Posted by blueberry on March 24, 2006, at 21:11:37
In reply to My Own Theory on Possible Causes of Depression, posted by Phillipa on March 24, 2006, at 14:13:35
I personally think hormones are a huge factor, a major factor, and a hugely ignored factor. Doctors try to cover up the symptoms with drugs, but never really treat the cause of the symptoms. If neurotransmitters are low or sluggish, it's probably because of poor hormone influence on their activity. Just my opinion.
High cortisol...anxiety depression. Low cortisol..anxiety depression. Thyroid...even when lab results appear normal compared to the general population, they might not be actually normal for a particular person. Subclinical hypothyroidism, or where lab results look ok but there are prominent symptoms anyway, I think is more common than most doctors realize. But they don't see it that way, they see the end result which is malfunctioning neurotransmitters.
What's sad is how easy and cheap it is to test treatments on patients to see if it works. Ultra low dose cortisol for hypoadrenalism can work miracles in a day to a week. T3 for thyroid can work for lots of people, and psychiatrists even use it to augment drugs without even checking thyroid levels first.
I think any depression anxiety patient should be thoroughly hormone tested prior to making a psychiatric diagnosis. The problem is that doctors are not trained that way.
poster:blueberry
thread:624196
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060322/msgs/624323.html