Posted by sowhysosad on April 22, 2009, at 19:15:58
In reply to Re: PERMANENT DAMAGE, posted by sowhysosad on April 21, 2009, at 3:33:23
Saw the neuro today and he suggested that codeine might be improving my movement disorder because it SUPRESSES dopamine?! That contradicts EVERYTHING I've read about opiates stimulating dopamine release, possibly through a GABA-mediated process.
If we decide to go with that theory he wants to try an atypical AP like quetiapine or olanzapine to antagonise the D2 receptors. Might also have the advantage of working synergistically with an SSRI against depression/anxiety when I go back on one.
He's open to my "dopamine depletion" theory too, but I'm not keen on his idea of going with levodopa to test it. Seems unnecessarily heavy-handed and risky to me. I'd prefer to stick to my plan to try NADH to stimulate dopamine.
I also suggested pramipexole as a DA agonist. He's not used it for a while but is open to looking into it again. He didn't like the idea of amantadine in a depressive as he claims it'll make me "mad" (to use his highly technical terminology).
However, either way, he's insisting my depression is under control before he adds another med to the mix which seems reasonable.
> Going off at a tangent, I've been taking 60mg of codeine every night for a few days as an antidepressant (yeah, not ideal I know but I'm in a "med-free" period and it works!) and it's caused a sudden and dramatic improvement in the movement disorder.
>
> It's gotta be the associated dopamine release that's doing it, which ties in with my original theory that the PHYSICAL aspect of the condition was caused by dopamine depletion.
poster:sowhysosad
thread:891840
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090416/msgs/892206.html