and, it put me into contact with people who shared all the symptoms i had and eventually, sometimes by accident, came across someone who properly diagnosed thyroid dysfunction.

HALLELUJIAH.

without being able to read the words written by others who actually fought this battle before me, i would still be thinking i was some kind of loony/hypochondriac. it’s okay to be fat, and it’s possible to be healthy and fat. here are loads of people who are. oh, thank gods. so if i’m *unhealthy* and fat, and it’s not normal for my body, there’s something else wrong? YES. peel back that layer of panic and self-loathing and look what better care you can get.

THANK YOU.

Serotonin is, essentially, the bouncer for your brain. It kicks out the “bad” signals. In both patients with depression and with fms, levels of serotonin are abnormally low (among other things). So more “bad” signals get through, resulting in more bad thoughts, more bad physical feelings, or both.

Serotonin isn’t the only chemical involved though — norepinephrine, substance P, certain cytokines, and a couple others I’m forgetting… all play into fibro.

Interestingly, two studies:
one found that in fibromyalgia patients, sleep is interrupted by bursts of brain activity, preventing the patients from ever reaching stage 4 sleep (or rarely) — the restorative stage
the other found that when you reproduce this effect in healthy patients, after 2-3 weeks… they start showing fibro symptoms!

I know I’m definitely one of the exceptions re: weight and fibro. Just reasoning it out, the fact that fibromites tend to be more sedentary than most (even in this LAZYOMG!!!11 american culture) means some weight gain is probably going to result. But yes, I have noticed that a great many fibro sufferers are fairly overweight — although I have noticed, too, a fair amount who are dangerously underweight — it seems to trend one way or t’other (more of the former than the latter). This is anecdata, of course. :)

A problem we know well in FA. I remember also the studies on antidepressant use in adolescents and how it can increase suicidal behavior, and I know that some SSRIs if mistakenly prescribed to bipolar people can cause psychosis. I do want to avoid getting sidetracked too much by the question of “are all psych drugs good or bad,” though — the researchers were talking about SSRIs, MAOIs, and tricyclics, not antipsychotic drugs, and they were specifically recommending avoidance even if these drugs would be effective because of potential weight gain. The question of whether psych drugs do more harm than good is a separate though important issue.

Neuroleptics, especially Seroquel, are being given as an adjunct therapy for depression. These are drugs that are commonly known as antipsychotics. The trend to their use in depression is alarming.

I found that these drugs made my depression worse and they impeded my cognition so badly that I had to quit working. I’ve been withdrawing from these highly addictive drugs for the last 4 years.

Sorry to sorta change the topic, but I really hate to see misinformation on these meds all over the place.

I appreciate your bringing up that one study fillyjonk…there are many many more, but most of them are hard to find as research in these areas are corrupt with pharma cash.

Also as feminists it’s important to understand that women are targeted in very creepy ways through direct to consumer advertising to take these meds.

Come to think of it, this is a good point. I was operating on an idealized vision of psych meds but I guess there was that recent study showing that they’re overwhelmingly ineffective. I still object to the reasoning, i.e. that meds should not be prescribed because they will cause weight gain, but I’ll add “because they often don’t work” to my list of good reasons not to take them.

Everyone is different, and brain chemistry is some complicated shit.

Depression is a collection of symptoms, and there is growing literature to suggest that, just because two people have a diagnosis of depression, doesn’t mean that they actually have the same chemical/mental/social variances. (Hence the fact that some current-generation antipsychotics work great for some people and do permanent damage to others.) The DSM is based on “expert opinion” rather than actual research, so there’s plenty of reason to be suspicious even of something as basic as diagnostic guidelines.

The discussion is further muddied by the fact that “depression” has a colloquial meaning as well as a clinical one. “Feeling depressed” does not begin to describe what most patients diagnosed with major depression experience. Feeling helpless and hopeless because of constant social alienation and persecution really isn’t depression in the clinical sense–depression is characterized as a mood disorder, and being upset by things that are, well, upsetting, doesn’t (or shouldn’t) place someone in the “mentally ill” category.

When I was diagnosed with major depression (with psychotic symptoms! score!) at 19 I had a series of terrible experiences with mainstream medical care ranging from ineffectual treatment to physical abuse. Having experienced my “illness” basically from birth, many of my “symptoms” were intimately wrapped up with my personality. To be completely asymptomatic was, for me, a removal of everything that made me me. I found more reliable information, a less infantilizing approach, and a more open-minded community at the Icarus Project. While I didn’t agree with everything, I found its focus on “healthy” and “happy” rather than “normal” to be much more productive–and, incidentally, very similar to many FA activists’ focuses.

(That got really self-centered there; sorry.) I also think there’s a lot of research yet to be done on the genetic components of fat and depression (and both), plus a howling emptiness where the sociological research should be.

Most of the psych meds that make people fat also cause people to be less functional. It’s a myth that psych meds help most people. In fact, at best 30% are helped by psych meds and a whole lot of people are made worse and get put on med merry-go-rounds that never quit. Iatrogenic illness is the rule rather than the exception.

I’m all for fat acceptance and I also happen to be a victim of over-medication that led to my weight gain. I don’t give a shit about the weight….I care about the fact that the drugs stole my life and poisoned my soul.

I can live with being fat as a result of meds, but I want my brain back, thank you very much.