Posted by Rzip on December 8, 2000, at 22:28:00
In reply to playing with the brain?, posted by mr. man on December 1, 2000, at 3:08:06
I always thought it is frightening how the pharmacological aspect of mental health treatments work. It is almost like people just pick hormonal pills randomly from a collective pile of pills or something.
I mean, biochemically, in terms of enzyme functions, your body is just not built to tolerate excess and conflicting side reactions. Takes too much energy (use up precious ATPs and you suffer symptoms).
What I still do not understand is why the medications in treating mental health is so random and unspecific (a try and error process); wherelse in somatic symptoms, you can target right on the specific enzymatic reaction. So, what I am thinking is why and how did medical treatments in the mental health field get to be this way, where clients feel it is o.k. to pick and choose and switch on and off and what-not. I mean, we are still talking about the same biochemistry reactions here. It is just crazy. I would definitively never touch any mental health drug since the whole process just do not make any sense to me.
So, my advice to you, Mr. Man is to find out from various doctors (second and third opinions) exactly what enzymatic deficiency you have within your illness. For instance, let us say that patient A suffers from depression...and it is due primarily to deficiency in the transformation of Dopamine to Norepinephrine (noradrenaline). So let us take a look at this problem and how it is usually treated in the wide public arena:
The reactions is as follows and let us assume that deficiencies at any of these steps would contribute to depression:
1) TYROSINE to L-DOPA (let us say that Medicine A is the predominate choice here)
2) L-DOPA to DOPAMINE (Medicine B for treatment)
3) DOPAMINE to NOREPINEPHRINE (Our patient of interest, let us say that Medicine C is the treatment of choice)
4) NOREPINEPHRINE to EPINEPHRINE (Medicine D)Now, in the wide-spread public, it is believed that Medicine A, B, C, and D are the same because they all treat depression. But that concept is wrong. If you give our patient Medicine B which catalyzes L-DOPA to DOPAMINE, then the biochemical problem of our patient's deficiency in the transformation of DOPAMINE to NOREPINEPHRINE is still not resolved. Worse, now you have a patient who is not only suffering from physiological responses due to acute stress from his original deficiency; but the patient also has excess dopamine floating around in his body system. Excess of any neurotransmitters in the body is not good because then the body has to get rid of it (hence, the unpleasant symptoms and wierdness).
Anyway, what I am trying to figure out is how in the world did the mental health profession get to such a point where patients/clients actually feel "safe" in picking and chosing among medicines A, B, C, and D? I just do not understand it.
In the above biochemical example, medicine B is a decarboxylase going from DOPA to DOPAMINE; and medicine C is a hydroxylase going from DOPAMINE to NOREPINEPHRINE. Two different types of enzymatic reactions! Scary scenario.
*** NOTE: Just so I make it clear, I am NOT criticizing any individuals on this board at all...What I am questioning is the logic of the medical aspect of the mental health profession. Although, I have null right to actually criticize anything (I have no medical degrees or anything)...what I can not help doing is to try and make sense of this.
As long as I do not understand it, I will continue to be fearfully of this whole approach to medicine. It is just not right. I mean, why can't physicians in the mental health field target specific enzyme transformation deficiency, when the somatic doctors can. The obvious answer is time and short duration of medical trials in terms of Mental health history. However, it still does not excuse the fact that clients seem to think it is safe to pick, choose, and actually ingest randomly categorized medicines! I mean why should this practice be supported?
The ultimate question of course is that since there isn't any major ramifications from this drug practice, I, myself must be missing some chunk of knowledge. So feel free to enlighten me :-)
- Rzip
poster:Rzip
thread:49740
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20001130/msgs/50223.html