Posted by bleauberry on October 21, 2010, at 19:08:13
In reply to Depression - Cognitive and Memory Impairments, posted by SLS on October 21, 2010, at 7:13:16
Picture this scenario. There is an organism that burrows into human tissue. It leaves a telltale trail the immune system sees as a a danger. While the organism is safely hiding in its protective coating or in hard to reach areas of little blood supply, the trail markers are still on your tissue. Your immune system mistakenly attacks your own tissue. The result is inflammation and the release of toxic proteins. Meanwhile the organisms going about their daily routine are excreting their own toxins similar to acetyldehyde, alcohol metabolites, and such. Some of the tissues involved include the brain and the spinal cord. The toxins contaminate serotonin and dopamine. The toxins clog up receptors.
This patient feels several things. Depression obviously. Cognitive impairments and memory problems, obviously.
Fatigue, probably. Loss of interest, likely. Sleep distrubance and anxiety, hit or miss.This patient is diagnosed with depression.
This patient does not have depression.
This patient will get better not by increasing neurotransmitter levels, but by suppressing the unseen organism and by calming down a confused immune system. Serotonin doesn't need to be added....toxins need to be removed.
Could probably present a dozen other scenarios that play out in real life and maybe should write a book.
Just food for thought.
All too commonly we see a cluster of symptoms such as "depressed mood, cognitive impairment, loss of interest, fatigue, unexplained pain, etc" and we immediately put a label on it "depression". But it isn't. Depression is only a result of a biological insult. The symptoms didn't just happen for no reason. The explanations are not rocket science and are not things that we need to wait 100 years for science to figure out.
It seems ironic how humans spend so much time, effort, and money attaching names to certain clusters of symptoms, when they basically remain impotent year after year, decade after decade, at doing anything significant to reverse those symptoms. Yet our clinicians barely do anything to figure out where those symptoms are coming from. It's considered a thorough exam to simply check thyroid, which usually doesn't even look at reverse T3 or thyroid antibodies. Oh well.
In any case, back to the original study of this thread, yes, I see it as no surprise that cognitive impairment and patterns in the brain are consistent with the presentation of depression.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? That's where I think science has got it all wrong when looking at depression.
But they are making strides. That's a good thing.
poster:bleauberry
thread:966468
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20101020/msgs/966511.html