Ketamine the next prozac?

[Dman]

I was reading an article on BBC online, when I saw this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5253800.stm).


Any thoughts?

On a side note, i suffered from depression for almost 4 years and I am not sure if its a coincidence or not, but the time I started slowly getting away from it was when I stopped the anti-depressents to do K (which I had not tried up to that point).

[Ganjasaurusrex]

Ive commented on depression many times here.

You are not lacking a synthetic chemical.

Pull any number of nutrient building blocks out of your diet and you will get depressed or develope other types of mood disorders.

We know that ascorbic acid, (vitamin c) converts the amino acids,
L- tyrosine and L-tryptophan to form seratonin.

You must understand Pharmacuetical companies cannot copy or patent these naturally occuring compounds and molecules or amino acids. They can only create drugs that mimic their effects. They make it sound as if depression is a great mystery to be solved by "research".

There are humanitarian scientists and there are profit motivated scientists.

You will find this pattern of mimic and copying many times over in other substances as well.

So what is more profitable, to sell you a mimic product or tell you what to consume to alleviate the problem?

Modern man has drifted away from his ancient paleo diets of fish and is now consuming more trash from the commerical food industry responsible for a lot of these nutrient deficiencies that in turn lead to these mental states.

You dont find nearly as many mental conditions in parts of the world like Japan as you do in the States. Because they consume more fish.

Fish oil is very important for a number of mental states including depression, shcitzophrenia, post pardom depression and bi-polar.

Just use your search box. (fish oil depression). You will find tons of well founded scientific backed research to support this. Many times supplemental fish oil works by itself. These are the scientists who are responsible and understand that these mood states are indeed dietary defiencies.

I posted a link a while back to an article from a scientist who did studies for Physciatric Times. Fish oil was all he used and showed amazing results.

So there are several approaches to natural remedies for depression.

Fall and winter are well known to be depression seasons due to the lack of vitamin D/D-3 synthesizing in the skin which then processes other vitamins in the body for depression. The lack of sunshine in these months causes depression.

This is why its important to supplement dry form D/D-3 in the fall and winter and in spring and summer to get 20 minutes of 50% full body exposure to the sun three times a week.

The problems with pharm drugs is there is a ton of side effects that go with these drugs. Some block vital nutrients in the body and cause more unrelated problems. Sexual side effects and lack of libido is common. Who wants that?

I would say make sure your getting adequate protien so you are derriving the amino acids, L-tryptophan/L-tyrosine from that protien. Turkey for example.

Supplement with 2-5 grams of ascorbic acid, 4 times a day to keep plasma levels constant as it is water soluble and quickly eliminated. Supplement with fish oil capsules EPA only not DHA. DHA can actually worsen it. As long as the EPA to DHA ratio is very low in the mix it is ok, meaning DHA is very low.

This is far healthier and far cheaper and far more effective at curing insteading of covering up the problem of deficiency.


Here is a link with other approaches.

http://www.healingwithnutrition.com/newsclips/blues.html



Have a good one.

[420mory]

Researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health report on an antidepressant with a difference. Ketamine, better known as an anaesthetic, can relieve depression in just hours.

The 'club drug' ketamine may be the fastest-acting antidepressant ever tested, researchers report today.

A team based at the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, studied ketamine in 17 people with major depression. All the subjects had failed to respond to treatment with standard antidepressant drugs or more drastic methods, such as electroshock therapy. But 71% felt better the day after taking ketamine, and 35% still felt better a week later. None improved when dosed with a placebo.

Most striking, the scientists say, was that some patients felt better less than 2 hours after taking ketamine. Currently approved drugs can take weeks to remedy depression. The work is published in the Archives of General Psychiatry1.

"It's almost like there's a sound barrier for those us who do depression research, and we have not been able to break it," says Carlos Zarate, chief of the mood and anxiety disorders research unit at the NIMH, and first author of the study. "That's the exciting part of this â?? now there is evidence that we can."

Zarate and his colleagues are not advocating that doctors start giving depressed patients ketamine right away. Large doses of the drug can cause brain damage in rodents, and its long-term health effects have not been studied in people.

"We don't want to give anyone the message to run out on the street and use ketamine," says Nuri Farber, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St Louis, who was not involved with the work. "It makes you crazy â?? that's why it's a banned drug."

Cure-all

Scientists are currently testing a wide range of recreationally used-and-abused drugs, including ecstasy (MDMA; see 'The ups and downs of ecstasy') and psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, as potential therapeutics.

Ketamine, invented in 1962 as an anaesthetic, is chemically related to phencyclidine (PCP), also known as angel dust. Both induce hallucinations and out-of-body experiences, hence their use as illegal psychedelics.

Ketamine has milder psychotic effects than PCP and is therefore also used as a legal anesthetic and horse tranquillizer. Scientists are studying whether it can be used to treat alcoholism and chronic pain, as well as depression2.

Short-cut

Ketamine targets a brain protein called the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor. Existing antidepressants target brain chemicals such as serotonin, but there is growing evidence that these drugs eventually affect NMDA receptors. Ketamine may work so quickly because it takes a short-cut straight to this part of the brain.

The psychotic effects of ketamine, such as euphoria, wore off before the antidepressant effects kicked in, Zarate's team found, suggesting that the drug's psychotic and antidepressant effects are separate. One surprising aspect is that other drugs that induce euphoria, such as cocaine, usually lead to a depressive crash once the high wears off.

Zarate's group is looking for substances with some of the chemical properties of ketamine, such as the ability to target NMDA, without the psychedelic effects.

Other scientists, including Farber, have developed drugs that can be taken with ketamine to damp its side effects. Giving these drugs together might help patients feel better without getting high.

Source: Nature.com (http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060807/full/060807-1.html)