Category — mental health

PBS has had a show on IRAQ veterans who have PTSD. It’s sad to see how many young people, in the beginning of life are suffering from trauma after serving there. It’s like compressing our very worst and complete life into one single year of life and then living with the horrific images in your mind day in and day out afterwards. These young people who gave their lives, and literally gave their lives to the military effort and will continue giving their lives because for the rest of their lives they will have the images we wish they would never have had to see.

Too bad we can’t send the old drunk geezers out there who don’t care about their lives anyways and who are crazy as hell, and hell bent on showing how macho they are. Instead the unfortunate truth is that we send out our youngest most vital members of society to a horrific, depressing and sad world.

Coping with PTSD is difficult. It can take much time to dull memories that one doesn’t really want to deal with.

If you are military suffering PTSD check out the link here to find more assistance.

A new study has shown that just smelling food (like a good chocolate cake for example) can create an increase in dopamine. The study at Brookhaven is located here: http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/2002/bnlpr052002.htm .. but you already knew that right?

Looks like a new development in the depression industry, the ability to measure dopamine. Here is a link to the Coulochem III electrochemical detector, but looks like this one is for blood only in major labs.

Meanwhile, here we have “Integrated” something or other that actually has the tests to get neurotransmitters tested

Researchers are finding out that in the experiments, a chemical virtually identical to the drug mianserin extended the lives of worms by 30 percent. “Lifespan can be extended by blocking certain types of retransmission implicated in food sensing in the adult animal,”  Linda Buck, a researcher at the Howard Hughes Institute in Seattle, Washington, and two colleagues screened 88,000 chemicals to see which might enhance the lifespan. Turns out that a few of those used as anti-depressants actually did make a difference.

Three other compounds that also act on serotonin also had a similar effect: mirtazapine, methiothepin and cyproheptadine. Interesting to note that Antihistaminic side effects include drowsiness and weight gain.

The antidepressant mianserin also notably blocked uptake of another neurotransmitter, octopamine, which has a role in releasing fat from fat cells.

Now the dilemma, should we use the magnets or the drugs?