4 ms·

Are there good ways of measuring your dopamine/serotonin levels?

by arjunb 18y ago

asciilifeform 18y ago
No. http://www.etfrc.com/ChemicalImbalances.htm http://www.etfrc.com/ChemicalImbalances.htm "No experiment has ever shown that anyone has an "imbalance" of any neurotransmitters or any other brain chemicals."
- iron_ball 18y ago
  A "Research Center Against Psychiatry" is hardly a reliable source for such a claim.
  - asciilifeform 18y ago
    Read the actual arguments in the linked article, and refute them. The source is irrelevant. Alternatively, ask an honest psychiatrist whether anyone has any solid idea just why the drugs work, when they work. Or why they don't, when they don't. "How are the chemical imbalances which are the supposed basis for the prescription of "antidepressants" diagnosed? Is exploratory neurosurgery performed, using some technique that allows the surgeon to quantify synaptic transmitter levels? No, the very idea is absurd. Is a spinal tap, then, done to at least measure, on a gross scale, the distribution of neurotransmitter metabolites? Of course not – how many people have undergone spinal taps before receiving a prescription for Effexor®? Is blood at least drawn, to test something? No. This diagnosis – the diagnosis of the most subtle of chemical disorders in the most complex organ in the body – is made on the basis of the patient's report of feeling sad and lethargic. Try to imagine a hematologist diagnosing leukemia this way to get a sense of just how ridiculous this idea is." "The principal reason for rejecting biopsychiatry (aside from the fact that intellectual honesty demands its rejection) is that it locates the cause of psychic suffering in people's "bad brains," and excludes the conditions of modern life, or anything else, from consideration as the cause of such pain." Note also that the author defends your right to take any drug, if you wish to. However, he defends it from the personal freedom point of view, and attacks the (popular yet unfounded) notion that these drugs return the individual to some nebulous ideal of "mental health."
- HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago
  That's not what he asked. The question is "can it be measured?" and it can: http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/44/1/155 http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/44/1/155 and http://www.springerlink.com/content/tq58032421q41q14/ http://www.springerlink.com/content/tq58032421q41q14/ and http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/110436914/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/110436914/abstrac... I write code for medical devices for a living; if a substance found in the body is therapeutically interesting, then someone, somewhere has built an instrument to measure it :-)
  - asciilifeform 18y ago
    The comment author almost certainly assumed that the measurement would have a meaning - specifically, that it would determine whether he might benefit from a drug. There is no doubt that we can measure the concentration of dopamine or serotonin in an aqueous solution (and eventually, within a brain.) Whether there can be any clinical point to such a measurement is debatable.
mdakin 18y ago
There is a personality questionnaire called the "Temperament and Character Inventory" which purports to partition personality into a few dimensions of temperament some of which (supposedly) emerge from the independent neurotransmitter systems of the brain. [1] So basically if you trust the test you could use it to gauge your dopaminergic and serotonergic activity level (among other things). I've not researched the test enough to draw my own conclusions about it. Thus I can't say this it is a "good" way to measure anything in particular. I've not taken the test yet as I am loathe to sit through 240 questions only to find out things I already know. But I probably will at some point. You can take it online for $14.50 though a website somehow associated with its designer C. Robert Cloninger, M.D. [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperament_and_Character_Inventory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperament_and_Character_Inven... [2] http://www.anthropediafoundation.org/site/PageServer?pagename=resources_measurewellbeing http://www.anthropediafoundation.org/site/PageServer?pagenam...

Are there good ways of measuring your dopamine/serotonin levels?

by arjunb 18y ago

Are there good ways of measuring your dopamine/serotonin levels?

No. http://www.etfrc.com/ChemicalImbalances.htm http://www.etfrc.com/ChemicalImbalances.htm "No experiment has ever shown that anyone has an "imbalance" of any neurotransmitters or any other brain chemicals."

iron_ball 18y ago
A "Research Center Against Psychiatry" is hardly a reliable source for such a claim.
- asciilifeform 18y ago
  Read the actual arguments in the linked article, and refute them. The source is irrelevant. Alternatively, ask an honest psychiatrist whether anyone has any solid idea just why the drugs work, when they work. Or why they don't, when they don't. "How are the chemical imbalances which are the supposed basis for the prescription of "antidepressants" diagnosed? Is exploratory neurosurgery performed, using some technique that allows the surgeon to quantify synaptic transmitter levels? No, the very idea is absurd. Is a spinal tap, then, done to at least measure, on a gross scale, the distribution of neurotransmitter metabolites? Of course not – how many people have undergone spinal taps before receiving a prescription for Effexor®? Is blood at least drawn, to test something? No. This diagnosis – the diagnosis of the most subtle of chemical disorders in the most complex organ in the body – is made on the basis of the patient's report of feeling sad and lethargic. Try to imagine a hematologist diagnosing leukemia this way to get a sense of just how ridiculous this idea is." "The principal reason for rejecting biopsychiatry (aside from the fact that intellectual honesty demands its rejection) is that it locates the cause of psychic suffering in people's "bad brains," and excludes the conditions of modern life, or anything else, from consideration as the cause of such pain." Note also that the author defends your right to take any drug, if you wish to. However, he defends it from the personal freedom point of view, and attacks the (popular yet unfounded) notion that these drugs return the individual to some nebulous ideal of "mental health."
HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago
That's not what he asked. The question is "can it be measured?" and it can: http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/44/1/155 http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/44/1/155 and http://www.springerlink.com/content/tq58032421q41q14/ http://www.springerlink.com/content/tq58032421q41q14/ and http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/110436914/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/110436914/abstrac... I write code for medical devices for a living; if a substance found in the body is therapeutically interesting, then someone, somewhere has built an instrument to measure it :-)
- asciilifeform 18y ago
  The comment author almost certainly assumed that the measurement would have a meaning - specifically, that it would determine whether he might benefit from a drug. There is no doubt that we can measure the concentration of dopamine or serotonin in an aqueous solution (and eventually, within a brain.) Whether there can be any clinical point to such a measurement is debatable.

mdakin 18y ago

There is a personality questionnaire called the "Temperament and Character Inventory" which purports to partition personality into a few dimensions of temperament some of which (supposedly) emerge from the independent neurotransmitter systems of the brain. [1] So basically if you trust the test you could use it to gauge your dopaminergic and serotonergic activity level (among other things). I've not researched the test enough to draw my own conclusions about it. Thus I can't say this it is a "good" way to measure anything in particular. I've not taken the test yet as I am loathe to sit through 240 questions only to find out things I already know. But I probably will at some point. You can take it online for $14.50 though a website somehow associated with its designer C. Robert Cloninger, M.D. [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperament_and_Character_Inventory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperament_and_Character_Inven... [2] http://www.anthropediafoundation.org/site/PageServer?pagename=resources_measurewellbeing http://www.anthropediafoundation.org/site/PageServer?pagenam...