Anybody try Adaptocrine?

May 9, 2007

I take Surmontil (also known as Rhotrimine) because it is one of the only two

antidepressants that raise REM (dream) sleep instead of lowering it. This is

because I have sleep apnea that happens in the REM sleep phases making me

severely REM sleep deprived. It is impossible to stay sane without dream sleep.

Before Surmontil, it took me a 4th of a bottle of l tryptophan a night and 16

hours to get enough sleep to avoid sleep deprivation caused migraines. I often

had them 24/7. The Surmontil cut my sleep needs down to 11 to 12 hours and I

can often get by with less. Since having two operations (throat and nose), and

getting a CPAP Machine I was able to cut way back on the Surmontil but never

have been able to eliminate it completely, and yes I do take magnesium and was

on feverfew. It does not help the migraines any.

To avoid temper tantrums and residual depression, I take 20 mg of Prozac too.

The hashis is probably responsible for at least some of the obstructive sleep

apnea. It causes the big, thick, fleshy throats that collapse and cut off the

air ways. But I have central sleep apnea too, (My brain forgets to breath and

that wakes me up out of many a nice dream). I'm blonde too! I wish it was just

a joke!

Unfortunately once one's throat is that big and thick, just going on Armour

or some other thyroid med doesn't make the throat shrink or the sleep apnea go

away, and sleep deprivation will big on depression BIG TIME. So, I would be in

trouble even if I hadn't obviously inherited bad genes from my parents.

I have learned to follow EVERYBODY'S advice to help myself. I stay prayed up.

I get enough rest and avoid stress. I take nutritional supplements, Armour

Thyroid and listen to relaxation tapes. I have people pray for me because there

is some evidence prayer actually works. I also take prescription meds to help

myself. It is like a three legged stool. I have learned if I fail to follow any

of all this good advice, my moods tip over like a stool with only two legs.

One of the theories for autism is that it is caused by a deficiency of a

hormone called oxytocin. (Don't confuse this with the pain killer oxicontin).

Oxytocin is produced by lactating Females. (My mother could not breast feed). It

also causes the bond between Mother and Child, and Husband and Wife. I never

bonded with my Mother and never felt the urge to pair up with a mate. The brain

also needs it to be able to recognize other people. I am very face blind

(prosopagnosia). Experiments with supplementing this hormone has helped

Autistic people socially interact better with people better and helps Face Blind

people do a better job of recognizing people, reading facial expressions and

telling them apart, but alas, the effect lasts only a few minutes, and it has a

terrible side effect, it makes people trust one another too much.

Obviously before Humans found they could hire " wet nurses " and/or bottle feed,

if you couldn't breast feed your offspring, he or she died. The huge numbers of

autistic people (not all of them children), that our society seems to be

producing lately may partially be caused by that. Autistic children just starved

to death in earlier generations because their Mothers (quite often with Autistic

tendencies themselves), could not feed them. Another factor is of course, if

you are deficient in one hormone you are probably deficient in more than one of

them. Lack of thyroid causes low body temperatures and the inability to run a

fever. If you can't run a fever you can't cook away bad germs. Before

antibiotics most people with weak glands just died of infections or the above

starvation from being unable to nurse. Now they live, and have kids, and often

those kids have hormone issues of their own including sometimes, low oxytocin.

If you can't love and your Mother could not bond with you, that is reason enough

to develop developmental depression. The pleasure centers of the brain do not

get stimulated, so they do not grow. One becomes emotionally stunted and there

is a limit of how much an adult brain can rewire itself to correct the problem,

but there is hope, some antidepressants, (Prozac included), have been found to

speed up brain cell formation, at least in the hippocampus where memory and

moods are regulated. I have noticed on Prozac I think better and can remember

better. If I go off of it this advantage goes away really quickly. Both my

Mother and my own life were saved several times by antibiotics. It is all well

and good to talk about doing things only the, " Natural way, " but Mother Nature

would have weeded me and my Mother out of the gene pool without considerable

help from Medical science. It is too late for my kind to go back to living only

naturally. I am childless by choice, by the way. I made the decision when I was

three years old (yes, THREE) not to pass it on.

In the future science may invent medications that even do a better job of

regrowing brain cells. Not only depression, but schizophrenia, autism, mental

retardation and various learning disabilities may be permanently reversible

after a temporary course of drugs. The future looks very promising, but only to

those that have the wisdom to make use of what is learned. If someone says

something will help, listen to them. If that same someone says something won't

help, be very cautious about believing that. It seems if a person has a hammer,