Who Was On Antidepressants Before Dysautonomia??

[sue1234]

I was just seeing some of the posts/signatures about antidepressants. I took Pamelor(nortriptylene) back in the 1980s for anxiety/panic. After about 7-8 years on them, I started feeling worse ON them, so quit. Did ok for quite a few years, then off/on Xanax for the last 8 years. I tried various SSRIs in the 1990s, but all of them kept me from functioning in one way or another. I'm just "theorizing" if there is any way taking the antidepressants WAAAAAY back then could have prompted my body to be oversensitive to the catecholamines now. Any thoughts on this???

[erik]

It's a big mystery world, but some basic principles are out there... and I love speculating!

I do know that psych meds are known for causing orthostatic intolerance (mostly the neuroleptics & SSRI's). That's a documented side effect (one of the ironies of autonomic probs is that SSRI's can often help despite this fact). I've usually assumed this meant a side effect just while taking them... hadn't heard anything definitive about long term effects, but long term effects are generally not known!

Boosting a particular neurotransmitter usually prompts various parts of the body to reduce their number of receptors... in other words, they down-regulate in response to overstimulation... usually this response is transient but one never knows (recovery time can vary and itself be regulated by known or unknown factors). Some things can be permanent, but usually not, and this response is observed everywhere from the kidney's to parts of the brain.

Stuff like fluoxetine also changes the RNA expression in key areas... so it isn't mutating your DNA but it's changing the way some of your traits are expressed... like a pseudo-mutation. One semi-demonstrated area is CAMP or BDNF. This is a mystery world since these things are so difficult to measure, and there are so many of them. Even things like some antibiotics end up having effect on nerve regeneration... some are neuroprotective! The only rule is that "science" only has crude insight to the total picture, or key specific knowledge that doesn't always lend itself to an overview.

This study is confusing but seems to be indicating that serotonin increases DNA synthesis but fluoxetine inhibits that??? So hard to tell since the abstract is trying to be brief and is well over my head. But one can at least see that there is direct relation of some sort between serotonin and related selective agonists and antoginsts with things like vascular response (and that's just an example of direct effect... there would be plenty of indirect "regulatory" routes to influence such things). http://ajplung.physiology.org/cgi/content/...ract/266/2/L178

Also, many meds and most psych meds modulate activity of key liver enzymes... Some inhibit them, some promote them, some do both and "balance" them (SSRI's tend do that). The chronic effect of this is probably not studied or of great concern to many, but it's fascinating to ponder. This is actually one of the ways they might help people because those key liver enzymes are not simply involved in drug metabolism... they have crossover with food metabolism as well as fundamental body activities such as key glucocorticoid regulation or other hormonal things. Increased or decreased or stabilized activity of such fundamental enzymatic processes can be complicit in therapeutic effects, side-effects, sensitivities, etc. It is most documented in drug interactions... since that is of great pharmacological concern and something that can be definitively addressed... I wonder about the more general aspects of this.

Any, I'm just doing the equivalent of "name dropping" here! I don't have deep knowledge of these things... just enough here and there to make crude but fascinating observations... nothing especially useful, just "fun" or brainstorming sort of thing.

At the end of all that... it could just as well have been a different condition emerging on it's own, perhaps even having been masked by the prior meds (accidental treatment), or perhaps totally unrelated. It's all speculation but there are plenty of possibilities. Large population studies would usually be used to try to suss out general trends from the individual variations.

[morgan617]

No clue, but I was put on tri's at age 29 for fibro and he had to stop them within 6 weeks, because the tachy I got was so bad. I've been sensitive that way ever since, but wasn't really on a lot of meds before that, so not sure if it triggered it, or was just the first one to do it. morgan

[Tachy Phlegming]

Even things like some antibiotics end up having effect on nerve regeneration... some are neuroprotective!

That sounds interesting. Do you know how that works? Do you have a reference?

[erik]

It is over my head, but I read about it as best I can. I think I bumped in to it as a tangent to exploring brain injury stuff, and I'm not finding my original links but below are some at least:

http://www.pdf.org/en/pubs_scientists/all/19582534

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...cgi?artid=28119

http://www.iovs.org/cgi/content/full/49/8/3631

Hopefully there is a better "overview" article I can find rather than obscure research. I do think it is nice that someone is looking out for the stroke survival rate of gerbils... very compassionate, however those I knew usually were more at risk of household trauma accidents or scuffles with other household pets

I hadn't heard of the eye thing before... I've heard of stroke, parkinson's and I think Fibromyalgia research into these somewhat newly discovered potentially beneficial side-effects. Antibiotics came up in the context of post lyme POTS... but if the neuroprotective factor is helpful perhaps the original harm needn't have even been from a bio-bad-boy.

I don't fully understand the definition (and full implications) of "neuroprotective". My sense is that it implies two things... 1) if known bad boys are out there, some neurons can be spared, perhaps in the context of toxic-flood in injury or in slower disease processes... 2) in the context of overall "turnover" of neurons from natural degradation, some protection could skew the odds and result in "increased" overall presence of key neurons (an effective increase in "regeneration" rate where such regeneration exists to begin with).

[ana_22]

I was on cipramil and then lexapro in 2004 for a year. I got sick in 2008.

sometimes i think it may be related. when i was on lexapro i would get night sweats and sometimes i would have these weird spells where my heard would speed up and id get dizzy but it would pass within ten minutes or so.

once i was having blurred vision at work and drove home was completley tachycardic and was sweating and couldnt think straight, dnt know how i made it home alive....i thought i was going to have a strke or something but in hindsight the real threat was i could have crashed the car,

sometimes i think maybe using the anti dep may have left permenant damge and caused me being ill. OR maybe i had a weak autonomic system that was further weakened by the anti dep. Or maybe its all just a coincidence?

Dont know.

[mountain girl]

I was on an antidepressant for at least ten years before developing pots and still take one. My thought would be as far as any connection that if our brain does not make enough seritonin, or what we do make is used up too quickly by stress, that perhaps that just puts us at risk for developing pots meaning our general genetic make up as opposed to the ssri drugs. By the way I could not tolerate any of the ssri drugs do to side effects so I am on Remeron which works differentlythan the SSRI drug class.