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Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

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Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#181

Post by alex_lav »

aftoprokrustes wrote: post #169
alex_lav wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this true of most drugs? It's not the NSAID that treated the pain, it's the reduction in inflammation...

Not really. If it is the _experience_ that is the main cause for reduction of depressive symptoms, it means that other ways to generate similar experiences (such as meditation, talk therapy, prayer, sensory deprivation...) could have a similar effect. If it is the physical effect of the medicine on the brain which is responsible for the effect, it would mean that it might be possible to design drugs that have the sam…

Ah, I understand the nuance you’re trying to capture now.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#182

Post by spiralx »

aftoprokrustes wrote: post #17
cameronh90 wrote: post #3

> They gave volunteers ketamine while they were under general anesthesia, theoretically preventing the participants from going on a trip. Maybe it's the trip that helps.

As a relatively seasoned meditator, I am absolutely sure that this is the trip that helps, not the chemistry. One way to look at meditation (and, I hear, psychedelics) that fits my experience is that it has the potential effect of opening the range of "ways of looking", to change the way one builds the perceived world. What propulsed my meditation to a totally different level was to see it as a practice of actively e…

Yes, I've recently come to realise that ketamine allows me to slip into a meditative state as a result of its consciousness-suppressing anaesthesia. For someone such as myself with ADHD and aphantasia this is a revelation as normally I find myself unable to quiet my restless mind enough to get there. And explains why both my most profound epiphanies and my greatest changes of mindset have all involved ketamine in one way or another.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#183

Post by spiralx »

hypercube33 wrote: post #47
aftoprokrustes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a relatively seasoned meditator, I am absolutely sure that this is the trip that helps, not the chemistry. One way to look at meditation (and, I hear, psychedelics) that fits my experience is that it has the potential effect of opening the range of "ways of looking", to change the way one builds the perceived world. What propulsed my meditation to a totally different level was to see it as a practice of actively e…

I look at it as shutting your computer off and plugging in a USB drive with repair software and wondering why nothing got fixed after you turned it back on. Aren't we just meat computers?

We are many meat computers layered on top of each other and interconnecting, with consciousness being the newest and thinnest layer on top.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#184

Post by spiralx »

padjo wrote: post #35
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #11

Unusual is an understatement. This just seems ill-conceived to me. You can't eliminate one effect on the brain by introducing other effects on the brain that might have their own consequences for the results. All this shows is that ketamine while under general anaesthesia is not more efficacious than placebo. Ok then. This just seems like a failed attempt to introduce better blinding to me. I'm not convinced it sheds…

But it did also find that using Ketamine to treat depression had about the same efficacy as knocking them out and shooting saline into them. So maybe Ketamine does nothing and people just feel better when someone cares for them. Anyway in the absence of an objective measure of depression everything seems to be on a loose footing

Or that both ketamine and the blind had very similar pharmacodynamics and perhaps we should explore anaesthesia as a mechanism of action more broadly?

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#185

Post by pcthrowaway »

belltaco wrote: post #128
pcthrowaway wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or general anesthesia prevents ketamine from having it's usual effect on the brain. This is such a stupid study, I hope they didn't anesthetize people just to study this

> I hope they didn't anesthetize people just to study this Why not? Apart from potential side effects of anesthesia, this sounds like a great study to find the mechanism of ketamine helping depression.

> Apart from potential side effects of anesthesia,

Bingo. If they were going to study the effects of some drug on amputees, it would be better if they didn't amputate limbs to test it. People don't have a good understanding of the damage from general anesthesia, so it's probably easier to get them to agree to do this study (and therefore perhaps easier/cheaper than selecting people already undergoing general anesthesia, and coordinating with the anesthesiologist and controlling for confounding factors like why they're being anesthetised in the first place)

But ethically, it would be much better if they didn't put people under to perform a stupid study on them, since it is damaging to the people getting anesthetized.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#186

Post by Rookie42 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #82
cypherpunks01 wrote: post #59

This is rubbish. Ketamine is a life-saver and has been proven to relieve depression, regardless of the administration setting. It is not magic and does not work in every case, but the effects are proven across countless studies. S-ketamine has even gone fully through FDA approval. Personally I have used it at home, and at a treatment center. There is no difference in the antidepressant properties, whether someone was…

> Ketamine is a life-saver and has been proven to relieve depression, regardless of the administration setting. It’s really not uncommon for some trials to fail to differentiate from placebo when it comes to depression studies. That doesn’t make this study “rubbish”, it just shows that you need to examine the body of evidence rather than cherry-picking studies that appear to match the outcome you want while dismissin…

I couldnt disagree more with your second paragraph.

I have a partner who has been prescribed Ketamine for the last 3 years. I firmly believe that the drugs ability to rebuild neural pathways and thus work around / resolve damage to be the only reason why partner is still alive today, and is now ready to return to work after so many years and such a brutal road.

In Australia, being prescribed Ketamine is very difficult, and thus very uncommon. While I do not believe it should be opened up to everyone, my experience over the last few years makes me a massive fan of the drug for specific situations.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#187

Post by blcknight »

Ketamine saved my life. It’s proven to be extremely effective against suicidal ideation. The trip is definitely part of it.

I’ve switched to shrooms and one trip every 3-6 months seems to reliably keep depression and panic disorder at bay. It did require some work and I really had to process some awful memories from my childhood.

But these things did more for me than years of psychiatric meds ever did - literally dozens of them. Mirtazapine made me gain weight - 60 lbs in a year. Prozac gave me bruxism and I cracked 3 dental crowns in a month. Effexor turned me into a suicidal yet somehow also emotionless zombie. I got addicted to Ativan and couldn’t sleep without it. I’m off it all, and happier than I’ve ever been.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#188

Post by bheadmaster »

jjk166 wrote: post #174
bheadmaster wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I say there's no teacup flying in orbit of Saturn, is the burden of proof on me? Or on the person telling me to stop spreading FUD and misinformation, because everyone knows there's a teacup orbiting Saturn?

Yes the burden of proof is on you. And in this analogy, the tea cups of saturn have been regularly observed for decades, so you have your work cut out for you.

The teacup is too small to be seen by any Earth's telescope.

Is the burden of proof still on me? Why?

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#189

Post by tsimionescu »

bheadmaster wrote: post #167
tsimionescu wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard for drug approval by the FDA is that the drug has proven to be more efficient than the controls in a phase 3 clinical trial, to the satisfaction of the FDA's experts. The ESA has similar requirements, as do the NHS and other national bodies. Given this, I consider that the right prior is to believe that a drug that has been FDA, ESA, NHS and many other national bodies is actually more effective than plac…

> "Stop spreading FUD and misinformation" is the exact right response. I strongly disagree. Everyone should have the right to "spread FUD and misinformation" as much as they like, and those who care should learn how to argue for the truth. Otherwise our society is pretty much guaranteed to devolve into a bunch of gullible morons. The fact that nobody is willing to dig up any proof of effectiveness of SSRIs beyond "we…

It's exhausting to argue every obvious point over and over. If you want to claim that well established practices are wrong, it's up to you to bring the evidence. I'm not going to cite studies to prove the earth is round either.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#190

Post by FollowingTheDao »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #79
cypherpunks01 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FDA does not approve medicine based on beliefs. I am sharing my personal perspective, alongside the fact that controlled studies have proven it is one of the most effective treatments known to exist. Nobody thinks ketamine cures depression, it is one treatment.

> The FDA does not approve medicine based on beliefs. Yes, sometimes they do. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/fda-increasingly-approve...

Downvoted! For a fact!

The internet is filled with crooked bots, captured bots, bots that want capitalism and governmental collusion to seem "silly".

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