Posted by Stephen Martin on April 22, 2010, at 15:02:42
In reply to Re: Going back to old-school - lithium., posted by linkadge on July 3, 2009, at 18:21:31
> 25mg is a lowish dose of 5-htp. I have used it intermittently with an MAOI without problem (not sure about with nortriptyline though).
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> >What do you think about taking N-acetylcysteine >(NAC)?
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> I personally don't like the stuff - but it depends on your symtpoms. I found NAC made me very irritable. Alpha lipoic acid was better (for me at least).
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> You might try sleep deprivation in combination with lithium. There is some evidence of sustaining the AD effect of lithium with periodic SD.
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> I remember when I was taking lithium + clomipramine. I would be fine for about 4 days then start to crash into depression. At this point I would skip the evening medication dose, pull an all nighter and take meds as usual the next night. This would last for another 4-5 days.
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> It can be a little taxing on the system (you have to prepare a completely stress free day the next day). But it quickly got me out of a bad funk.
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> Its great though. I remember feeling like trash (all anxious, worthless, hyper ruminative), then about 2:30 something started to shift over the course of about 5 minutes. Then all of a sudden..normal.
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> Linkadge
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>That bit on sleep deprivation is quite interesting, indeed! That lends some creedance to the theory that depression and bi-polar depression have a connection to disruption of the circadian rhythm - in other words, the depressed person isn't as 'awake' as they ought to be during the day; contrarily, Manic patients typically encounter insomnia. It the same with seasonal affective disorder - the reduced daylight in winter confuses the brain's clock into thinking it should sleep more, etc.
Interesting stuff.
poster:Stephen Martin
thread:904699
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100416/msgs/944553.html