Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin • Hacker News Board

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#81

Post by agumonkey » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 5:24 PM UTC

anthony_romeo wrote: post #61

phkahler wrote: post #48

>> Previous studies have led researchers to believe that individuals with social anxiety disorder or social phobia have too low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. A new study, however, shows that the situation is exactly the opposite. It's stuff like this that is destroying the reputation of science in general. I know it's one thing to "lead to believe" and another to "show that", and perhaps that's what happe…

It's a good thing that science can change. This is what distinguishes science from dogma. The problem is not these supposed 'reversals', but rather how this information is being reported. Pop-science media reports modest studies as absolute truths to catch eyeballs. When one study merely suggests research in one direction, it's emblazoned as fact on the tabloids. In the example you identified: "Fatty food is bad - no…

To express it as a spectrum. Dogma has an almost infinite amount of resistance, science tries to reach to zero, but sometimes has too much (IIRC people became emotional about Einstein's theory)

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#82

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

henderson101 wrote: post #3

Hmmm.. having been on an SSRI (at the time I was depressed) and suffering from a mild to middling social anxiety disorder (which stems from a chronic childhood one which lessened as I reached my mid 20's), for me SSRI's made me feel indestructible and fearless. But they also made me feel like I had no emotions at all and removed sexual desire and affected pleasure, so I stopped taking them and instead dealt with the…

[deleted]

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#83

Post by phkahler » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

TallGuyShort wrote: post #55

sjtrny wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs are in a totally different category than peer reviewed articles. They go through rigorous testing that works the vast majority of the time to weed out unsuitable drugs. On the other hand peer review (having been through it a few times) is extremely sloppy and reviewers do not do due diligence. Often the reviewers can't even if they wanted to (no raw data released etc) and they have to blindly accept the authors…

The problem is that things go from being talked about as a statistical correlation with a probability of error, to being a "link", to being the thing people base their diets and other philosophies on. The anti-vaccine movement resulted in a lot of people touting science as the reason you should trust vaccines, conveniently ignoring the fact that it appears to have started from a phony scientific study. The fact that…

In the link he brings up the "fatty food makes you fat" thing. My memory is that fatty foods were shown to be bad for your heart back in the 1980's and I always wondered where the "makes you fat" part came from. It's almost like once something is labeled (fatty food = bad) people forget the why and substitute their own reasons.

Similar stuff is going on now with saturated vs unsaturated fat. The problem is trans-fat which tends to form in the commercial process for saturating fat, and in the deep fryer. I don't recall any other research, but now there seems to be another "reversal" on saturated fat. Or is it unsaturated? IDK, but the public opinion is getting altered again.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#84

Post by don_draper » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 5:44 PM UTC

Everyone is different and there is no single elixir to solve all problems, but meditation helped me greatly.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#85

Post by don_draper » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 5:48 PM UTC

xiaq wrote: post #27

glasz wrote: post #24

social phobia = psychiatric disorder, in case i can't speak in public? do i have to speak in public? i'd be very careful with that kind of judgement. in general, having experience with how "modern medicine" and society in general handle such proclaimed "problems", psychology is a great deal of bullshit. i myself don't like masses of people. i embrace this preference. and i love it. most amassment of people aren't eve…

No, an important aspect of mental diagnosis is that the patient is actively troubled by the problem but is unable to change on his own; otherwise it is more of personality. If you just hate socializing, you don't have social phobia. If you sincerely believe that washing your hands every ten minutes make you cleaner and do so, you don't have OCD. Psychologists are not as eager to judge as you might imagine.

I'll bet a lot of people take these drugs not because they have to but want to. They want to look the part for work, or talk to the hot chick in the bar.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#86

Post by sramsay » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #62

sramsay wrote: post #54

I really think we're dealing with some very complicated biochemistry here. I have never seen a single psych drug, the PI sheet for which did not begin, "The exact mechanism of action is unknown" (or words to that effect). And that includes very old drugs like Lithium. Obviously, these drugs can provide relief for people suffering from various kinds of mental disorders. Most of them target serotonin, norepinephrine, d…

Note there are at least 14 known serotonin receptors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HT_receptor and this is responsible for the rich pharmacology of serotonin-affecting drugs such as the SSRIs, hallucinogens such as LSD, and MDMA which delivers an entirely different experience, atypical antipsychotics, antimigraine drugs, anti-emetic drugs such as Ondansetron, etc. It doesn't matter "how much" serotonin you have as…

Right. I think that's why we get into the "let's try this" mode with doctors, which has been mentioned in this thread. That can be frustrating for patients, but "sertonergic drug" (or effect) is a hugely broad category, and we don't have any way to know in advance which part of what thing needs to be affected in what way -- or even if it's serotonin that's the problem!

I hear what you say about "reactive mind." I've never heard it put that way, but man does that capture depression/mania and a whole host of other brain cooties.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#87

Post by biturd » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 6:14 PM UTC

platz wrote: post #63

jgroszko wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of the harm comes from people treating science as some sort of monolithic entity. Science says X! Science says Y! When really it's more like some scientists over here have found some evidence for X, some over here did some work that points to Y. It's neat that mainstream enthusiasm for science has grown so much in the last few years, but it seems like a lot of times this kind of treatment oversimplifies…

Don't forget the Science community itself is always shouting "Trust us, we're impartial scientists, don't ignore us!". Some scientists over here have found some evidence for X, and the media that cover their story, REALLY want you to believe their story. You can't treat the Science community as impartial here.

Is any of this even solvable to the general mainstream public? They need to think in absolutes, as in, this medicine does x to fix, prevent, or repair y. That is how the general public measure things.

In reality, an anti depressant for example, probably works out to something like: it works about 50% of the time, with a bit of a lean over 50%, but if we calculate in spontaneous remission, placebo effect, and some other variable, now it looks like it is either a net zero effect, or in many cases, like AA meetings, statistically detrimental. But the general public will need a binary answer.

And I consider myself part of this general public, I just know there is more than meets the eye on anything, and in general I feel correlation and causation more often then not don't agree.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#88

Post by j_baker » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 6:18 PM UTC

> Based on previous studies, it was believed that individuals with social phobia had too little serotonin and that SSRIs increased the amount of available serotonin. In a new study published in the scientific journal JAMA Psychiatry, researchers from the Department of Psychology at Uppsala University show that individuals with social phobia make too much serotonin.

Hold on a sec. What exactly did this study do differently? If the previous studies showed one thing, why should we suddenly believe this study that says it's all false?

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#89

Post by j_baker » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #48

>> Previous studies have led researchers to believe that individuals with social anxiety disorder or social phobia have too low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. A new study, however, shows that the situation is exactly the opposite. It's stuff like this that is destroying the reputation of science in general. I know it's one thing to "lead to believe" and another to "show that", and perhaps that's what happe…

I wouldn't treat this as a complete reversal just yet. These kinds of "paradigm changing" studies get shown to be flawed all the time. It's just that the press rarely reports when that happens.

Re: Individuals with social phobia have too much serotonin

#90

Post by justacat » Fri, Jun 19, 2015, 6:25 PM UTC

heroku wrote: post #34

richmt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but the biggest thing my therapist recommended me was practicing mindfulness through meditation. The idea is that it makes it easier to fall back in that same mental state when suffering everyday anxiety. Another thing she recommended which I just started doing was exercising regularly. I just started lifting a few weeks ago with a friend at the gym, and already its had a huge boost on my confidence levels. S…

I started exercising and it gave me a huge confidence boost that further lead to being attracted by girls. After a year though I got used to lifting weights and I wasn't progressing as I wanted to be so that didn't help. But I am sure if you get shredded you will be cured.

Dude…getting shredded has always been the cure.