Posted by bleauberry on February 28, 2008, at 17:32:33
In reply to FIGURE ME OUT AND YOU ARE SMARTER THAN ANY DOCS, posted by AMY II on February 28, 2008, at 0:43:21
I wish we all had the answers you are looking for. We all need them ourselves.
All I can say is, similar to what henryo's response to your post said, is to screw logic and try new stuff. Most important, screw the logic. If you search archives or sites where people rate meds, you will find people who found Wellbutrin to be their magical antianxiety med, after failing just about everything else normally prescribed for anxiety. Go figure. Wellbutrin. Doesn't make sense. Someone here a few months ago was on massive doses of Klonopin and still desperate. As I recall, huge relief came very quickly shortly after starting Lithium. Go figure. Lithium is for bipolar, not anxiety. Bottom line, don't go near anything similar to what you have already tried. Instead, venture into brand new territory, even if whatever the drug is doesn't make sense, and perhaps especially if it doesn't make sense.
You mentioned something. Hormones. Those are powerful powerful powerful. Not to be taken with a ho-hum attitude. Major psych symptoms can result to where the best of drug combos may only smooth the edges but come nowhere near what you are looking for.
Hey, we are all guilty of saying, "Mood disorder, must be in the brain." Psychiatrists make their living off that. Just my opinion, but that is a huge mistake. The brain is attached to the rest of the body, feeds off the rest of the body, and is impacted strongly by what happens in the body. Mood problems of all kinds can and often do come from other places than the brain.
Mainstream medical lab tests are fairly useless for diagnosing your stuff. When someone suggests you have bloodwork done to rule out other causes, I almost cough. Typical bloodwork looks at a lot of real important stuff, but not the kind of stuff directly related to your symptoms. Did you look at TSH, freeT3, freeT4, reverseT3, and the 3 thyroid antibodies? Did you look at what cortisol is doing over a 24 hour period with 4 saliva samples?
Do you have, or ever had, silver fillings (amalgams) in your teeth? Regardless, all psych patients, in my opinion, NEED to consider lead and/or mercury toxicity and not laugh it off. All psych patients should own the book Amalgam Illness, even if they never had amalgams. There is a ton to learn about what goes wrong in the body and brain that causes symptoms, and a ton of it is in that book. Besides mercury and lead, copper is another one. People can become copper toxic and display your symptoms and history by simpling taking vitamins that have copper and drinking water from copper pipes.
Food intolerance testing? Can you guarantee by lab results that you are not intolerant of any particular foods? If not, well. What is a most common primary symptom of a delayed food reaction? Massive anxiety, followed the addition of lethargy on top of the anxiety to make quite a strange brew.
What is your reaction to Magnesium Glycinate? Is it calming? Sedating? Neutral? Runny stools? You would not be the first impossible psych case solved with simple high dose magnesium.
The moral of the story is...look where you have not looked, and try new stuff. Don't limit your search to things that work just between the ears. You might actually do yourself a huge favor by seeing a good integrative doctor rather than a psychiatrict specialist. There is obviously something impacting your brain with some power. Question is, what is causing that impact? Is it the brain itself, or is it from outside the brain?
General stuff. Probably not the direct pinpoint help you, and we all, want. Mostly endorsed by underground medicine, amalgam illness patients, autistic children's mothers, and integrative doctors, and often seen as quackery by mainstream medicine. I visit lots of forums. With all due respect to my former psychiatrists, I must admit I have seen and continue to see solid gains happen to impossible cases when people test for real causes rather than blindly attempt to treat a set of labeled neatly categorized symptoms.
Ok. So you just want some drug ideas. Well, of the ones that do make sense for your symptoms, but haven't been tried, go for those. Even if reports are sketchy or the drug isn't used that often. So what. Try it. Neurontin for example gets bad press generally, but for the minority of people it works for it really really works where nothing else does. You don't want to overlook something like that. For things that do not make sense, well, go for it. Honestly though, I think your best bet is to widen the scope of what is impacting the brain. A psychiatrist will not be able to help much with that. So if you insist on your primary treatment coming from a psychiatrist you are essentially limiting your potential of success.
Disclaimer. Lots of personal opinions. Not anti-psychiatrist, it's just that in tough cases it becomes more important to look at the whole person rather just between the ears, and they are not specialized at that.
poster:bleauberry
thread:815112
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080221/msgs/815211.html