Antidepressant drugs have been used with varying degrees of success in treating the sleeplessness of FMS and CFS. Many of our patients are on SSRIs. SSRIs are supposed to help a patient hang on to and use his naturally occurring stores of serotonin. This is like using a gasoline additive to help increase the efficiency of your car’s fuel. But most of the patients I see are running on fumes! A gasoline additive won’t help. Using 5HTP is like pouring gasoline straight into your tank; you fill your brain with serotonin. There’s no need for an additive when you can simply replace your serotonin stores any time you get low.
Why are my Serotonin Levels so low?
We are all born with a stress-coping savings account. Each day we are bombarded by stress. This can be from physical, emotional, mental, or chemical stress; physical labor, an argument, guilt, depression, long work hours, over exercising, pollution, medications, food additives, and pesticides. The stress-coping savings account is filled up with stress-busting chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, magnesium, B vitamins, cortisol, and DHEA. These chemicals are released every time we are subjected to stress. We make countless withdrawals from this account every day.
Making Deposits
We make deposits into our stress-coping savings account when we go into deep sleep. If you don’t go into deep, restorative sleep (you should be dreaming at night) you’ll be making more withdrawals than deposits–this leads to bankruptcy. Once you’ve bankrupted your stress-coping savings account, poor health becomes a way of life. A vicious cycle emerges. You need high levels of serotonin to fall into deep sleep each night. Once in deep sleep, you make more serotonin. If you become depleted in serotonin, you don’t go into deep sleep–and you don’t make serotonin. This results in more pain, fatigue, digestive problems, headaches, and susceptibility to infections.
Why Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors don’t always work
Many of my patients are on anti-depressants known as Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors (SSRI’s). SSRI’s (Prozac, Paxil, Lexapro, Celexa, Zoloft, Effexor, etc.) are supposed to help a patient hang onto and use the serotonin in their brain. It’s like using a gasoline additive to help increase the efficiency of your car’s fuel. Most of the patients I see are running on fumes and an additive won’t help. There is no serotonin to re-uptake! If your brain is running on serotonin fumes, an additive isn’t going to help. This is why many people try one anti-depressant after another in an attempt to find one that works. To see which brain chemicals you may be low in, take my Brain Bio Test in my book, Treating and Beating Fibromyalgia and CFS, or read it online at www.DrRodger.com
No one has a Prozac Deficiency
For the last few years I’ve been using the amino acid Tryptophan or 5HTP. 5HTP, along with B6, B12, B3, and magnesium is what makes serotonin. People don’t have an anti-depressant deficiency. They may have a serotonin deficiency. Increasing serotonin levels with 5HTP is like pouring serotonin straight into your brain. There is no need for an additive.
75 percent of the response to antidepressants is duplicated by placebo!
An article that appeared in the American Psychology Association’s journal reveals that prescription anti-depressants are not much better than placebo.
Although antidepressant medication is widely regarded as effective, a recent meta-analysis of published clinical trials indicates that 75 percent of the response to antidepressants is duplicated by placebo.
The report analyses the data submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval of recent antidepressant medications.
The authors analyzed the efficacy data submitted to the FDA for the six most widely prescribed antidepressants approved between 1987 and 1999:
- Prozac
- Paxi
- Zoloft
- Effexor
- Serzone and
- Celexa.
“More important, the FDA data constitute the basis on which these medications were approved. Approval of these medications implies that these particular data are strong enough and reliable enough to warrant approval. To the extent that these data are flawed, the medications should not have been approved.
In order to generalize the findings of the clinical trial to a larger patient population, FDA reviewers sought a completion rate of 70% or better for these typically 6-week trials. Only 4 of 45 trials, however, reached this objective.”
The Emperor's New Drugs: An Analysis of Antidepressant Medication Data Submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Irving Kirsch
University of Connecticut
Thomas J. Moore
The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services
Alan Scoboria and Sarah S. Nicholls
University of Connecticut
Prevention & Treatment, Volume 5, Article 23, posted July 15, 2002 American Psychology Association
Roughly 28 million Americans -- one in every ten -- have taken Prozac, Zoloft, or Paxil or a similar antidepressant, yet very few patients are aware of the dangers of these drugs, nor are they aware that better, safer alternatives exist. Now Harvard Medical School's Dr. Joseph Glenmullen documents the ominous long-term side effects associated with these and other serotonin-boosting medications.
These side-effects include neurological disorders, such as disfiguring facial and whole-body tics that can indicate brain damage; sexual dysfunction in up to 60 percent of users; debilitating withdrawal symptoms, including visual hallucinations, electric shock-like sensations in the brain, dizziness, nausea, and anxiety; and a decrease of antidepressant effectiveness in about 35 percent of long-term users.
New Warnings on Antidepressants’ Link to Suicide
New warnings have surfaced about the risk of suicide from selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant drugs, which include Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft.
Drug regulators have reported that Paxil, which is closely related to the other SSRIs, may increase the risk of suicide among teenagers and children, especially during the first few weeks of treatment. Regulators have recommended that no new Paxil prescriptions be written for patients under the age of 18 years. Some say the suicide risk may extend to adults as well.
Recent studies have focused on the antidepressants’ effectiveness, as studies have found that the drugs are no more effective than a placebo, rather than their safety. SSRIs bring in billions of dollars in sales each year.
New York Times August 7, 2003
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