Posted by West on February 10, 2009, at 14:43:18
In reply to Re: Good grief...NOT a pro ssri video » West, posted by garnet71 on February 9, 2009, at 18:48:32
'I think its pretty damn scary to prescribe, for example, SSRIs without first being sure there is actually a seratonin deficiency in the brain. BTW, there is a seratonin test available. Not 100% accurate, so maybe we should ask the question as to why more accurate tests are not being developed.'
From what i understand medical literature has never made any over 'deficiency'. I assume such an imbalance would be impossible to accurately measure without killing the subject and taking a brain slice and putting it on ice as is the convention in lab studies with rats
> Here's an interesting video back at you. It's sounds a bit rambling at first, but the overall point is provocative; from the point of an anthropologist:
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> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ewvCNguug
>Thanks, i had some problems loading the whole of it but found the beginning interesting. It seems romantic love is a completely biochemical state over which you are powerless. I suppose you don't know until it's hit you.
I had been using ritalin once alongside escitalopram which i was taking for depression. My usual state was calm but a bit apathetic. After taking it for a week to write some important essays I had to return home to pick up some stuff. After supper my mother asked me if I had fallen in love: perhaps heightened dopamine had had some latent effect on my manner. Either way i believe women to be infinitely more sensitive than men to human behaviour.
Male vervet monkeys lower down the pecking order are known to have lower levels of serotonin than their 'alpha' male counterparts. They are more likely to take risks like jumping 10-20 feet across branches, frequently falling and hurting themseleves, getting into scraps etc whereas the alphas engage in dangerous activity much more infrequently and only do so when it is essential (or where it threatens their rank). In an experiment to see how it might alter the status and dynamics of a troop, scientists removed the alpha male and gave a drug designed to raise serotonin to a monkey near the bottom. After a couple of weeks it's status goes up. What's interesting is that the males don't notice anything at first, it's the females who do: they're attention and interest becomes aroused by these monkeys- as if there must be something about them - maybe they're calmer or gentler - or maybe he becomes more trustworthy or starts bringing them food, whatever it is they start to notice him more. This gets the attention of the male monkeys ultimately leading to a status rise in the group until he becomes the alpha male. The drug was prozac. Pretty amazing really.
> www.ted.com
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> It's pretty amazing.
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poster:West
thread:879096
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090203/msgs/879271.html