Which begs the question that if we are exposed to additional toxins, or allergic reactions, additional infections or even medications that cause the immune system to over react, and thereby reducing the levels of dopamine, that our pain levels increase.

Serotonin also controls pain.

His approach is to try all the drugs that have worked for fibro patients until one works. Even before my Lyme dx, I decided I was done with the anti-depressants. Each one gave me bad side effects with no or little pain reduction.

This is from years of smoking cannabis and being in pain. Also I took ephedrine for a year.

My libido is none and my modivation is low.
Wellbutring helped alittle but it led to insomnia.

The best thing to raise your dopamine is confidence. Your mind. I realize now that no drug will completelly fix me. I must fix the way I think.

That being said I suffered a severe depression 3 years ago and had my neurotransmitters checked.

You know I have thought the sameeee thing- why do they hand out antidepressants like PEZ candy, when they are fully capable of doing some freaking serotonin tests to find out the status, etc.

My family doctor gave me Zoloft ( for pain, but also said "it will help with that depression) and then went onto say when I looked at him with big old wide eyes...

well... there is no test for depresssion.. I dont know if you have it.

He wasnt happy when I argued with him.

YES THERE IS!

Hlawtin:
If you're concerned about dopamine, you could try supplementing with Tyrosine, a precursor to dopamine. My amino acids book says therpaeutic dosages are 500 to 2000 mg per day, divided.

I think what y'all are talking about is orthomolecular medicine, treating biochemical imbalances with nutrients. The Pfeiffer Treament Center (www.hriptc.org) does this kind of work. Also www.orthomed.org can provide a list of orthomolecular literate doctors in your area.

Dr. Eric Braverman has written some about orthomolecular medicine. His book "The Edge Effect" talks about the four main neurotransmitters, GABA, Dopamine, Acetylcholine, Serotonin. There are questionnaires to help you determine which is your dominant "type," and where your deficiencies are. And what medications, supplements and foods can increase what you need. It's kind of interesting. But Lyme probably throws them all out of whack.

So many factors can affect one's level of dopamine or for that matter anything else in the human body that without really understanding the root cause of why the levels are low, or how low they really are you run the risk of putting the body further out of balance, which only makes the matter worse.

The real concern I have after much research, is that the real problem we face is an immune system that is confused and overwhelmed and is simply pushing buttons and killing both the good and the bad. It is in essentially panic mode, which is creating a cascading effect.

And if by chance it can kill all the bad off what gets it to stop killing the good. It really is the killing off of the good things that is causing most of our symptoms. The infection/infections, as well as toxins and other bad things for the most part are the precipitating factor. I am not saying that is the case for everything, but I believe is a large part of it.

The more we polute our body with unecessary drugs the worse it is for us. So it is important to make sure that the ones we do use are necessary for our recovery. And by the way I am not accusing our LLMD's of doing this. The ones I have seen do look at the root cause.

look at my post on MUCUNA BEAN, it will engage the dopaminergic neurons.

-trevor/oliver

[This message has been edited by trevor (edited 24 February 2005).]

quote:

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Originally posted by hwlatin:
It is not that I am concerned about dopemine, what I am concernd about is that Doctors prescribe drugs because of symptoms instead of figuring out what the root cause is.

So many factors can affect one's level of dopamine or for that matter anything else in the human body that without really understanding the root cause of why the levels are low, or how low they really are you run the risk of putting the body further out of balance, which only makes the matter worse.

The real concern I have after much research, is that the real problem we face is an immune system that is confused and overwhelmed and is simply pushing buttons and killing both the good and the bad. It is in essentially panic mode, which is creating a cascading effect.

And if by chance it can kill all the bad off what gets it to stop killing the good. It really is the killing off of the good things that is causing most of our symptoms. The infection/infections, as well as toxins and other bad things for the most part are the precipitating factor. I am not saying that is the case for everything, but I believe is a large part of it.

The more we polute our body with unecessary drugs the worse it is for us. So it is important to make sure that the ones we do use are necessary for our recovery.

[This message has been edited by hwlatin (edited 24 February 2005).]

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