InSteady · HackerTrans

2 năm trướcdiscuss

Good call. The author of this book is a marketer and "media strategist," with an obvious focus on social media. He was great at plastering subtle ads all over relevant threads and subs over on reddit. Nice to know that he too has figure out reddit has gone to shit and is also looking for greener pastures..

InSteady

3 năm trướcdiscuss

May be a part of why so many people with psychiatric disorders (especially undiagnosed or untreated) often use nicotine and/or alcohol to cope. They both interact heavily with the GABAergic system. Alcohol also inhibits the activity of glutamate and reduces extracellular levels in certain brain regions. Too much glutamate in the brain can cause 'failure of different neurotransmission systems' and is neurotoxic.

It's too bad self-medicating with these substances comes with such awful downsides.

InSteady

3 năm trướcdiscuss

As with many behavior impairing/enhancing substances, there are effects on multiple neurotransmitters:

>Caffeine activates noradrenaline neurons and seems to affect the local release of dopamine. Many of the alerting effects of caffeine may be related to the action of the methylxanthine on serotonin neurons. [1]

Or take alcohol, which people typically associate only with GABA:

>Among the neurotransmitter systems linked to the reinforcing effects of alcohol are dopamine, endogenous opiates (i.e., morphinelike neurotransmitters), GABA, serotonin, and glutamate acting at the NMDA receptor (Koob 1996).

Two other things, first the notion that depression can be reduced down to a deficiency of neurotransmitters is almost certainly an oversimplification (if not outright incorrect). What we have is correlation, not causation, where GABA, stress hormones, and other mechanisms also show up. Second, even if this characterization of "low on neurotransmitters => depression" is correct, it is not and has never been just about serotonin:

>The monoamine-deficiency theory posits that the underlying pathophysiological basis of depression is a depletion of the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine or dopamine in the central nervous system. [2]

[1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1356551

[2] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2950973

InSteady

3 năm trướcdiscuss

This is being investigated and may eventually become part of the diagnosis (if you can afford the tests):

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1026...

>In conclusion, a series of biomarkers in the literature are promising as objective parameters to more accurately diagnose ADHD, especially in those with comorbidities that prevent the use of DSM-5. However, more research is needed to confirm the reliability of the biomarkers in larger cohort studies.

But yeah, generally there are a lot of conditions where you go report symptoms to your doctor or perhaps a specialist and they prescribe a treatment based on that alone. Testing is mostly used to rule out the really nasty possibilities or figure out what's actually going on when first-line treatments don't work.

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