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Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

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Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#321

Post by bowsamic »

colechristensen wrote: post #262
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am treated like an addict or ridiculous when I tell doctors I'd rather not "try SSRIs" If you’re willing to take Xanax but you’re not willing to try SSRIs, you have probably been severely misled about the relative risks of each. Seriously, the internet misinformation machine is terrible for SSRIs. One thing to keep in mind when reading online reports of drugs is that they tend to correlate quite heavily with the…

My primary disinterest with SSRIs is first hand experience with people taking them and going on and off them. I don’t want to go into it or discourage anyone from taking them, but my experiences and reading papers reporting side effects results in a hard no for me.

I don’t recommend SSRIs. I’m just one case but the side effects were bad: memory loss, total lack of emotion, unable to laugh or cry, etc. I ended up stopping them bc I stopped feeling in love with my wife. They were giving me a half life. I tried them again, this time with much worse memory loss, I don’t remember what it was like that time. I just remember sitting around people laughing with a dazed out smile, unable to join them. I felt fundamentally separated from the highs and lows of human life. First time was 50mg Zoloft, second time was 100mg Zoloft. I cannot recommend except in extreme cases

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#322

Post by hawthornio »

glerk wrote: post #19

Benzos are pretty terrible drugs in general. The physical addiction potential and withdrawal people are going through are enough to dissuade me from touching them. For folks dealing with anxiety, I recommend trying propranolol. It is not as powerful, but sometimes it is enough to achieve the desired effect and the side effects are way less severe.

Another happy propranolol user!

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#323

Post by noduerme »

klodolph wrote: post #320
noduerme wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aside, what's with all the chiropractors starting cults and self-help websites and running for office calling themselves "doctors" these days? It's like every time I hear about some dirtbag doctor selling a fake covid cure, turns out to be a chiropractor. Chiropractic was a quack gig to begin with, but whatever online university decided to call it a doctoral degree deserves a special place in hell. Still, doesn…

If they're "doctor" it's because they completed a doctorate program, typically a D.C. All people who complete a doctorate program are entitled to be addressed as "doctor". This includes everything from a Ph.D. (the original "doctor"), to M.D.s and D.O.s (medical doctors), and yes, D.C.

>> All people who complete a doctorate program are entitled to be addressed as "doctor"

Well, we have three choices. Either:

1. We change this social norm

2. we come up with a better title for people who didn't get a degree in quackery from an online program, or

3. most people lose all trust in doctors.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#324

Post by logicchains »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #222
kayodelycaon wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch. People are really bad at handling their own medical care. I’m legitimately on 8 different medications and 3 supplements (not including vitamins), per doctor’s instructions. There is no way I’m going to any appointment (including my dentist) without a printed list of everything, including the dosages, instructions, and reason for being on it. Edit: I apologize for the poor phrasing. It comes off being flippant.…

> People are really bad at handling their own medical care. Of course they are, that's why they seek professional help from people who have spent years studying medicine and who can presumably be trusted to understand the intricacies of the issues involved. People are bad at handling their own auto repairs, that's why we have mechanics. They're bad at handling their own legal issues, that's why we have lawyers. Etc e…

>People are bad at handling their own auto repairs, that's why we have mechanics.

And much like doctors, mechanics have a massive conflict of interest. If you're not careful, the mechanic will propose a bunch of unnecessary work on your car just to earn more money.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#325

Post by KingMachiavelli »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #222
kayodelycaon wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch. People are really bad at handling their own medical care. I’m legitimately on 8 different medications and 3 supplements (not including vitamins), per doctor’s instructions. There is no way I’m going to any appointment (including my dentist) without a printed list of everything, including the dosages, instructions, and reason for being on it. Edit: I apologize for the poor phrasing. It comes off being flippant.…

> People are really bad at handling their own medical care. Of course they are, that's why they seek professional help from people who have spent years studying medicine and who can presumably be trusted to understand the intricacies of the issues involved. People are bad at handling their own auto repairs, that's why we have mechanics. They're bad at handling their own legal issues, that's why we have lawyers. Etc e…

But both lawyers and mechanics are notorious for over billing and recommending unnecessary work?

I'd say medical care is an exception where we try to mandate (by law) that they act in our best interest.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#326

Post by voldacar »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #86
retrac wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I can attest to the surprising efficacy of alpha blockers. I have used prazosin as a sleep aid for the last decade, a few times a month. There were some limited studies that suggest it is effective in helping sleep quality in people with nightmares and PTSD. Now, I don't have PTSD, but I do have a mind that will not shut off at night, running in useless circles that jolt me back awake. It does nothing fo…

Good to hear! Glycine 3 gram before sleep can be useful as a combination. it relaxes the body too and relaxe the mind also. There are interesting studies showing positive effects on sleep and no tolerance. magnesium l threonate before sleep, the lthreonate variant penetarte the brain far more than regular magnesium, and it acts as a mild NMDA antagonist, which means it decrease maximal excitation. it is also a great…

> the lthreonate variant penetarte the brain far more than regular magnesium

How is this possible? Don't the magnesium ions fully dissociate once they come in contact with water, so that there's just free floating Mg+ and threonate?

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#327

Post by headsoup »

yodsanklai wrote: post #120
shepardrtc wrote: post #29

I was prescribed benzos because of sleeping issues, but I was also taking phenibut at the same time. After about 3 weeks of using large doses of the benzos every night, I stopped taking them, but a year later I still feel pangs of withdrawal sometimes when I get stressed. It took me another 4 months to get off the phenibut and a month or so after that before my sleep returned to normal. There were months where I mayb…

> I tell everyone to never take benzos for any reasons You can't generalise your experience. Everybody is different and that's the doctor's job to assess whether the benefits outweigh the cost, considering the patient and their problems. Personally, I've been taking benzos very occasionally for 20 years (never more than a few days at a time) and they helped me overcome difficult times. Never had the slightest addicti…

> easier said than done

Yes but easier comes with a greater cost.

This is widely true for broader society where we are all busy taking the convenient solution over the harder, proper way, because screw long-term.

Sometimes, you have to realise that what pharma companies list as 'side effects' are not that at all, they're effects. Think about that.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#329

Post by nickstinemates »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #45

The world of medecine is degenerate. Sustainable, non addictive and non neurotoxic anxiolytics exists: the #1 being opipramol the sigmaergic. emoxypine (which btw cure hangover) and guanfacine are worth mentioning. Maybe beta blockers to some extent. NMDA antagonists such as memantine have side effects but are not neurotoxic to my knowledge and there are milder ones such as mg-lthreonate. afobazole is interesting but…

remedies and compounds that work widely have a name: medicine.

Re: Long-term benzodiazepine use causes synapse loss and cognitive deficits in mice

#330

Post by Broken_Hippo »

headsoup wrote: post #327
yodsanklai wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tell everyone to never take benzos for any reasons You can't generalise your experience. Everybody is different and that's the doctor's job to assess whether the benefits outweigh the cost, considering the patient and their problems. Personally, I've been taking benzos very occasionally for 20 years (never more than a few days at a time) and they helped me overcome difficult times. Never had the slightest addicti…

> easier said than done Yes but easier comes with a greater cost. This is widely true for broader society where we are all busy taking the convenient solution over the harder, proper way, because screw long-term. Sometimes, you have to realise that what pharma companies list as 'side effects' are not that at all, they're effects . Think about that.

Yes but easier comes with a greater cost.

It isn't like we are choosing easier because we are lazy. The reason it is easier to say is because with a lot of diseases and afflictions, we simply do not know the cause or do not know how to treat it. And honestly, it is Much better to treat symptoms than to treat nothing at all. Heck, sometimes it might mean death - like in the case of diabetes - or more suffering and disability - like with MS.

It isn't just because we are taking the convenient solution, in other words, and I find it disingenuous not to remember that we have a lot of holes in our medical knowledge and to realize that our imperfect knowledge leads to much of this.

And redefining side effects isn't really helpful. Sure, the medicine causes them, but it isn't like any researcher or doctor is trying to make you have unwanted effects. They are there because we don't yet know how to do the treatment without unwanted effects, and we still do it because sometimes those are better than the disease.

I don't think "big pharma" is innocent, mind you, but it doesn't help anyone to focus on conspiracy theories when you could be looking at things that actually happen and including other organizations that allow the abuse to continue (for profit medicine, for example).

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