Posted by bleauberry on April 16, 2015, at 7:37:59
In reply to Lithium Carbonate induced Anxiety/Panic Attacks, posted by ayhan celebi on April 15, 2015, at 17:30:59
Lithium has many varying mechanisms throughout the body, as does any salt or mineral, so I think it is difficult to pin down what is happening or why.
One of the lesser talked about mechanisms is that it can boost norepinephrine activity, which would certainly explain things. But it isn't that simple.
The thing I personally do not agree with is the journey to get to a certain target dose, and accidentally miss the exact best dose because it wasn't being looked for. The doc is looking at 3000mg as a target perhaps, but how is anyone to know that 450mg is your best dose but they blew right past it too soon. And now it's so late in the game, maybe things got messed up.
Who knows. Just sayin....weird stuff happens. Me, I just do what works the best and it is usually not a dose or a substance that an MD chose for me. But that's just me.I hear ya....it doesn't seem fair to have to be made more nuts in an effort to try to get un-nuts. Crazy. All of these meds are so powerful I bet half the docs that write scripts for them wouldn't be able to tolerate the same doses they dish out every day if they tried them themselves just...to be fair about it and be able to empathize authentically with the patient.
My long journeys taught me that the whole anxiety spectrum of symptoms is better managed or cured with botanical medicines and/or supplements than pharmaceuticals. They have much more "blanket coverage" for whatever might be going on that we will never know, they cover a lot of possibilities sort of like a shot gun approach, and present the body with a multitude of health benefits....which is the pharms don't do.
For just one example, a common yellow plant compound called berberine is something I take every day and have for a couple years. What does it do? Anti-anxiety. Anti-depression. Anti-fungus. Anti-biotic. Anti-Lyme. Pro-blood sugar balance. Pro-immune system support. Pro-blood cleaning and thinning. And if I keep going, this will get much longer. See what I mean? meds can't do that.
I'm not suggesting berberine or anything else....just trying to make a point....anxiety is complicated....many mechanisms out of kilter....wide blanket spectrum is needed....to cover many possible causes all at once.
In the med field alone, no herbs, I think my favorite approach for anything bipolar related or schizo related, is the antipsychotics in combo with SSRI or SNRI or Ritalin. My fav in that camp is Zyprexa. Zyprexa with Prozac IMO should be choice #1 for anything bipolar with depression. Why antipsychotics? Why Zyprexa? Because if we were to spend a few days researching archives of this site, reviews at other sites, everything we can find on patient opinions of treatments....the antipsychotics win that battle pretty easy, and it appears like the best success stories had Zyprexa in them, followed up with Abilify and sometimes Seroquel. Not scientific....just general impression upon completion of the project. But Lithium?....not. You won't find the same results with that. Or any other mood stabilizer.
The antipsychotics have one thing about them that is sort of in a way similar to herbs.....wide spectrum mechanisms that hit a lot of stuff all at once.
Hang in there! It does get better!
poster:bleauberry
thread:1078288
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20150407/msgs/1078297.html