cigarette smoke has VERY significant MAO inhibiting factors, on the order of 40-60% I believe.The cigarette/nicotine/MAOI connection makes sense. I remember the very first cigarette I ever had, I said, "wow, this is what's been missing my whole life". There was no buzz, and in a few puffs I certainly wasn't addicted. I just instinctively knew there was something good about cigarettes.
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> So parnate might be the right drug for you. If you've had ECT and been hospitalized before, I'm shocked it's taken this long for you to consider parnate. Why did you consider ECT before an MAOI?The doctors in the psychiatric ward, where I was for a week, pushed ECT on me. I was in such bad shape and at the end of the line with no hope, so it didn't sound like a bad idea. Looking back, yeah, a good ole MAOI makes a lot more sense.
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> Will you be taking anything else besides parnate? Have you tried tianeptine on it's own? MAOIs + Lithium are a very powerful combo, and you may only need 300 - 600mg of lithium which shouldn't cause any cognitive problems in most people.Tianeptine I don't like. It numbs me out as bad as ssris do and with more cognitive dysfunction than ssris. Don't know why. Lithium, bad news, much worse depression on it.
I know my doc is going to push all kinds of natural things on me and maybe revisit meds I've already been on, but I am going to point to the genetic test results and say, look, that stuff spells MAOI as clear as can be. Isn't that why we did the test? To find out what to take?
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> Can you do chelation therapy to get rid of the mercury?Chelation therapy is even more of a gamble than psychiatry. Many people have been seriously screwed up by the common IV chelation. It moves too much mercury too fast, and dumps a lot of it before being excreted. Successful for some, disaster for others. High risk. The safest way is low dose frequent dose DMSA chelation, which I have done 9 rounds of. But it takes 60 rounds or so to make a real impact, and nothing gets mercury out of the brain until alpha-lipoic acid is added to the chelation mix.
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> What are you on right now?Nothing. I try things here and there. Out of dozens of meds, herbs, or supplements, the only one that held any promise, despite totally intolerable side effects, was Milnacipran. Practically anything else makes me worse. My baseline, as bad as it is, is actually better than drug-induced deterioration.
Parnate makes sense. Good luck finding someone in Maine to prescribe it. But I will get my doctor to go along. It will be a tough sell, I can already predict the see-saw back and forth debate, but we'll see.
poster:bleauberry
thread:864497
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081123/msgs/864931.html