Breakthroughs In Anxiety & Depression Research

Wow. So… it’s finally occurring to the establishment that stress and loss could actually be responsible for most forms of depression and anxiety…

*face palm*

And so medicines that quickly address mood and anxiety disorders, actually help grow new brain cells and protect against stress in the brain, are at long last getting the attention they deserve!

It’s all thanks to a bunch of people, including researchers, noticing how healing and PROTECTIVE certain substances like ketamine, ecstasy and ‘shrooms’ actually are. They work within HOURS, with the effects lasting WEEKS. Using talk therapy at the same time can actually erase PTSD and entrenched depression that are otherwise “a lifelong affliction that can only be managed, not cured.” Make no mistake, these feel like miracles to long-suffering patients who can all too easily give up hope of being fully productive, let alone HAPPY human beings.

Here’s a great article discussing much of this: getpocket.com/explore/item/a-vaccine-for-depression

The biggest obstacles are that these are either long past a patent date, or are natural substances, and so are not profitable to Big Pharma. It doesn’t help that our puritanical society freaks out over ANYthing that dares to make us actually feel good! The horrors!

“Depression is the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting 30 percent of Americans at some point in their lives. But despite half a century of research, ubiquitous advertising, and blockbuster sales, antidepressant drugs just don’t work very well. They treat depression as if it were caused by a chemical imbalance: Pump in more of one key ingredient, or sop up another, and you will have fixed the problem.

But the correspondence between these chemicals (like serotonin) and depression is relatively weak. An emerging competitive theory, inspired in part by ketamine’s effectiveness, has it that psychiatric disease is less about chemical imbalance than structural changes in the brain—and that a main cause of these changes is psychological stress. “I really do think stress is to mental illness as cigarettes are to heart disease,” says Gerard Sanacora, the psychiatry professor running the ketamine trial at Yale.

The theory describes stress grinding down individual neurons gradually, as storms do roof shingles. This, in turn, changes the nature of their connections to one another and the structure of the brain. Ketamine, along with some similar molecules, acts to strengthen the neuron against that damage, affecting not just the chemistry of the brain but also its structure.”

For many decades, experts have been treating depression on the premise of it being a chemical disorder.

“But the evidence [that a lack of serotonin causes depression] is slim. Prozac raises serotonin levels within hours yet doesn’t change mood for weeks. When scientists deplete serotonin in healthy people, it does not make them sad. And when doctors measure serotonin levels in the cerebrospinal fluid of depressed people, they do not find a consistent deficiency; one 2008 study even found increased levels of serotonin in depressed people’s brains. The drug tianeptine, discovered in the late ‘80s, decreases serotonin levels yet relieves depression. And studies have shown that people falling in love show lower, not higher, levels of serotonin.“

So what IS the culprit?

“Stress in moderation is not harmful, but motivating. Cortisol, a stress hormone, cycles daily; synchronizing with sunlight, it helps arouse us for the day. In health, the hormone spikes when we need to pay attention: a test, a job interview, a date. Studies on rodents and humans confirm that brief, mild increases in stress are good for the brain, particularly for memory. During these spikes, neurons are born and expand in the hippocampus, the seahorse-shaped finger of tissue responsible for forming new memories and understanding three-dimensional space, and rodents learn better. The student who gets stressed while studying is more alert and remembers more than the one who feels no urgency—up to a point. The problem comes when stress is either too intense at one moment, as in a rape or violent attack, or too sustained, as in long-term poverty, neglect, or abuse.

Stress changes brain architecture differently, depending on how long it lasts. After chronic stress, like childhood trauma, the effect of hormones on brain cells inverts: Neurons in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for mood and impulse control, start to shrink, while those in the amygdala, the almond-shaped seat of fear and anxiety, expand like overgrown shrubbery. “

Yep! I believe that!

But again, “Doctors, patients, and the government agencies that fund research are often suspicious of a drug known to cause hallucinations, as they have been of psychedelics like psilocybin and ecstasy, despite their potential for treating depression or anxiety. Each tends to show fast results after a single dose, just like ketamine.“

SO glad to see that many more people are catching onto this! It’s so needed.