Posted by joe schmoe on June 29, 2011, at 12:03:56
I have recently gotten into beer tasting as a hobby and noticed a curious thing. Some days beers taste delicious, and other days the exact same beers taste horribly bitter. This puzzled me for a long time until now, when I found this study
"Serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) blunt bitter taste acutely (minutes), but enhance it chronically (hours) in normal healthy humans."
Apparently SSRIs in the study decreased the bitterness taste threshold by 53% (!). If I am reading this correctly, it means things taste twice as bitter as they should.
Since I sometimes skip a dose of celexa, or take half a dose, or take it at different times of the day (it has a 35 hour half life so I don't pay close attention to when I take it) it could explain why sometimes, beer is tasty and other times, it is horribly bitter.
I am tempted to start some hourly taste experiments with a bitter food (dark chocolate) to see how my sense of taste varies throughout the day based on when and at what dosage I take the celexa.
Anyone else ever have experience with ssris making food more bitter? Ever experiment regarding the best time to take the ssri to reduce this effect? Or is skipping a dose the only way to get a normal sense of taste?
Just read Viibryd is coming out nationwide on Friday, which happens to be when my next appointment is with my pdoc, so hopefully I will be moving on to that drug - although I suspect it will have the same bitterness taste issues.
poster:joe schmoe
thread:989763
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110619/msgs/989763.html