Posted by bleauberry on December 17, 2013, at 6:00:03
In reply to Treating Depression via the Immune System, posted by Iansf on December 10, 2013, at 16:17:31
I don't know what they mean by "false". What exactly constitutes not false? Who made the subjective determination? Why did they? Can they prove it reliably and dependably every time?
I know a lot about the immune system. Unfortunately, that isn't very much, because we as humans don't know very much about it. If we did, HIV would be a non issue, colds and flus not a problem. Fibro, CFS, Lyme....no problem. But obviously these continue to be huge problems where the best we can do is attempt to manage them, sometimes cure them. As far as I know, there just is not enough factual wisdom of the immune system to be able to claim something as false or true in its treatment.
Heck, even simple basic foods have negative or positive impact on the immune system. That's one reason Americans are so unhealthy. They eat the wrong stuff. Generally speaking. Plants are full of good stuff for our immune system, stuff that guides it, adjusts it, modulates it, beefs it up....but we don't eat much in the way of plants compared to the other foods we eat.
Anyway, as Scott said, the tetracycline family is a good place to start. Doxy is the most common but tends to plateau and relapse. Tetra is similar except doesn't plateau or relapse the way Doxy does. Mino is more geared for suspicions of intracellular infection. All of them have anti-inflammatory and other side mechanisms which happen to be beneficial.
Doxy, Tetra, Mino, Bactrim, Cipro, Factive, Rifampin, Flagyland a couple others. Those I have taken. None in particular helped with my depression and other psych symptoms....it was more of an accumulative effect over time. I am pretty sure my biggest improvement came from anti-Bartonella treatments (a common and devastating co-infection of lyme, also contracted from cats as well as ticks), and these treatments were high dose Doxy, Rifampin, and Cipro. Doxy is usually dose at 200mg as the max. But to penetrate the brain, it needs to be 400mg, and for it to become deadly rather than simply suppressive, it needs to be at least 400mg, and is sometimes dosed up to 600mg.
If infection is underlying someone's psych symptoms, and two MDs who specialize in this area claim that most psych symptoms are infection, then one needs to know this is a long term approach requiring months and even years of treatment to reverse the disease. 3 months is a bare minimum. Anything less is a total waste of time.
Lyme specialists tell me that their hypothesis is that ABX improves symptoms not from the actual killing of bugs, but rather the way they reset the immune system back to normal. The actual mechanisms are mystery. All we know for sure is that this happens commonly in the clinical setting, whether we can explain it or not.
Antidepressants and other psych drugs fill the purpose of temporary assistance while undergoing other longer term strategies for healing. But we tend to see them as long term or forever drugs, rather than temporary assists. They don't cure anything. On the other hand, ABX are slow, but they actually cure, to a point where psych drugs are either no longer needed or are at much reduced doses.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1055921
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20131209/msgs/1056409.html