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L-5HTP, SSRI Drugs and Do-It-Yourself Medicine – Again…

Written by Wellness Club on September 2, 2008 – 7:30 pm -

Time and time again we have folks write (or call) us to describe their do-it-yourself attempts at treating serious medical conditions and to ask for medical advice – I’ve written on the wisdom of this before… there are plenty of articles about this in our archives!

Tracy recently wrote us to describe her years of suffering at the hands of conventional medicine in therattempts to treat her eating problems, abdominal pain, and headaches with SSRI’s and other drugs – her email concluded with this few sentences:

I am going through the worst withdrawal imaginable. Will L-5HTP help? I have started a 102mg cap. quantity of 2, 3 times a day, how long will this take to kick in, will it help me? – and PLEASE, any other advise to detox or rebuild my brain will be so appreciated!
Thank you,
Tracey

Hi Tracy,

What an adventure you have had at the hands of conventional medicine!

It is possible that L-5HTP may help your distressing symptoms. Without a great deal more information about you, your medical history, your symptoms, your current labwork, your neurotransmitter levels and balance, and a great deal more, it is impossible to give a more definitive answer than that – I’m sorry.

Neither migraine headaches nor IBS are caused by a drug deficiency – as you have discovered. Rather than attempting to cover up the symptoms (headache, abdominal pain) with drugs, you will be much further ahead in terms of time, health, and money to seek the assistance of an holistic, naturopathic doctor to find and treat the causes of these problems.

You have certainly been to our website – I invite you to return there and review the pages on Irritable Bowel Syndrome,  Migraine Headaches, Mood Disorder and Neurotransmitter testing.

I cannot stress strongly enough that your best, most efficient, and most cost-effective approach to this will be through a telephone consultation with Dr. Myatt – please see her consultation information.

Without some solid, experienced direction to help you formulate your strategy for wellness you will continue to get the results that you have gotten so far. If you don’t know what to aim at, or even how to aim, and don’t know what ammunition to use, you will simply continue to blaze away in the dark, blindfolded, not knowing if your shots are even coming close to your target!

Do yourself and your family a favor and get some help to deal with this – mental health is not a do-it-yourself project!

Hope this helps,

Cheers,
Nurse Mark

Now often our answers to these sorts of questions are not what these folks are looking for and we never hear from them again – Tracy took the time to write back:

Thank you so much for the detailed and personalized response, I will definitely look into a phone consult with Dr. Myatt – but again, your timely and compassionate response gives me hope – so nice of you!!!!!!!!!

What a nice reply – and Dr. Myatt and I am looking forward to hearing from her so that we can get busy correcting her distressing symptoms!

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Posted in Health Questions, Mental Health, Nutrition and Health | Comments Off