Posted by morgan miller on October 26, 2010, at 10:41:47
In reply to Re: adding lamotrigine--Morgan Miller, posted by moongoo on October 26, 2010, at 5:30:40
> Please tell me what is dangerous about Lamictal. I take 200 mh for depression for bipolar and it seems to help but am very very worried about hurting my body.
How much is it helping? Does it help more than anything you've tried? What other medications have you tried?
I'm sure some people have taken Lamictal for years and been fine, or at least they couldn't feel any bad happening. The same goes with other psychiatric medications, including SSRIs. Some say that Prozac altered their brain for the worse permanently, while others have been on Prozac for 20 years and feel fine.
All I know is, Lamictal is one of those drugs that I often hear about people experiencing what appear to be fairly disturbing short term and long term negative effects, more so than most other medications. I said it earlier in this thread, it appears Lamictal can negatively impact something called Long Term Potentiation(LTP), something you don't want to mess with. It also depletes your body of folate, so you should be supplementing extra folate, and it should be in the form of l methylfolate(Metafolin). Metafolin may actually upregulate monoamine neurotransmitters, possibly contributing to a better antidepressant response to psychiatric treatment, especially treatments that are specifically geared toward depression. Another thing that concerns me about Lamictal is it was originally made as an anti-epileptic, not a mood stabilizer and especially not an antidepressant. Anti-epileptics are very very powerful drugs that do much more to our brains than target neurotransmitters and other things that play a role in depression(I know I know, antidepressants do other things than just target neurotransmitters). If you don't have epilepsy and your brain does not need a drug that targets the parts of your brain that may cause seizures, why would you take an ant-epileptic. Unless someone has exhausted all other possibilities and they found Lamictal is the only medication that relieves their depression without unwanted side effects, I think it's a bit extreme to be taking an ant-epileptic for depression. I know Scott takes Lamictal because he has tried everything in the toolbox and right now Lamictal is one of the few things that seems to help. This is a case where it makes sense to be on Lamictal.
Does your doctor suspect that you may be bipolar? If so, the use of Lamictal would make more sense, especially if you are suffering from bipolar depression, but not mania.
poster:morgan miller
thread:946827
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20101020/msgs/967026.html