Article: on UC and depression

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/05/01/irritable-bowel.html

I found this article interesting, it talks about lessened inflammation in the intestine with treatment from an antidepressant, but states that the effect did not occur in rats with no vagus nerve.

I guess one way to read that is the antidepressant = change in brain = change in intestine (when the vagus nerve exists), but antidepressant = change in brain = change in intestine (vagus nerve not present)

but for what it's worth, I think it also reflects a (scientific?) bias towards the dark age idea of ulcerative colitis as a psychosomatic illness.  Good research, but I'm afraid we can't make as much progress in medicine if we always must operate from the mind body problem viewpoint.  I believe there is more seratonin in the intestine than in the brain.

Quincy said...
Regarding studies.....the variables in each of our lives/dna/extrensic and intrinsic issues cannot ever be replicated...so, that study means absolutely nothing to me. Seems a moot point and wasted effort to worry about it

Forgive me if I am overly optimistic.  But this is probably the last time I will bother to reply on this topic, because it will eventually bear out in the research that there is much more to "emotional disorders" like anxiety and depression than simple chemistry within one's skull.   

PMA

Positive Mental Attitude

Google it

But seriously, moderators, can you please ask Quincy to stay on point, and to try her best not to reply to threads just to throw her (angry) viewpoint on other people?  If your "not interested" in a topic, please feel free to go ahead and *not post* rather than putting other people down.  We all have lives to lead and our own struggles, and we don't need to be confronted with the aggravation of a poster who insists on negatively responding to every message I post.

Quincy said...
Sounds as though therapy would be a good option for you.
And if you haven't tried rectal meds yet....do so.

Hope you find the cure....

Thanks for suggesting I am in need of mental health treatment, which, I am not.  But I do refer people for treatment in my daily job, and I wouldn't wish those problems on anyone.  And I would welcome anyone who feels like expending any amount of creative thought towards relieving the suffering of all of us with IBD.  I also don't feel it is appropriate to mock other people's desire to be rid of this disease. 

That's just my two cents, so moderators, feel free to handle it however you see best.  But situations like this make me not care to post to HW. 

It would be helpful to lead a thread with other points to actually influence others to understand .... rather than throw up your hands and cry foul.

Try to be persuasive in a scientific or even personal way through communicating your perspective....it would at least make it seem as though you want to share an opinion...it always has merit no matter who answers.   

quite respectfully and rather ticked off that you cannot make the effort. 

quincy

Jerry Garcia said...
2. I'm quite open to the possibility that UC may be related to levels of seratonin and may be influenced by mood and or anti depressants. However, stress and depression are two completely different issues and I only seem to get depressed after I start flaring (due to obvious reasons).

I post articles like this on here to get people's comments, if I don't often make myself clear as to what "the point" is, it's because I often don't know - if I did I'd be publishing for a medical journal.  I also want to show people that the medical and psychiatric community by no means have a complete or even reasonable conception of why things go wrong, or how to make them better. 

So I'm prone to being misunderstood, for instance, with this article I was in no way endorsing antidepressant meds, and now that I think about it a little more, an article like this could well have been sponsored by a company making anti-depressants, who knows.

One thing I am certainly not saying is that UC is caused (or even initially triggered) by Stress.  That is just not my view.  And this is another reason I post articles like the one above.  Because I want people (maybe people who are trying to figure out UC after diagnosis) to question the use of the term "stress" and how it is so ambiguous it's not funny, and not scientific.  For those of us who believe this magical "S" word triggers our flares, (which implies that one way of treatment is to improve coping skills) we might do well to realize that this idea of stress might be indistinguishale from the release of adrenalin, cortisol, higher blood pressure, etc.  And it could interact with UC by any matter of means, through vascular action, proteins, anything. 

There is a whole field of science on the enteric nervous system.  It could well end up being a brain in our guts.

So instead of me wearing myself out getting misunderstood, and splitting hairs with people who probably wouldn't even disagree with me if they understood what I was saying and why I was saying it, possibly fighting ghosts, I'll summarize my whole point of all this blabber and then I wont post about it here anymore.  I'll just post here for actual every day questions about UC management.

The thing I've been trying to communicate is opening people's minds to the idea of:

1.  UC disease process --> physiological anxiety etc

instead of anxiety --> UC disease process

I am also quite sure that having UC can cause one to be anxious or depressed as well.

To me these posts are intellectual discussions.  I am certainly not trying to forcibly deconstruct someone's personal worldviews or beliefs, or force anyone to change the concept of the world they've formed to understand and cope with UC.

And why am I so interested in beating a dead horse?  Well, part of me thinks that they might find better treatments for people suffering from any variety of mental illness by "thinking outside of the box" and seeing how things (like the enteric nervous system) effect the mind.

But I guess I should enroll in a masters program or just quit the idea altogether.

Thank You 

JerryGarcia said...
I feel I should post a response here for two reasons.

1. If it had not been for Quincy preaching (yes I know she does it a lot) about rectal meds, then I may have not been able to deal with my last flare so quickly. I'm really glad that it's plastered all over the forums because had it not been I may have just dismissed it as I have learned to with a lot of posts on here.

I do believe there may be something to this research.  I have found since I got my first symptoms of UC, I have not been myself, even in remission.  I have been depressed and tired.  Whether that be a contributing factor to getting UC or it be one of the symptoms, not sure, but would like to know one way or another.  Depression can be caused by hormone levels (seems UC is also, especially for women), perhaps there is a connection, who knows, what is there to loose.