Medications that change who we are • Hacker News Board

Re: Medications that change who we are

#191

Post by detaro » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

droithomme wrote: post #190

> with the US alone buying up 49,000 tonnes of paracetamol every year – equivalent to about 298 paracetamol tablets per person Commonly sold as the brand Tylenol. How is it possible that the average across the US population is nearly one per day, the entire year? Max dose is 3900mg per day. Tylenol is not recommended for children with fevers as it can have bad side effects (Reye's Syndrome). More popular than aspirin…

Wonder at what rate that stuff gets bought and not used, either by institutions or consumers, but it's probably only a small part.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#192

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

zzzeek wrote: post #189

aphextron wrote: post #32

>"It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains." I feel like perpetuating this mindset is the ultimate sin of modern psychiatry and the entire industry of psychiatric pharmaceuticals - your brain is your body. It's not some special thing that sits apart from it. It is an integral part of the whole, no different than your kidneys or liver. People think they can take an a…

actually a big chunk of this article is about cholesterol-lowering statins being linked to mood disorders, a medication which purportedly has no psychiatric impact at all. The reliance the medical industry has on statin drugs cannot die fast enough for me.

Indeed, Statins seem to be handed out like by doctors as a fix for high colesteral. I recall that the final verdict is they increase life expectancy so they're effectively just a treatment for a disease marker.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#193

Post by bravura » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

bemmu wrote: post #48

I've had trouble falling asleep for a long time, and at some point years ago started taking ambien for it. It took a long time to realize just how strong an impact it was having on me (could write a long blog post about it). Stopping wasn't easy, but now year+ later I'm basically back to normal, and feel like I have superpowers compared to the time when I was still on it.

a) how often and for how long, and what impact?

and

b) yes, you should write a blog post on it

Re: Medications that change who we are

#194

Post by vanniv » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #142

mcguire wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" The mind is highly correlated with the brain but it is not the brain. " ... in roughly the same way that a process is not a processor. Or a program, for that matter.

Okay, if you're saying that the mind is just the sequence of events occurring inside the brain, I certainly won't argue that the sequence of events doesn't exist. However, I don't think that's what most people mean when they say "mind", and using the word "mind" brings with it a lot of baggage, so I'd prefer to use a more descriptive term, like "sequence of events".

I think it is at this part of the debate where the ship of Theseus becomes interesting.

The sequence of events in the brain are what make up the mind. But, if you replace the brain while keeping the sequence of events continuous, you have a new brain and the same mind.

Or maybe just the same brain. Ship of Theseus and all that.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#195

Post by BurningFrog » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #81

aphextron wrote: post #32

>"It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains." I feel like perpetuating this mindset is the ultimate sin of modern psychiatry and the entire industry of psychiatric pharmaceuticals - your brain is your body. It's not some special thing that sits apart from it. It is an integral part of the whole, no different than your kidneys or liver. People think they can take an a…

> It's not some special thing that sits apart from it. It is an integral part of the whole, no different than your kidneys or liver. Except it is. The brain is a part of your body and the two are tightly integrated. Yet the brain is also not simply another organ. If you lose half of your liver, your personality might change due to the trauma, but you will still be you. If you lose a kidney, you’ll live on as if littl…

> > It's not some special thing that sits apart from it.

> Except it is

I'd half agree. It is a special thing, but it doesn't sit apart from the rest.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#196

Post by vanniv » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #186

mikro2nd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think the brain was the most important part of the body. Then my arsehole clenched shut for a week...

Hope you tore it a new one!

This joke is also very deep. "You" might tear "it" a new asshole.

Almost as if, in some important and meaningful way, "your ass" was a fundamentally different entity than the "you" that has agency to act

Re: Medications that change who we are

#197

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

robbiep wrote: post #119

aphextron wrote: post #32

>"It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains." I feel like perpetuating this mindset is the ultimate sin of modern psychiatry and the entire industry of psychiatric pharmaceuticals - your brain is your body. It's not some special thing that sits apart from it. It is an integral part of the whole, no different than your kidneys or liver. People think they can take an a…

The interesting bit here is that literally everything you do or eat affects this. For example your diet is going to get broken down into micronutrients and for a lot of these molecules, while they are circulating, there are a lot of receptors that they are going to bind to and modify function on. And then there is exercise (or lack thereof) and all of the even-further away components (personal relationships, sleep et…

Certainly, "who" a person is, is a dynamic process. However, I strongly suspect that things like nutrition, social interactions and sleep are things we're adapted to self-modulating, so these are ways we can "consciously shape ourselves", give the old-us the opportunity to create the new-us. But a drug with an unexpected affect on personality seems like the opposite of this.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#198

Post by heavyset_go » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #81

aphextron wrote: post #32

>"It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains." I feel like perpetuating this mindset is the ultimate sin of modern psychiatry and the entire industry of psychiatric pharmaceuticals - your brain is your body. It's not some special thing that sits apart from it. It is an integral part of the whole, no different than your kidneys or liver. People think they can take an a…

> It's not some special thing that sits apart from it. It is an integral part of the whole, no different than your kidneys or liver. Except it is. The brain is a part of your body and the two are tightly integrated. Yet the brain is also not simply another organ. If you lose half of your liver, your personality might change due to the trauma, but you will still be you. If you lose a kidney, you’ll live on as if littl…

> If you lose half of your liver, your personality might change due to the trauma, but you will still be you.

If your thyroid is damaged, it effects who you are through depression, lethargy, anxiety and significant behavioral changes. If your adrenal glands are overactive, it effects who you are through chronic stress, psychological conditioning and panic. Disorders of the gut effect who you are similarly, as does removal of parts of the lymphatic system. Hormonal changes from disease, consequences of genetics or supplementation can drastically change a person's personality.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#199

Post by lhuser123 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 8:38 PM UTC

sugarkjube wrote: post #40

Definitely 100% true, first hand experience here. I had mild medication prescribed for regulating blood pressure. Supposedly without psychological side effects. I found out a year later that it dramatically affected my personality. More or less like in the article, but in the opposite way. The frightening thing is, I didn't know !!! I found out a year later when temporarily stopping the medication, my kids started to…

And I agree 100% with you. Also first hand experience here.

After that period, I started to read everything I could find about the subject, and it is pretty scary. You are spot on when assume that most doctors are clueless. Actually, I think is too complicated to understand for anyone.

Have you seen other people go through the same situation ? Have you tried to help them ? If you ever do, that's when you find out how complicated it is, because they look at you like you are crazy. Many times no one is able to figure out what's really going on. Not their family, not their friends, never mind their doctors, who sometimes just prescribe a stronger medication and all hell brake loose...

Re: Medications that change who we are

#200

Post by allovernow » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

JimboOmega wrote: post #180

philwelch wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, personalities tend to change if the testes are removed.

There's a huge family of "Neurosteroids"[1], which impact various receptors in the brain in lots of super complicated ways that aren't entirely understood. They are synthesized in all kinds of ways naturally, and when it comes to "what they do" in terms of personality... "probably something" is the best we can do. There is massive complexity in all these things, all kinds of feedback mechanisms, genes and enzymes inv…

When we know so little, is it really ethical for a psychiatrist to prescribe these drugs to make people slightly more like the opposite gender, rather than teaching them to accept who they are and deal with the disorder like any other incurable condition?