EDIT: I should probably specify, in light of there being a corporation named "American Orthomolecular Research" in particular vogue on these forums, that I specifically am referring to an orthomolecular-physician supervised regimen with bloodwork in my poll.
The short version: I want to know what you think of orthomolecular medicine, and your rationale. If anybody has any experiences, pretty please post them
The long version:
OK, so today I went to an orthomolecular psychiatrist for longstanding mood issues that have not responded to normal psychiatric treatment. I was contemplating various medical options of a less conventional manner, most prominently MAOI's. When I met the doc I was not entirely sure what to think of him. He was somewhat eccentric, and highly energetic, moving around the whole time, emphatically showing me graphs of metabolic pathways and talking about neurotransmitters, inflammatory processes, methylation, and amino acids. The gist is that he has a firm background in biochemistry in believes a great deal more in identifying metabolic imbalances through bloodwork than he does in the normal pharmocopeia of psychotropic drugs. He essentially expressed this as correcting the root cause as opposed to trying to mask a symptom of it. From what I gather from my online readings, this is rather typical of the orthomolecular movement.
For right now, he simply directed that I take Metagenics probiotics (again, I'm skeptical of the advantage of Metagenics over store brands) and ordered a pretty vast array of bloodwork including DHEA, thyroid hormones, testosterone, B and D vitamins, cortisol, etc.
He said he won't "stab blindly" and start a regimen without bloodwork.
After spending years trying psychiatric meds to no avail, I am endlessly frustrated with the idea of seeking help and at the best getting something ineffective. Having followed up a bit on the nature of most of the drugs out there, it is very clear that a true pathophysiology for mental illness is still rather tentative, and that the currently prescribed drugs are at best temperizing measures. There's a reason psychiatric protocols are more or less "guess and check". Although my idea was to move on to more aggressive or experimental medication, I am mulling over the significance of actually identifying metabolic defects and correcting them. In a way it seems too good to be true.
It's especially interesting that he seems to be the only doctor that ever though it was significant that my problems got far worse after leaving the hospital for introcolisis and a peptic ulcer (supposedly all caused by H. pylori). He also seems to be the only medical profession who showed some level of outrage at my being prescribed antipsychotics, and seemed to believe they could be as damning as I thought. Likewise he said that my prolactin levels should probably go down during this regimen.
Allegedly, at the end of the regimen, the doctor said that once the regimen corrects everything and things fall back into place that the brain releases a "protein that makes more neurons grow". After leaving it occurred to me that he was talking about BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor). This would, of course, be awesome if it were true.
Edited by PetaKiaRose, 08 January 2009 - 05:31 AM.
