The Strange Cases of ME Remissions Induced by SSRIs (Dr James / Dr Smith / Dr Le Fanu)

[eric_gladiator]

@Learner1 @JES @ebethc


I agree with what he says. In my also caused a permanent damage that I do not know how to improve, before this everything was easier but let me be guided by an incompetent doctor who supposedly compared my illness to his psoriasis. At the moment I think it will happen. By the way, what do you think of the ldn? Is there a risk of relapse or something?

 

[Learner1]

There are repair mechanisms for mitochondria. They also die off and are recycled every 6-8 weeks or so. At the conference the researchers said if you have more good ones than bad ones, you should still be ok, til you reach a tipping point, especially if your mtDNA are damaged.

The important thing is to stop anything that is damaging them and do things that encourage healthy ones. Naviaux's list of cell dangers is a good list of things to avoid. So are psychiatric drugs as noted in the links I provided.

Folate, B12, B6, amino acids and lipids like phosphatidyl choline and NT Factor are useful nutrients. And working on making new food ones - PQQ and careful exercise can help.

 

[JES]

@Learner1 @JES @ebethc


I agree with what he says. In my also caused a permanent damage that I do not know how to improve, before this everything was easier but let me be guided by an incompetent doctor who supposedly compared my illness to his psoriasis. At the moment I think it will happen. By the way, what do you think of the ldn? Is there a risk of relapse or something?

There is no permanent damage of mitochondria in CFS/ME. It might be that a drug you used damaged the mitochondria, although I find it unlikely, but then as poster above said, mitochondria are recycled every 6-8 weeks.

But anyway, CFS/ME is not mitochondria being permanently damaged, if they were as in mitochondrial diseases, you would most likely die or end up in a state where no remission is possible. But we know CFS/ME patients have reported "temporary" remissions from many different things and remissions that happened within days. Regarding LDN, I consider it one of the safest medications, mainly because Naltrexone has been FDA approved at dosage of 50 mg, and the LDN dosage is 10 times smaller.

 

[eric_gladiator]

@Learner1 @JES


There are people whose symptoms got much worse with an antidepressant, something has to do ad to cause that or then I can not find an explanation. to me it happened to me, I had been wrong for a long time but I had a more or less normal life until I tried duloxetine and I came literally round and with a number of symptoms that I totally ignored.

 

[Learner1]

@Learner1 @JES
There are people whose symptoms got much worse with an antidepressant, something has to do ad to cause that or then I can not find an explanation. to me it happened to me, I had been wrong for a long time but I had a more or less normal life until I tried duloxetine and I came literally round and with a number of symptoms that I totally ignored.

I agree. I watched a family member go through 9 psychiatric drugs which did little to help, but caused worsening if symptoms and suicidal impulses.

Many antidepressants sap the body of nutrients, like folate, glutathione, etc. and cause damage to mitochondria, which can definitely worsen symptoms.

When we finally took a nutritional approach with a functional medicine doctor, and replenished missing nutrients, the symptoms went away completely and the drugs were not needed. It took awhile as bottlenecks are cleared, then we found the next problems, at. so it was an iterative process over several months.

B vitamins, like B12, folate, and B6, amino acids, like tyrosine, tryptophan, GABA, glycine, cysteine, and taurine, antioxidants, like ALA, vitamin C and glutathione, minerals like zinc, selenium, and iodine, and lipids like DHA/EPA, flax seed oil, phosphatidyl serine and choline can all be useful in improving brain symptoms.

It is worthwhile to test and figure out deficiencies, though, rather than randomly throwing nutrients st the problem, which could lead to unintended consequences.

And once you know the dynamics, its easy to adjust when symptoms arise. My chemistry has been manipulated and occasionally gets out of whack, but all I need typically is a little folate, B12, methionine, or TMG to make symptoms go away.

Good luck in finding alternatives to the drugs...

 

[eric_gladiator]

@Learner1

my analyzes in general go well. How would you know if you have deficiencies? The analysis of the immune system is valid for this?

 

[Learner1]

I use this test, which is the most complete test on the market:

https://www.gdx.net/product/nutreval-fmv-nutritional-test-blood-urine#

Immune system testing is different.

 

[TrialAndError]

I've come across something very strange and confusing. Two UK doctors in the 90s and early 2000s used SSRIs (Zoloft / Prozac) to bring a number of ME patients into remission. A third, Dr Le Fanu, conducted an informal trial with promising results. As far as I can tell Dr Smith and Dr James had a biological view of the disease with well defined patients.

Given how many people take SSRIs, and how poorly many ME patients react to it, I'm a bit confused.

From a document on Dr Smith's protocol.



From the same document. Dr Le Fanu, inspired by the SSRI results invited ME patients to try sertraline via his newspaper column.



Finally from a testimonial of a mother and daughter posted by @Jenny a while back:

Any anti-depressant will make you into a non-human, imo.

Lived with different people, on/off anti-depressants. They have no conscience and will/can hurt you/anybody.

 

[JES]

Any anti-depressant will make you into a non-human, imo.

Lived with different people, on/off anti-depressants. They have no conscience and will/can hurt you/anybody.

If anti-depressants made all people non-human that will hurt anybody, then in my country there would be over one tenth of the population walking around as zombies doing crazy things. Not seen that. No offense, but first you need to understand that there are different types of anti-depressants that work in very different ways before making such a generalized statement. Secondly, there are conditions like severe depression where anti-depressants may be the only way out. I would not even rule out antidepressants entirely for CFS/ME treatment, because many of them have interesting immunomodulatory effects. But so far there is no conclusive evidence.

 

[jpcv]

One more anedoctal episode:
After a few months of being sick, I decided to take Escitalopram because I was having some anxiety disorder symptoms.
I started with a low dose to prevent a worsening of the anxiety symptoms,and as I was using around 5 mg I started to feel MUCH better from my ME symptoms, something like my batteries had been recharged again...then after afew days this wonderfull feeling just disapeared totally...
So for some people, for some reason, SSRI might have some activity.

 

[Hip]

I started to feel MUCH better from my ME symptoms, something like my batteries had been recharged again...then after afew days this wonderfull feeling just disapeared totally.

This phenomenon of a drug temporarily making great improvements in ME/CFS symptoms, and then mysteriously stopping working, is not uncommon in ME/CFS. I experienced this once myself, with the antidepressant bupropion (Wellbutrin): even at a low dose, I went into near remission for two weeks, and thought I had found my personal cure for ME/CFS.

But then after two weeks, it just stopped working, and I could never get this drug to work again for me. Even after taking a break from it for several months, and then trying it again, it no longer worked.