Anti-depressants thought to be placebo?

[The0Self]

The main benefit to serotonergic antidepressants is the “foot in the door“ effect that they can offer to severely depressed people — they can give people the slight kick (in the case of SNRI’s) or numbness / thought-suppression / emotion-suppression / OCD/dopamine-suppression (in the case of SSRI’s) to get out and simply DO stuff, which of course may be all they had to do in the first place... but in some cases it simply wasn’t going to happen without the antidepressant.

This is not meant to gloss-over the unfortunate fact that they’re way overprescribed. Indeed, part of the supposed antidepressant effect is serotonin’s induction of the learned-helplessness response — that’s probably the wrong path for most people... But antidepressants do increase BDNF, one of the main compounds associated with depression remission — BDNF can also be increased safely and naturally via meditation, conscientious living, and light but challenging exercise.

[Matt23]

The actor Richard Dreyfus claims he has bipolar.  He's talked about how he takes lithium and that it works quite well for him.  Whether it placebo or not, to me, doesn't really matter, so long as the benefits for him outweigh the negatives.  

I'm not saying individual cases don't get benefits from medications.  But I question a generalized, statistical and broad view of medications (and the pharmaceutical industry) which says the benefits outweigh the drawbacks (again, for most people, most of the time).

Here's an interesting piece (the first section of it) about how the mice we test drugs on are genetically different then wild mice.

• Basic story here...
  • Use animals for testing = animals must be relatively close genetically to humans
  • Lab mice = genetically different than wild 
  • results from lab mice = drugs not as harmful as they actually are to humans

Bret Weinstein is a decently famous evolutionary biologist and professor. 

He's got a podcast called the Dark Horse podcast.

...

To be fair, I haven't looked at much evidence on the other side of the argument.  I've been researching more on the anti-pharma side of things.  So, I've got that bias probably. But ya... just seems like some pretty credible people are advising that pharmaceuticals can be more damaging than helpful for most people, most of the time.

[Enlightenment]

@The0Self What version of cardio is better for increasing BDNF?

Go as fast as you can but only for 20 minutes (let's say it's 10 km/h) or 35 minutes but significantly slower, something like 8 km/h?

After I go as hard as I can for 20 minutes I get a very strong mood increase afterward for about an hour (runners high). Is BDNF related to runners high so I should aim to optimize my cardio training towards what gives me stronger runners high?

[Matt23]

I accidently reposted

Edited September 19, 2020 by Matt23

[The0Self]

5 hours ago, Enlightenment said:

@The0Self What version of cardio is better for increasing BDNF?

Go as fast as you can but only for 20 minutes (let's say it's 10 km/h) or 35 minutes but significantly slower, something like 8 km/h?

After I go as hard as I can for 20 minutes I get a very strong mood increase afterward for about an hour (runners high). Is BDNF related to runners high so I should aim to optimize my cardio training towards what gives me stronger runners high?

The runner’s high is related primarily to opioid activity, not BDNF. You’d have to do some research on it but I’m pretty sure the BDNF increase is largest with a challenge, but in the absence of stress — so for cardio this would be something like walking on a treadmill with the incline all the way up and doing that for 30 minutes at the same speed, then doing that every day and adding a tiny bit of speed every once in a while; or running at a comfortably fast pace for 30 minutes a day. Something like that. Or even lifting progressively heavier weights on chin/dip/deadlift etc but only in (for instance) the 5 rep range and rarely ever pushing to the max or getting significantly out of breath.

[Brian Wolfe]

When anti-depressants taken correctly, it will not change your personality. Rarely, people feel apathy or loss of emotions while on certain antidepressants. When this happens, lowering the dose or switching to a different antidepressant may help.

[Enlightenment]

@Michael569 @neutralempty

I stumbled upon this today

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002239561100032X?via%3Dihub

Quote

 it was reported that depressed adults who used antidepressants were three times less likely than their unmedicated counterparts to still be depressed after eight years.

 

[Nahm]

Clarity grows naturally right out of the earth & needs no human manipulation or explanation.