Posted by bleauberry on April 16, 2009, at 15:20:23
In reply to Effects of long term SSRI use... My Story..., posted by newquestions on April 16, 2009, at 9:10:07
Something has been missed. I have no doubt longterm ssri use has changed things. But I do not believe that is the causative factor in your symptoms. I do believe it is a confounding factor, but not the underlying one. Something has been missed.
Have you seen your 24 hour cortisol curve?
Have you taken 1200mg DMSA, collected urine for 6 hours, and seen how much lead/mercury is in it?
Have you had all the Lyme lab tests? Have you had a doctor who knows Lyme well enough to ignore the tests and go by symptoms?
Is thyroid in the optimal range? That is, skewed toward the best end of the scale for each hormone measured, not in the middle or skewed toward the weaker side? In other words, is it optimal or normal?
Ya know, you describe me to to a tee. Perfectly. I never thought anyone else felt the things I did. You do. Exactly. The 5htp, everything. All of it.
But ya know what? When I tried rounds of DMSA, oh my word, for about 2 days out of the 5, all of my symptoms pretty much vanished. What it told me was..."my body and brain are not permanently damaged, they know exactly how to work normally". It's just a matter of finding how to do it. But the important thing is...it is still there! The brain is still perfectly capable of feeling healthy and 20 years younger. Mine proved it.
First day on the antibiotic Tetracycline. Same thing. Amazing improvement. Downhill slide after that. But again, it showed me, my brain is fine and capable. It's there. How to get it is a tricky one, but it is there to be got.
The best of all. My cortisol is/was below the normal dialy 24 hour curve. On a mere 1.25mg-2.5mg per day (hydrocortisone), just 10% of the target dose I was headed for, I had absolute total remission for an entire day (after 2 weeks of hydrocortisone). Again, yet again, I was shown without a doubt, the capability of normalcy is there.
Your symptoms fit Lyme perfectly. They also fit adrenal fatigue perfectly (low cortisol). Both can mimic each other.
If you are not seeing a doctor who deals with this stuff as a majority of their day, you won't get well.
I do believe ssris played into. Partially by hiding a disease that was already in progress, until the disease got strong enough that the meds didn't stand a chance, and it looked like med poopout, but wasn't. The sensitivity to supplements and meds is because...something else is going on.
I know you said you are investigating these things, but that effort needs to be stepped up to the bigtime.
poster:bleauberry
thread:891025
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090416/msgs/891069.html