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Serotonin, antidepressants and the 2 biovista drugs

knackers323

Senior Member
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1,625
I was wondering how many people have had any success with antidepressants or other meds that work on serotonin?

If these two drugs that biovista (do we know exactly what these are yet?) have identified work on serotonin I was thinking, does serotonin have a healing or protective role on the nervous system and brain?

And this is the reason for these meds to work. Rather than for their antidepressant effect.

Anyone know if PWCFS tend to have genetic defects that relate to serotonin?

Anyone got any thoughts?
 

ukxmrv

Senior Member
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Location
London
there appears to be a subset of CFS that has high serotonin so it's possible that drugs may be dangerous to them. I was tested (blood test USA) and my levels were reported as normal.

My experience has been that AD's have always been a disaster for me. The side effects have been severe and I've never seen any of the benefits. That said my mood is good and I don't suffer from depression.

The AD's were prescribed by a doctor who said that they could have pain relieving effects or help sleep or the immune system. They didn't work in any way I could see in these areas for me.
 

knackers323

Senior Member
Messages
1,625
there appears to be a subset of CFS that has high serotonin so it's possible that drugs may be dangerous to them. I was tested (blood test USA) and my levels were reported as normal.

My experience has been that AD's have always been a disaster for me. The side effects have been severe and I've never seen any of the benefits. That said my mood is good and I don't suffer from depression.

The AD's were prescribed by a doctor who said that they could have pain relieving effects or help sleep or the immune system. They didn't work in any way I could see in these areas for me.

Hi thanks for your reply.

When they test for serotonin does it measure the level that is in the brain, body or stomach?

Apparently most of the body's serotonin is in the the gut and has other uses that have nothing to do with mood.
 
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Completely useless for me, both with an SNRI and then with serotonin precursors. I felt physically horrible while taking them, and only did so for a couple days.
 

ukxmrv

Senior Member
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4,413
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London
Hi thanks for your reply.

When they test for serotonin does it measure the level that is in the brain, body or stomach?

Apparently most of the body's serotonin is in the the gut and has other uses that have nothing to do with mood.

I don't disagree with you Knackers. My test was only for bloods but my gut reaction to the drug was severe.

When I tried AD's one of the areas that it very badly affected by them was my gut. I read up on it after because of the way my gut reacted. Also my partner was having cancer treatment and one of the drugs that potentially could be prescribed did have an effect on the stomach and there was a serotonin link. I worked out then what could have happened to me.

My gut was never the same again after the AD's (and equal only to damage from antibiotics in my experience).
 

Sparrow

Senior Member
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691
Location
Canada
I had a terrible reaction to them too. Debilitating side effects, worsened my orthostatic intolerance greatly, didn't help at all with any symptoms, and on top of that I turned out to be one of those lucky few who gets profoundly depressed by antidepressants. Seriously depressed. It was awful. Thankfully cleared up fine once I went off them. My mood is good again now.

I was initially misdiagnosed with depression so I went through seven different antidepressants of various sorts in an attempt to find an answer. Every one was horrible for me. Clearly that is not the answer where I'm concerned.

That said, there are other types of medications that interact with serotonin in the body, and who knows about those ones. The mechanism is very different, so they might be helpful in some way.
 

peggy-sue

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Serotonin is pretty much endemic in most body systems and has multiple roles in each, in all sorts of not-yet-understood ways.
 

justy

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I had a catastrophic reaction to only 2 doses of an SSRI (misdiagnosed with depression rather than M.E) and it took me two years to climb down off the walls. It was two years of a living hell. I also suffered almost psychotic episode and severe suicidal ideation, after only one dose which took months to wear off.

Consequently I try to never take anything that messes with any brain chemistry. I would never want anyone to have to experience what I went through.
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
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2,623
Location
Scotland
I'm on a tiny dose of citalopram, (1o mgs) for clinical depression which devloped because of having ME.
I was bouncing off the walls for over 6 weeks before it did kick in, and I hate being on it still.

It makes me callous, and I do get far more "suicidal ideation" than I got, even when depressed.

I think it's part of the callousness though.

It's better than the hell of severe clinical depression though.
 

caledonia

Senior Member
I've been through the wringer with anti-depressants too. Unlike the others, after some typical initial GI effects, I tolerated it ok for many years. But when I tried to withdraw - yikes! Consequently, I've done a ton of research on anti-depressants.

The bottom line is, you would be much better off addressing poor methylation, which is the root cause. Methylation is required to make neurotransmitters. I did testing and all of my neurotransmitters were low.

Note that good levels of melatonin and serotonin are also required for sleep, and we often have too much glutamate (excitatory) relative to GABA (calming) - all neurotransmitter problems. You can take supplements to support the various neurotransmitters to get some immediate relief, but methylation is the ultimate fix.

This is a good article on this subject: http://metabolichealing.com/michael-s-blog/mental-illness-or-methylation-mutation/
 

knackers323

Senior Member
Messages
1,625
I've been through the wringer with anti-depressants too. Unlike the others, after some typical initial GI effects, I tolerated it ok for many years. But when I tried to withdraw - yikes! Consequently, I've done a ton of research on anti-depressants.

The bottom line is, you would be much better off addressing poor methylation, which is the root cause. Methylation is required to make neurotransmitters. I did testing and all of my neurotransmitters were low.

Note that good levels of melatonin and serotonin are also required for sleep, and we often have too much glutamate (excitatory) relative to GABA (calming) - all neurotransmitter problems. You can take supplements to support the various neurotransmitters to get some immediate relief, but methylation is the ultimate fix.

This is a good article on this subject: http://metabolichealing.com/michael-s-blog/mental-illness-or-methylation-mutation/

Hello this is interesting. Have you heard of many people treating their depression by way of methylation?

Was it 100% effective for you?

Does it seem to work for everyone?
I have not heard of this before.

Sparrow what were the other medications that work on serotonin that you had in mind?
 

Sparrow

Senior Member
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691
Location
Canada
Sparrow what were the other medications that work on serotonin that you had in mind?

I was thinking of some of the anti-nausea drugs that target serotonin (suppressing, not boosting, I believe). There may also be other drugs that affect the serotonin system without acting on the brain the way antidepressants do. I'm not sure.
 

heapsreal

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5htp of late has been good. 100mg twice a day.

5htp seems to be tolerated alot better than ads.

Said it before but ads just help us feel better about feeling like shit. Not a bad thing though. Just as long as dr and patients realize thats how they may help us, not a cure as such.

This all depends on if one can tolerate them too and if people are started on really low doses. Also the ads with short half lives like effexor are the hardest to come off. Sometimes its better to switch over to an ad with a long half life to come off ads and then slowly taper off. Nothing straight forward is there??
 

Snow Leopard

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Several studies in the 90s have investigated Serotonin levels, both in plasma and also via associated measures to get an idea of serotonin levels in the brain.

These studies showed high serotonin related activity (could be either increased 5-ht or receptor activity) and this was actually proposed as a potential cause for CFS, since serotonin is known to cause drowsiness etc.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2127129/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8550954
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1282370
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11352361

Example of the hypothesis:
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/72/2/573s.full

Secondly, no Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) has shown to have any effects on either fatigue or depression in double blinded trials, eg there is no evidence base to suggests that SSRIs have any efficacy in CFS patients.


On the other hand, monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) have show to have some modest effects and is evidence based for CFS patients, whereas the efficacy of SSRIs are not.
 

heapsreal

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i think there were studies on moclobemide, a reversible MAOI, has shown to be helpful in cfs/me, supposedly less side effects then traditional MAOI's.
Doesnt seem to be alot of people who have tried this med or other MAOI's for cfs/me on PR??
 

Abha

Abha
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267
Location
UK
Recently I was listening to Dr Amen(SPECT scans) at the Gluten Summit and earlier on Youtube(Dr Mercola interview).He mentioned that recent research mentions that over 90% of serotonin is made in gut.I read too that women produce 52% less serotonin than men(recent Canadian study).Like Justy I have had bad times too with SSRIs.At the moment I'm on amitriptyline for bad sleep problems(esp in early hours of morning).
 

Rand56

Senior Member
Messages
675
Location
Myrtle Beach, SC
I was thinking of some of the anti-nausea drugs that target serotonin (suppressing, not boosting, I believe). There may also be other drugs that affect the serotonin system without acting on the brain the way antidepressants do. I'm not sure.

hi Sparrow

You can also try ginger if you wanted to try a non-drug route......

" Galanolactone, a diterpenoid found in ginger, is a 5-HT3 antagonist and is believed to at least partially mediate the anti-emetic activity of this plant"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HT3_antagonist

Here's another interesting side note I was unaware of about ginger.......

"From these results, we can say that the ginger extract has a neuroprotective role against monosodium glutamate toxicity effect."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19579948
 
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lansbergen

Senior Member
Messages
2,512
Can this throw some light on it?

http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v19/n5/full/1395217a.html

Table 4. Time Course of Regional Effect of Levamisol on Serotonergic Parameters
http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v19/n5/fig_tab/1395217t4.html#figure-title

Time-dependent effects of levamisole (35 mg/kg, IP) on morphine content in brain regions at various times.
http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v19/n5/fig_tab/1395217f1.html#figure-title

We have previously demonstrated that a chemically unrelated immunostimulant agent, muramyl dipeptide, also produced a significant increase in the endogenous levels of the opiate alkaloids morphine and codeine (Munjal et al. 1996). Thus, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the shared ability of these agents to increase morphine and/or codeine levels may be functionally related to their immunostimulatory properties. The widespread effects of levamisole on both the opiate system and on monoaminergic function in brain suggest that its use as an immunostimulant agent might include studies to determine whether this use might not produce significant, previously unanticipated behavioral effects in these subjects

I take much lower dosis then they used but I take it such a long time now that with a 4 hour half life time it must have accumulated. Nonetheless I still need it every day.

It relaxes in a pleasant way, of course that changes behavior.
 

caledonia

Senior Member
Hello this is interesting. Have you heard of many people treating their depression by way of methylation?

Was it 100% effective for you?

Does it seem to work for everyone?
I have not heard of this before.

Sparrow what were the other medications that work on serotonin that you had in mind?

Hi @Sparrow I just happened to see this. If you want someone to reply, put an "@" in front of their name in the post and they will get an alert.

Anyway, I have anxiety, not depression, but it all works the same way. There are actually prescription methylfolate drugs such as Deplin based on this hypothesis. The problem with those is, it's a HUGE amount of folate. As we are very sensitive, this could be very dangerous. The other problem is it's typically given without B12, so it will cause methyl trapping and stop methylation - the opposite of what you want.

I just talked to someone on here who took Deplin and felt great - for a few months - then started to feel worse. I believe that is due to methyl trapping.

Anyway, I've been successful in getting my GABA and glutamate balanced. I no longer need to take GABA, theanine, etc. That didn't take more than a few months.

The next step is getting through metal detox. Mercury can be a cause of depression, and both mercury and lead gum up the works at the MTHFR/MTR junction, where folate and B12 combine to make methyl groups. So you can see where it would cause wide ranging problems, both mental and physical. I figure that will take about six months.

I've only been withdrawing from Zoloft for a year, and it's going to take another two years or so. So I can't really say that I'm 100% good mentally until I get off that. But I'm stable now with no breakthrough problems, except for withdrawal symptoms at certain times.