a/d not more effective than placebo

[[we...]]

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7399362n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox

 

just call me Mrs. Pig

 

Guinea

[[re...]]

Fascinating-

 

Thanks for posting this wellness.

 

 

I have a feeling Dr. Weil would concur.  He has been talking about this phenomenon for years.

 

 

[[An...]]

Very interesting!  I can´t quite fathom it though.

 

 

[[we...]]

his work is peer reviewed, his data is from the same data everyone else has, it's just a statistical analysis, and statistically, no difference from placebo.  Harvard School of Medecine, not bad credentials.  I beleive it from my own experience, and unfortunately I have a lot of it.

[[La...]]

Again, great Britain has it right, what is wrong with the US and Canada, are we so far into the drug companies pockets, I actually posted that to facebook with a warning to not stop these meds abruptly but I hope this will get some notice as we are medicating ourselves to death!!!!! Ladygrace

[[wa...]]

Glad to read this because my doctor wanted to give me Lyrica and Trazodone to help me get off the clonazepam.  I didn't take it or get it from the pharmacy yet because I wanted to read up on it first.

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WEIL: Well, you know, first of all let me say something about medication. There is a disturbing and growing body of evidence that the major class of antidepressant drugs, the SSRIs, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, don't work so great, in fact that they barely can be distinguished from placebo even in severe depression now, and it may only be in very severe depression that they show an advantage.

 

There is also, I think, great concern about a new problem just coming to light. It's called tardive dysphoria. That means lingering depression caused by the drugs. You know, we were always taught that depression, however severe it is, is self-limited, that it resolves itself.

 

Well, it doesn't anymore, and one reason why it may not is because the drugs produce the very problem they're meant to treat, and this is so logical. It's similar to what you discussed earlier about antibiotics and germ resistance, and when you push on the body with an outside force, it pushes back. This is called homeostatis, a basic truth of physiology.

 

If you increase serotonin at neural junctions with a drug, the body responds over time by producing less serotonin and dropping serotonin receptors. And therefore, it gets you into a worse situation. It's just like trying to treat acid reflux with drugs that suppress acid: You take it away, and you have a worse problem than you did to begin with.

 

So the drugs may create their own need. I'm not going to tell people to get off them or not use them, and I certainly would never tell anyone with bipolar disorder to stop taking medication or people with major depression, but I think if you've been on these drugs for a year, it's worth finding a practitioner who can help give you a schedule to wean yourself off while using the other measures that I recommend.

 

And if you have mild to moderate depression, I would really urge you to find out about the other things you can do first before you try medication, and that not only includes the things we've discussed. It may include getting your vitamin D levels checked because there's a clear correlation with low vitamin D and poor emotional health. I think it means working in retraining the mind, and that may be going to practitioners of cognitive behavioral therapy.

 

[[we...]]

thanks for that post.

 

[[To...]]

From my experience, Anti depressants were the biggest pieces of crap I had ever taken, they are the reason I ended up on Benzos!

I personally don't think they work at all and should be outlawed!

[[...]]

WEIL: Well, you know, first of all let me say something about medication. There is a disturbing and growing body of evidence that the major class of antidepressant drugs, the SSRIs, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, don't work so great, in fact that they barely can be distinguished from placebo even in severe depression now, and it may only be in very severe depression that they show an advantage.

 

There is also, I think, great concern about a new problem just coming to light. It's called tardive dysphoria. That means lingering depression caused by the drugs. You know, we were always taught that depression, however severe it is, is self-limited, that it resolves itself.

 

Well, it doesn't anymore, and one reason why it may not is because the drugs produce the very problem they're meant to treat, and this is so logical. It's similar to what you discussed earlier about antibiotics and germ resistance, and when you push on the body with an outside force, it pushes back. This is called homeostatis, a basic truth of physiology.

 

If you increase serotonin at neural junctions with a drug, the body responds over time by producing less serotonin and dropping serotonin receptors. And therefore, it gets you into a worse situation. It's just like trying to treat acid reflux with drugs that suppress acid: You take it away, and you have a worse problem than you did to begin with.

 

So the drugs may create their own need. I'm not going to tell people to get off them or not use them, and I certainly would never tell anyone with bipolar disorder to stop taking medication or people with major depression, but I think if you've been on these drugs for a year, it's worth finding a practitioner who can help give you a schedule to wean yourself off while using the other measures that I recommend.

 

And if you have mild to moderate depression, I would really urge you to find out about the other things you can do first before you try medication, and that not only includes the things we've discussed. It may include getting your vitamin D levels checked because there's a clear correlation with low vitamin D and poor emotional health. I think it means working in retraining the mind, and that may be going to practitioners of cognitive behavioral therapy.

 

 

Rebecca - great insight here , I agree 100% especially from experience.  I realized after looking back that the original zoloft, klonopin, and buspare actually gave me chronic panic attacks as well as a sense of feeling like garbage.  The xanax did the same but when you increase the dose all it does is alleviate the symptoms brought on by the drug itself until you hit tolerance withdrawal.

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From what I've read, I do now question the simple idea that depression is caused by low levels of seretonin. It's that plain question which makes me have doubts about a/d.  I haven't been truly diagnosed after begging for one for years, but I have always wished for the magic medication to save me.

 

After what I've gone through because of benzos, I now question whether not getting "treated" was maybe a gift in disguise. I fear this might cause anxiety here on BB, and I do not want that, but maybe there is just no chemical antidote for some things like depression or anxiety beyond what we can do for ourselves.  I really don't know. I do think there is more and more evidence pointing to our diets being a huge source of illness or health. Wiser minds than mine will decide this issue.

 

M.

[[...]]

The biggest problem with this witchcraft of a medical profession is that all they base your diagnosis on is what you tell them you're feeling. 

 

If you say that a couple days out of the week you are sad or you hate your job, you are diagnosed as depressed.

If you say that you are nervous before a presentation or you can't sleep, now you have anxiety.

 

For most from what I've seen is that the original condition is a walk in the park compared to the side effects and artificially elevated intensity of anxiety/panic brought on by the drugs themselves.

 

I mean people are taking ativan or valium because they can't sleep, a few weeks later they're in the ER for their first panic attack,  what a racket.

[[we...]]

serotonin and depression have not been linked.  Here is an intersting peer reviewed article on the topic.

 

"With direct proof of serotonin deficiency in any mental disorder lacking, the claimed efficacy of SSRIs is often cited as indirect support for the serotonin hypothesis. Yet, this ex juvantibus line of reasoning (i.e., reasoning “backwards” to make assumptions about disease causation based on the response of the disease to a treatment) is logically problematic—the fact that aspirin cures headaches does not prove that headaches are due to low levels of aspirin in the brain."

 

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020392