Posted by bleauberry on September 11, 2012, at 13:05:31
In reply to Need out of the box suggestions, posted by chicagokat on September 10, 2012, at 10:42:19
Ok, cool, I saw a good clue in your post. Ritalin. That says something.
Right off the bat what pops into my head is Savella or Parnate. I mention Savella because even though it is an SNRI (the only true SNRI other than clomipramine), it has some mechanical similarities to ritalin.
I failed ECT too, and about a backpack full of meds that probably looks like your backpack full of meds. I responded nice to Savella within the first few days. That also happens to me on Ritalin, except the tolerance issue builds real fast, and it gets kind of nasty with agitation issues. It was a while ago, I read it on pubmed, there is some science showing some mechanical similarities between savella and ritalin.
have you combined SSRIs plus TCAs? Such as Zoloft+Nortriptyline, anything similar? If not, you should put that on the list too. It's totally different than either alone.
When you say you've tried SNRIs, if one of them was not savella, then you have not tried snris. That's because they are actually ssris with a marketing gimmic. Effexor for example is 30 parts serotonin to 1 part NE....almost pure serotonin. At highe doses the ratio changes to a little more of NE, but is still dominantly serotonin. Cymbalta is 9 parts serotonin to 1 part NE. Not exactly an snri there either. But it sure sounds good and makes sales go up. Prozac actually increases NE in the brain more than those two supposed snris do.
Interesting how you said you felt worse on ECT. From session 1 to session 10 I felt considerably worse too. It wasn't until the 12th session I actually improved a lot, but only for a couple days, and then it was gone, back to darkness. Thankfully I was so out of it during the ECT weeks the memory insults helped get through the rough times.
Parnate is sort of in the stimulant category, and may not have the same issues you had with nardil.
My lyme specialist said some of his patients present with only one symptom.....resistant depression. Now before anyone says there he goes again with that lyme crap, it just has to be put on the table for viewing. It's true. The underlying cause....not a deficiency of neurotransmitters, but rather a contamination of them. You would not believe how powerful the neurotoxins from stealth infections can be. They are....toxins. There aint no antidepressant on the planet gonna do anything about that. A few specialty herbs however are very specific for that. I'll mention the heavy weights if you want to learn more.....
Resveratrol made from polygonum cupsidatum (japanese knotweed), not resveratrol derived from grapes. Rhodiola Rosea. Smilax. As well as any vitamins/minerals known to mop up junk....mega dose vit c, high dose selenium, and overall a much higher intake of all vitamins/minerals. Therapeutic intake is different than normal healthy intake. Therapeutic requires much more.Grocery cart choices also can make a huge difference. There are so many people that have said the single best thing they did to improve their mood and symptom was.....(example) stopping dairy, stopping gluten, stopping whatever food they identified during challenge tests. Pretty simple. Just skip a suspect food for a couple weeks, then see what happens when you eat it again. No difference, cool. Big difference, you just found something no doctor was ever going to find. And other than that, is my standing that anyone with any kind of chronic symptoms needs to include careful food choices the same way they approach meds. Food really is powerful. We are not aware of that because we've been trained by consensus society habits that are different and do not take into account chronic illness. Just because something is called food and a lot of people eat it, does not mean it is good for you. Personally, when I read the ingredient label, if there is something there that is chemical not food, or something I don't recognize, or something I can't pronounce, forget it, I'm not eating it. Someone else can have that crap if they want. Eat to please your body, not your taste buds. Taste buds change to like whatever you eat. I used to love donuts everyday, a favorite. I've been gluten free for a few years now and I do not want a donut, they still taste ok, not great like they used to, and feel like rocks in my stomach. Every plate of food I eat has lots of colors in it....mostly from a variety of fresh or slightly cooked veggies and fruits. A lot of them I was not crazy about, but now I love them.
My biggest gains in mood improvement started when I began approaching it as lyme or lyme-like (lots of similar stuff out there) instead of depression. The depression was just a symptom of something else. No wonder the psych meds failed so often. Post ECT, the limited number of meds that offer me any potential include savella, ritalin, vicodin, parnate, nort+zoloft. Right now I am not on any meds. The antibiotic doxycycline for a few months probably got me the largest gains of all. Don't get me wrong, I'm not all that well, may never be, I'm just sayin, depression can and does respond to other stuff besides what is in the psych toolbox. And especially when the depression is strongly resistant, that is a huge clue the depression is not what we think it is.
Anyway, I hope you can get some ideas to work with.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1025287
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120830/msgs/1025392.html