@Gillman fan, great idea that could be extremely helpful for people, and i`ll help anyway I can.

I`ll check with my lawyer first about whether my section on recreational drugs is a good idea or not

 

Hahaha yeah 'That'll Be the Day'. A really, really long day... :grin2:
Naa i'll pass, besides i think that i might have dyslexia.

But i like your initiative to write this!

 

It should atleast be a new sticky that links to Dr Gillmans PDF about MAOI Diet Drug Interactions.
I have probable posted a link to it some 78 times...

http://psychotropical.com/images/Publications-pdfs/MAOI_diet_drug_interactions_2017.pdf

 

Zeus is our nootropic expert

what to say. I am a nootropic guru :grin2:

Now for real. From my experience nootropics work better and with less side effects than many prescription medications.

Some of my favorite nootropics:

1.) Depression (Tianeptine)
2.) Anxiety (L-theanine, Lemon Balm, Phenibut)
3.) ADD/ADHD (Phenylpiracetam, Bromantane, Selegiline)
4.) Fatigue (Modafinil, Ventolin, Caffeine, echinacea)
5.) Cognitive enhancement (Ginkgo Biloba, B-complex, Noopept)

 

5.) Cognitive enhancement (Ginkgo Biloba, B-complex, Noopept)

What brand ginkgo do you take? You know a couple of years back the New York State attorney general's office found that there was no ginkgo in several brands of ginkgo.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...mart-walgreens-accused-of-selling-fake-herbals/?utm_term=.6ce89d15fbcb#comments

 

Great idea, I like your structure. SAS is already the best source for maoi-info, but they are all over the place... Maybe we could also provide a list of doctors in different places who like to work with maois.

 

I think what I will do is just create a google doc with the skeleton outline, people can start posting whatever they want in there.... I literally have to catch a cab right now so I don't have time yet, I will try to get on it later tonight.. I will send out invitations for people to have editor status, basically anyone who asks who has been on these forums a few months actively posting.

Anyone have a webhosting ideas? This would be much much better even as a basic HTML document, dunno if forum supports that. Maybe we can host FAQ on forum but have link to separate site. Maybe Dr. Gillman would host? Reminder to self - I really owe that guy a donation.

 

We could make a "group" where we write and talk about the FAQ.
http://www.socialanxietysupport.com/forum/groups/

And make another thread here where everyone can post about their experiences of MAOIs.

 

I would be happy to pass on whatever information I have on MAOI augmentation strategies.

 

FAQ is started, links have been sent! You can type directly in the shared Google Document! It is time to contribute!
Everyone who has received a link should have permission to edit the document. If anyone else wants to request access to the FAQ please PM me.

I encourage everyone to write directly in the Google Document. Right now I am just trying to structure and coordinate this thing, not pick and choose exactly what goes in each category. You do not need my permission to contribute - just post your information directly into the shared google doc. There are just a few rules that will make this easier on everyone:

1. Don't delete anyone else's content - just write what you want to separately under the appropriate heading.
2. If you want a new heading (e.g. finding an MAOI doctor) just write it at the end of the FAQ
3. The FAQ is divided into a 1 page "idiot" section and a longer "semi-educated moron" section. Try to keep anything in the idiot section really really short and avoid big words. The organization and topics of the idiot section are completely up for grabs, feel free to write your own version of the entire idiot section if you want.
4. Feel free to add comments directly to the FAQ, Google docs has a comment feature, look in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Everyone can contribute something - there is plenty of work to do. I typed some crap out while on the plane but left a lot of notes for myself where links should be inserted, statistics verified, etc. Feel free to write a new version of whatever I have posted - I am trying hard but I tend towards using big words and scientific detail... we might be better off with 12th grade English.

Everyone can contribute one or two sentence "blurbs" as well as longer "anecdotes."
Negative experiences or information are fair game as well. E.g. "I just couldn't stand the side effects," "I waited 5 months but Nardil didn't kick in," etc. We might want to insert these into relevant sections of the FAQ later... I have heard that morons like it when a dense section on drug interactions is broken up with some inspiring quotation.

This forum and some other places on the internet contain a gold mine of blurbs and anecdotes. You can just search for old posts and copy them directly into the FAQ - just attribute quotes properly please. Chop Suey was one prolific poster who is no longer around and had good info and quotes. Chairman MAO on Dr. Bob's forums is another guy I want to re-read his posts.
Maybe people who have been around a while can contact old forum posters they know who might want to contribute?

There are lots of headings that are completely blank for now. You don't need to be the world's greatest expert to contribute here... eventually everything in the FAQ should be vetted by multiple people.

Links to journal articles are good - the purpose here is not to try to make a scholarly documents with footnotes on every sentence, but to provide a resource where readers can dig deeper.

This is the first round of the writing process.
This goal right now isn't to produce a finished and polished FAQ, we should just gather all the information we can and then decide what to put in the FAQ later. Don't get hung up on details, and remember that this is ultimately an MAOI FAQ, lets try not to get too sidetracked on extraneous matters like the pros and cons of benzodiazepines

Long term goals -
At some point I would like to close things off to new content and we focus on narrowing things down, we can discuss which info is most important, or try to resolve clashing information, etc. Our collective consciousness should really provide some good insights here.

Eventually, we can polish and finalize the FAQ. I reserve the right to just do this myself or maybe appoint a few people who would have exclusive responsibility over certain headings.

Then a final round of approval and vetting, including with Dr. Gillman, mainly looking for errors in order to ensure accuracy. Dr. Gillman should have final say on any health/safety issue and we aren't going to argue with him, we are just kind of summarizing what he wrote with links to his website for more detail where necessary. We should be able to finish this whole project in a few months. Also we should figure out where to host FAQ, and make it into a sticky, insert HTML links to navigate around the document, etc.

If someone wants to argue with me about any of this, go ahead, but we will have plenty of time to re-organize things later, delete entire headings, add new ones in etc. The purpose of the FAQ structure right now is to make it easy for everyone to contribute while maintaining enough organization that we can easily reach consensus on particular topics.

On a personal level, I am in remission but I have a long period of my life I need to make sense of, put behind me. Using the lessons I learned to help others helps give my personal tragedy meaning and closure. I am proud to be working on this and I don't think there is any other corner of the internet that can compare to this forum when it comes to patient expertise and knowledge on MAOIs. I really think if we put our heads together we can make the best source of information for patients on the internet.

 

So.. no contribution or feedback in 2 days. I guess people aren't as interested as I had hoped. Is there anything holding people back that would make it easier to contribute?

 

^
Im on an ASUS laptop with no backlit keyboard and a "smart touch pad" I was actually gonna message you and ask if there is any saved copy of the text...
Im scared that i might accidentaly delete the whole thing!

Yeah im re-reading the Norwegian book Psykofarmaka from 2015, its basicly where we stand in "Scandinavistan"... Sweden, Norway, Denmark

Problem is that its in Norwegian, and it was a page in it about MAOI that i took a picture of, and contacted Dr. Gillman about, I Showed him the picture and a translation.
He went: :um :mum !

Its written by Trond Aarre, specialist in psychiatry
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Aarre%20TF%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=12888407

And the "dinosaur" Odd Lingjaerde
Odd Lingjærde, Professor Emeritus, is a physician and specialist in psychiatry. He has been a professor of psychiatry at the University of Tromsø and Oslo and has conducted extensive research, especially within psychopharmacology. Lingjærde was for a number of years head of department at Gaustad Hospital. He is an honorary member of the Norwegian Society for Biological Psychiatry and the Scandinavian College of Neuropsychopharamacology.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Lingjaerde O[Author]&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=8256649

 

In google docs you can see any changes and revert them under "see revision history." So basically it is being automatically saved and it is easy to see changes or go back to an earlier version.

 

@Gillman fan, had a brief look through the doc but have been hectic at work and a bit mind ****ed at the end of the day (i look at spreadies and docs all day at work !!)

Hopefully will have a good look through tomorrow.

 

Probably little bit off topic but anyway

Is there any other med as effective as Nardil for depression/lifting mood beside all typical ADs like SSRIs etc.? Thanks

 

You are right. This is off topic. Please limit discussion to stuff relevant to the FAQ.

I am still interested in this, but for now the whole schedule is being opened up... I typed 8 pages or so myself, but I can't write a "community FAQ" myself.

Hopefully people will feel better, be less busy etc. and interest will grow in working on this. For me at least, I learned a lot on these forums and this is my way of giving back.

 

^
yes, good catch!
Got me thinking about Blancos article from 2010. It mentions 2 studies of Parnate for SAD.
This also has some good info about Nardil.

Psychopharmacology for SocialAnxiety Disorder
Carlos Blanco, Franklin R. Schneier, Mayumi Okuda, and Michael R. Liebowitz
http://sci-hub.bz/10.1016/B978-0-12-375096-9.00019-5

Two open trials studying the effect of the MAOI tranylcypromine on SAD have also been published. In the first one, Versiani, Mundim, Nardi, and Liebowitz (1988) treated 32 patients with SAD for up to one year. Of the 29 patients who completed at least one month of treatment, 62% showed marked improvement, 17% showed moderate improvement,

In a second study, an eight-week open trial including 81 patients, Versiani, Nardi, and Mundim (1989) found statistically significant reductions in both CGI Scale severity and Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) scores.

 

why are mods so keen on shilling specifically MAOIs on this forum? in the poll they didn't even get that great an approval rating, somethinglike 2:1 positive

 

What poll would that be?

 

Currently the MAOI group is right at π times better than SSRIs in the poll (3.142661).

 

You say "Also they [MAOIs] may be a bit overhyped around here". Is that because such a forum as this may well be over-represented by treatment-RESISTANT cases, whether of SA or DEP? This would simply mean that MAOIs are stronger medicines. I have pulled every single... every single... EVERY SINGLE (according to the research librarians at a prominent school in the science and health-science libraries) study on extracellular serotonin levels on MAOIs.

Does anyone care to know how much more POWERFUL MAOIs are versus SSRI/SNRIs vis-a-vis serotonin increase?

 

Sure.

 

.... nah... I mean why bother, when we can just let Pharma companies tell us things like,

"our new anti-depressant is [a super mother-****ing] improvement over [the other ADs ... THAT WORK BY THE VERY SAME MECHANISM...]

 

SSRIs - let's all be honest and include Trintellix and Viibryd - are limited because their mechanism of action is inferior. But psychiatrists across the board believe them (vis-a-vis MAOIs) to be "safe", none having kept up to date on the now trivial (read: completely safe in normal portions) amount of tyramine in foods. Psychiatrists (and i do mean 98% +) also couldn't tell you the difference between Serotonin Syndrome (Toxicity) and Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome or for that matter, a completely unrelated headache that they doltishly attributed to the (first) MAOI they just prescribed.

 

Must remember both have different mechanisms, so each will be better suited toward specific individuals. MAOI's let neurotransmitter do their things, while SSRI's and or new-generation AD's actually try to control the way neurotransmitters work. Big difference. Although with this generation of people, I am not surprised they tend to prescribe SSRI's. Some people just don't have the right mindset to be flourishing.

 

2 ppl care. "Fascinating". will gbty asap

 

"Must remember both have different mechanisms, so each will be better suited toward specific individuals. " - neonknight77

The fact that MAOIs and SRI drugs have different mechanisms of action means in no way that the two classes are equivalent or equipotent, or that one class will be necessarily or inherently better suited to one individual or another. Their purpose is the following, (and BTW drives the multi-billion dollar AD development industry) : to increase serotonin (and in the case of MAOIs, dopamine and noradrenaline) in the synapse.

Will give proper analysis soon, but suffice it to say FOR NOW at least, that we are looking at ~ a 2,000% versus %500 increase. Yes. 4 times difference. At least. With Tranylcypromine even greater.

I'll post research with citations, and welcome - defy - anyone to gainsay the results. A nice discussion may come out of it. The data, as they say, are howsoever, in the "majorest" of ways, on my side.

 

I will just give you a basic understanding real quick, because you seem interested.

New-generation AD's such as SSRI's (what you are quoting) yes, only work in the synapse. Brain. They "may" have an effect on other area's of body where its destination receptors are affected, but it is neglectable compared to next statement.

MAOI's increase neurotransmitters (by inhibiting its recycle) found all along the body, not the just brain. If you are not educated yet that neurotransmitters are found below the neck, then please educate yourself. Half, if not more, of serotonin is found inside your gut, for example. Some studies estimate that 90% of serotonin is synthesized in the digestive tract. Something MAOI's also react on.

This subject is very complex, so please check it out .

Modern therapy aims to improve symptoms, not cure disease at the moment. Look in to Stahl's new method of therapy, which unfortunately is still symptom based, just precisioned toward specific circuits. I do not much agree, but I will let the "founding fathers" do their work before their time comes and goes, and they see different methods. Probably just not as well $$$ intended.

 

I should emend the following... there may well be ways in which SRI drugs and MAOI drugs work differently for different patients - it does, however, seem to be on the side of the MAOI drugs, i.e., volume transmision, etc. By being specific, the SSRIs have limited their scope of therapeutic effect. But,... let's all remember..., they're.. "safe".
Horse****.

 

I must say I m pretty skeptical since phenelzine is supposed to inhibit more mao A than tranycypromine and thus to have a more potent effect regarding serotonin. Also you figures don't make a lot of sense if you don't mention where the serotonin increase happens. Levels vary according to the part of your brain/body you consider.

Anyway, I'm waiting for the "proper analysis".

 

Hi and thanks for the responses. Let me apologize for my annoyed mood in my previous post(s).



What makes me frustrated is that we have 60 year old drugs that are stronger than the newer ones, but when a patient doesn't respond to SSRI + (anxiolytic/mood-stabilizer/stimulant, etc) the next phase is to have the patient spend $thousands on ECT/TMS/Vagus Nerve Therapy etc., rather than try an MAOI that could alleviate patient suffering 1) often better/longer and 2) much cheaper.

A quick review on microdialysis studies. These microdialysis studies are done in the brain, and although any particular ROI may be measured, very common ROIs are PFC and Raphe Nuclei (esp Dorsal). The challenge as I go through the study data is to make ensure I compare apples to apples, for example, a study that measures levels in the Striatum can't be compared with one that measures levels in the MRN. There are several other factors to be considered, for example time between probe insertion and dialysate measurement

Just a reminder - I'm looking at MAOIs as a class versus SSRIs as a class, not differences within classes (say, Tranylcypromime versus Phenelzine). Tranylcypromine does seem to have a greater effect on Serotonin increase after 100% MAOI inhibition, and psychiatrists report therapeutic effect above full inhibition. The reasons for this aren't fully known, although some speculations could be made. Sorry to get off track.

 

A previous study seems to match what I've found so far:

 

Are you surprised by this information? MAOI's like previously mentioned, increase overall neurotransmitter found throughout the whole body. New-generation AD's typically only elevate neurotransmitters in the brain which are not as profound (as you can infer).

Can you explain the relativistic difference in SSRI's ability increase serotonin to a greater degree than TCA's?

And you say that we have drugs that are older (TCA's) and much better than SSRI's, yet they do not increase serotonin as much. How can you explain this? Just purely curious.