[HN Gopher] Social anxiety disorder-associated gut microbiota in...
___________________________________________________________________
Social anxiety disorder-associated gut microbiota increases social
fear
Author : thunderbong
Score : 144 points
Date : 2025-06-15 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pnas.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pnas.org)
| bloqs wrote:
| this astonishes me
| kneel wrote:
| 16S sequencing doesn't reveal a mechanism, it indicates a narrow
| genomic pattern that may or may not be relevant.
| ngruhn wrote:
| This is gonna go viral as: just eat more yogurt to stop being
| awkward or whatever.
| jadamson wrote:
| Yoghurts probably won't help, but Fecal Microbiota
| Transplantation might.
|
| A team at the University of Calgary is currently recruiting
| participants with Major Depressive Disorder and Obsessive-
| Compulsive Disorder:
|
| https://research.ucalgary.ca/participate/clinical-trial-eval...
|
| https://research.ucalgary.ca/participate/focused-study-fmt-o...
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Damn, that's my city and I have been struggling with some
| other stuff
|
| I don't fall under the umbrella of Major Depressive or OCD
| but if they were doing trials to help anxiety or something I
| would probably sign up
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| The experiment looked to be the other way around. If you
| introduced new microbiota from patients with SAD this caused
| SAD in mice.
|
| So introducing new microbiota won't solve the problem. The
| theory that needs to be tested is that we know microbiota can
| switch SAD on, but does removal of said microbiota turn it off?
| It needs to be an antibiotic cleansing. It can even be DIY.
| People can try this on themselves. I think the unknown factor
| here though is whether or not a persons diet is introducing the
| SAD causing microbiota.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Do we get gut bacteria from the people around us? Where does
| a newborn get their gut bacteria from?
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| The entry point to the gut is from the mouth so because of
| that, I think food is where most of the gut bacteria comes
| from.
| cwmoore wrote:
| Sure, as long as you hold your mouth and nose closed when
| not eating.
| asdff wrote:
| You have a back door as well for the gut that tends to
| open at least once a day. We know fecal matter is in the
| air in most bathrooms. It wouldn't surprise me if you got
| an infusion of community fecal biome right into your anus
| every time you used a restroom that isn't your own.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Yes but usually when the back door opens things are
| exiting the gut rather then going in. So I don't think
| that counts.
|
| There are cases where things do enter the back door but I
| think that's just humans getting creative and it wasn't
| designed for entry.
| hackernewds wrote:
| we can from kissing
| evanjrowley wrote:
| It's not just food as many commenters are pointing out. It
| could be from what people are drinking, even water, if oral
| delivery is not sanitized.
| cwmoore wrote:
| So if the choice is between unsanitary water or sterile
| and containing chlorine, etc., which has the effect of
| strengthening the microbiota so that the resulting
| population increases perceived wellness in the host
| organism's sociopolitical fitness, its simple enough, we
| all stop eating and drinking for ultimate safety and
| maximum paperclips.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Newborns get a lot from their mother. They have very little
| stomach acid, so whatever they are getting goes straight
| through to their gut.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Introducing new microbiota will put competitive pressure on
| the old one, so I wouldn't write it off with out trying.
| mproud wrote:
| Lotta yogurts people buy are chock full of added sugars.
| grafmax wrote:
| Eating more prebiotics in the form of unprocessed plants is
| much more effective at improving gut health than probiotic
| supplements or even probiotic foods. (Of course you can do
| both.)
| chkaloon wrote:
| Can we just keep taking courses of scorched earth antibiotics
| until we come up with a microbiome combo that feels good?
| orionsbelt wrote:
| Anecdotally, that generally seems to make things worse, not
| better.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Where does having solid stool sit in comparison to not having
| social anxiety?
| bhaney wrote:
| I did this years ago and it seemed to work, but n=1. It took
| two cycles of antibiotics and intentional introduction of "good
| bacteria" before I landed on something that seemed to fix most
| of my food intolerances. Didn't seem to have any impact on
| anxiety.
|
| I learned later that this is pretty dangerous to attempt, since
| you're very likely to give yourself c diff or some other
| infection and end up with persistent IBS before you land on a
| good microbiome.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Given that it'll cure the latent chlamydia and gonorrhea that
| people have - not to mention the cat toxiplasmos - lets do it!
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| They caused SAD in mice by introducing specific microbiota.
|
| But does the system have hysteresis? Can the flip be switched the
| other way? Introduce antibiotics to wipe out all the microbiota
| and does the SAD improve?
|
| There can be human trials for this given that antibiotics are
| approved low risk medicines. Clinical trials with antibiotics to
| clean out and reset the microbiome along with strict diets in
| attempt to prevent reintroduction of said microbiota.
|
| It can even be DIY.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I think it makes sense that our microbiome should be able to
| trigger such a response. If your microbiome is changing, it means
| that some microbe is gaining numbers it didn't previously have,
| and your current bodily functions, such as your immune system,
| aren't stopping it. That doesn't necessarily mean your immune
| system is compromised, but if it is then it would probably be
| good not to spend a lot of time around other individuals,
| especially large groups or strangers. Other reasons for your
| microbiome to be shifting, like a sudden change in diet or
| enviroment, could also be indicative of an issue like food
| shortages or territorial change where it would also be good to
| minimize your exposure to and reliance on others. Finally,
| depending on what exactly is gaining a foothold, you could
| potentially be a threat to your kin if you come around them.
| Developing a social fear response to certain changes in gut
| microbiome could thus be quite beneficial for most social
| creatures.
| amelius wrote:
| Beneficial for the group, not the individual, I suppose.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Which is to say, maladaptive. Despite all the people wishing
| evolution worked at the group level, it doesn't. Groups don't
| have offspring, individuals do, and thus things that are bad
| for the individual are extinguished regardless of their
| effect on the group.
|
| If you look closely enough, even individuals aren't the true
| units of evolution, for the same reason; competing alleles is
| where the real action is.
| energy123 wrote:
| Alleles are shared with kin which gives rise to multilevel
| selection effects in rare but real scenarios.
| saltcured wrote:
| When thinking about evolutionary forces, you cannot
| conflate "positive" outcome with survival and reproduction.
| An individual might survive and produce offspring via
| effects that make the individual unhappy in their own life
| and/or with shortened life.
|
| It's only when an effect causes death or infertility prior
| to normal reproductive phases that we can really say it has
| a direct evolutionary pressure. Anything that happens later
| is always going to be through secondary, social effects on
| how their condition supports or hinders their offspring
| from reproducing further generations.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Voting me down doesn't change the fact that group selection
| is a myth. A myth that some people are fervently attached
| to, but a myth nonetheless. Groups simply don't reproduce
| at a rate or fidelity to allow evolution at the group level
| over the time scales in question.
|
| E pur si muove.
| theptip wrote:
| The problem with Evolutionary Psychology is that it's easy to
| construct this sort of "just so" story for pretty much any
| causal link, and they are not falsifiable.
|
| IMO the simpler hypothesis here is that this isn't anything
| adaptive, it's just another example of how biology is like
| spaghetti code; changing one chemical signal will affect an
| essentially random set of downstream systems, some of which can
| be causally connected to psychology/behavior.
| troll_v_bridge wrote:
| Which would still be natural selection though.
| asdff wrote:
| That isn't a problem because no one speaks of these
| suppositions in terms of "just so" but in terms of "could be
| due to." If you want to prove something as just so you have
| to do a lot more work describing a mechanism of action and
| that involves reaching into a different toolbox.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| Could also be like climate change, where it correctly
| describes a broad phenomenon, but cannot be used to identify
| or classify any individual event. E.g., Wildfires are
| probably getting worse because of climate change, but it's
| difficult to say if the Pacific Palisades fire would not have
| happened in a cooler global climate.
|
| So, is microbiome-mediated social anxiety selected for as an
| advantageous trait for societies subject to communicable
| diseases and the travails of nomadism? Maybe. Did YOUR
| microbiome-mediated social anxiety arise because it was
| advantageous for your community? Probably impossible to say.
|
| Also, a hole in GP's logic: you would expect protective
| social anxiety to arise in people whose situation hasn't much
| changed except that they've encountered people whose has (as
| with sedentary villagers encountering nomads who may or may
| not be about to ransack their settlement).
| softsound wrote:
| Wildfires are worse in areas where the wrong type of trees
| were planted as well which is common in logging areas or
| places cheaply "reforested" that don't do much research on
| what should be growing there. Wildfires themselves aren't
| bad per say either as certain trees only grow from fires.
| Not to say that climate change isn't a factor though, but
| there are a lot of varibles too.
| veunes wrote:
| Makes me wonder how many other "maladaptive" responses today
| actually had adaptive roots in a different context
| cyberge99 wrote:
| Makes sense. People naturally want to poop someplace comfortable
| because pooping is a very vulnerable position for a human.
| pogue wrote:
| I've seen probiotic supplements that have strains that claim to
| help with anxiety and depression, but I've never really looked
| into them because I'm quite skeptical they do anything. But if
| anyone is familiar with them and has any feedback I'd be
| interested to hear it.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Strongly second this ask.
| cwmoore wrote:
| So long as it isn't eating the variety of fresh fruits and
| vegetables that produce gut serotonin in the microbial
| breakdown of complex carbohydrates and fiber, right?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Eating fresh fruits and veggies is a great general health
| advice but unlikely to shift your gut microbiome
| meaningfully (unless you are eating some specific fruits or
| fruit skins in specific conditions).
|
| And randomly eating healthy stuff is probably not going to
| shift your biome in a particular direction nor eliminate
| the cause of biome issues.
|
| I eat healthy including a lot of whole fruit, nuts, dried
| fruits, dark green veggies and grass finished meats and
| there are still times I have my biome be a bit off.
| cwmoore wrote:
| "Unlikely", "randomly", and "probably" had me nervous
| about your contribution to this discussion.
|
| I do appreciate the quantitative precision at the end of
| your last sentence.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Why wouldn't it be? Do you know which ones exhibit the
| desired characteristic?
| cwmoore wrote:
| The ones that aren't food shaped name brand products or
| fruit colored sugar water.
| bhaney wrote:
| Whether or not the effect in the paper turns out to be true and
| reproducible, the supplements you've seen almost certainly
| don't do anything unless you're wiping out your established gut
| microbiota with antibiotics first. Your existing microbiota are
| entrenched and in a very good position to defend themselves
| from any weakened intruders you might intentionally introduce.
| Meanwhile, supplement companies really like to make exaggerated
| claims.
| pogue wrote:
| I posted some links to papers I came across here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44284165
|
| It's a very fair and valid question as to whether a probiotic
| supplement:
|
| A) Survives being packaged and stored in a warehouse for an
| indeterminate amount of time B) Being shipped in the back of
| a truck/airplane C) If the bacteria is still alive whether it
| can make it through the GI tract to even have any effect
| whatsoever
|
| I don't know whether this has been studied. I know Consumer
| Labs does yearly tests on various supplements, probiotics
| included, but it's a subscription service and you need to
| subscribe to see the results. I have subscribed to them in
| the past and found their testing and articles quite helpful.
| I
|
| _In their tests, ConsumerLab found that the number of viable
| cells in probiotic products ranged from 1 million to 225
| billion per recommended serving._
|
| _Additionally, some products were contaminated with harmful
| bacteria, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which poses a risk
| to immunocompromised individuals and infants._
|
| _The company also noted that the enteric coating of some
| products did not function properly, potentially affecting the
| delivery of the probiotics to the gut._ (Brave AI Search
| summary of the article below) [1]
|
| _ConsumerLab Tests Reveal Best Probiotic Supplements and
| Those With Quality Issues_
| https://www.consumerlab.com/news/best-probiotic-
| supplements/...
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I've had a LOT of gut problems in my life. I have a physically
| broken stomach, have had to have stomach surgery in the past,
| and probably will have to do it again soon.
|
| Most probiotics I've taken did nothing. The only ones that seem
| to actually work for me are these:
| https://drohhiraprobiotics.com/
|
| Not sure why it works, but anecdotally, they do.
|
| Other things that have helped _significantly_ - cutting out
| alcohol.
| asdff wrote:
| I'm not sure how many probiotics will make it through the
| stomach acid. One would think suppository would be vastly
| more effective: parachute directly onto the battlefield.
| AaronAPU wrote:
| yeah I had serious gut problems for years and no probiotic
| ever did the slightest thing. Anecdotally I can't
| differentiate them from snake oil.
|
| But Metamucil changed my life dramatically over a span of a
| few weeks. Never had the type of symptoms it's indicated for,
| which everyone I mention it to just assumes. But it fixed me
| somehow.
| pogue wrote:
| I was recently talking about fiber & fiber supplements on
| here in a thread about a new type of fiber that was shown
| in a study to help with weight loss.
|
| _Acetylated cellulose suppresses mass through commensals
| consuming carbohydrates_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44219171
| h2zizzle wrote:
| Fermented foods are way more helpful IME. I've even found
| kombucha protective against mildly spoiled food.
|
| I can also attest to having my first alcoholic drink in a
| while and it screwing me up for a week.
| pogue wrote:
| I've always been skeptical of probiotic supplements in
| general mostly because they are stored/shipped in
| unrefrigerated environments. I believe in most cases the
| bacteria would end up dead before you even ingested it.
| However, some companies have developed strains that can
| withstand some amount of heat. But you never know where
| they've been stored/for how long/etc.
|
| I remember speaking to someone who had the suggestion to
| try fermenting food with probiotic supplements, as that
| would be the only realistic way to know if they were still
| alive.
|
| There are vendors that do sell probiotic supplements that
| come shipped in dry ice that people with Crohn's disease &
| other GI ailments. I don't remember the name of the company
| that sold them though.
|
| But, I agree that yogurt or saurkraut/kimchi and other
| fermented products would be a good way to get some gut
| bacteria. Those would be great to use after you came off
| antibiotics, but it wouldn't necessarily help with genital
| mental health/anxiety (as far as I'm aware).
|
| Interestingly, yeast has neurotransmitters and
| neurotransmitter precursors in it such as tryptophan and
| serotonin. [1]
|
| Having said all that, I decided to look up the "mood
| enhancing" probiotic strains I've seen being sold in OTC
| supplements. The two strains I see are Lactobacillus
| helveticus Rosell-52 and Bifidobacterium longum Rosell-175
| (there may be others I'm unaware of). The studies are quite
| small, unfortunately. (I didn't read all of them though)
| [2] [3] [4] [5].
|
| Finally, this is quite a unique term I haven't come across:
| Psychobiotics!
|
| _Psychobiotics are probiotics that have the
| characteristics of modulating central nervous system (CNS)
| functions or reconciled actions by the gut-brain axis (GBA)
| through neural, humoral and metabolic pathways to improve
| gastrointestinal activity as well as anxiolytic and even
| antidepressant abilities._ [6]
|
| [1] _Melatonin and Other Tryptophan Metabolites Produced by
| Yeasts: Implications in Cardiovascular and
| Neurodegenerative Diseases_
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4718080/
|
| [2] _Assessment of psychotropic-like properties of a
| probiotic formulation (Lactobacillus helveticus R0052 and
| Bifidobacterium longum R0175) in rats and human subjects_
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20974015/
|
| [3] _Probiotics Promising for Mild to Moderate Depression_
| https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/881877
|
| [4] _The effect of Lactobacillus helveticus fermented milk
| on sleep and health perception in elderly subjects_
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17851460/
|
| [5] _One Giant Leap from Mouse to Man: The Microbiota-Gut-
| Brain Axis in Mood Disorders and Translational Challenges
| Moving towards Human Clinical Trials_
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8840472/
|
| [6] _Exploring the Potential of Lactobacillus helveticus
| R0052 and Bifidobacterium longum R0175 as Promising
| Psychobiotics Using SHIME_
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10056475/
| kayamon wrote:
| After trying a lot of things what worked for me was cutting out
| negative food; usually gluten, lactose, fructose. Probiotics
| never did anything for me.
| Geee wrote:
| There's this one person who claims to have found out that
| theses probiotics need to be amplified into a megadose, and
| subsequently they cured themselves from social anxiety. I'm not
| sure if there are other people who have replicated, but the
| initial report seems trustworthy. See
| https://pdfcoffee.com/experimental-treatment-for-social-phob...
| pogue wrote:
| That's very interesting. Making your own yogurt sounds like
| it could be easy to do and you could potentially just use OTC
| probiotic capsules or powder.
|
| I posted some studies above about two probiotic strains that
| have specifically been studied for mood enhancement aka
| "psychobiotics": Lactobacillus helveticus Rosell-52 and
| Bifidobacterium longum Rosell-175.
| wosined wrote:
| Another excuse.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| What? Excuse for what?
| vslira wrote:
| I'm writing the following in jest, before anyone takes this
| seriously, as I assume this kind of correlation has been
| accounted for.
|
| Maybe the causation is reversed: people who go out more are more
| frequently infected with all kinds of bugs, from getting too
| intimate with strangers to eating stuff that was prepared by
| someone not too assiduous in their hand washing - a sibling reply
| mentioning fecal microbiota transplant comes to mind
|
| I know this article is about bugs that cause anxiety, but maybe
| they just lose the competition in a gut environment with the
| social bugs
|
| People who stay at home are less infected, thus the correlation
| with these gut specimens
| pogue wrote:
| It's an interesting theory! Maybe find some extroverts and
| share meals with them & do some consensual saliva exchange with
| them and pick up their healthy bacteria! :)
| im3w1l wrote:
| I kinda skimmed parts of it but a question I have is whether the
| study was appropriately blinded. ctrl-f blind didn't give any
| results. One of my biggest concerns with gut flora research is
| wishful thinking.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Offtopic but can we please stop and appreciate the excellent
| acronym "SAD"? It's gotta be right up there with
| hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia in the gallery of best
| disease names.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| It also stands for Standard American Diet. So there you go.
| FranklinMaillot wrote:
| It also stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder which is
| winter depression.
| NotGMan wrote:
| This is well known in low carb and juice fasting communities:
| many people completely healed life long depression after an
| extreme dietary change.
| Tarsul wrote:
| I know from personal experience that eating sugar does induce
| more anxiety in me. This might sound weird but I can "physically
| feel" in my head a certain anxiety when e.g. I think about
| something awkward. This "physical feel" stopped being there when
| I stopped eating sweets for a few weeks. One reason why I try to
| keep my sugar intake down (the other being in danger of getting
| diabetes...).
|
| Thus, I wholly believe this study.
| veunes wrote:
| It's wild how much your gut can mess with your brain chemistry
| frankish wrote:
| Can you explain your jump from gut microbiota to sugar? Aside
| from sugar being one food that passes through our digestion,
| I'm not certain why you have singled it out.
| kelipso wrote:
| Just from basic principles, what you eat affects your gut
| microbiome because different bacteria reproduce more or less
| from you eating different foods.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I believe most people are not notability adversely affected by
| sugar and a small subset of the population, like myself, are
| acutely affected. The former does not invalidate the latter.
| Sarah Wilson of "I quit sugar" fame started off with a zero
| sugar crusade then later ameliorated her advice in an apparent
| effort to generalize her advice for a wider audience. I think
| advice should be tailored by conditioning on what category a
| person fits into. I would go further and suggest that a zero
| sugar diet should also have zero fruit. As a ADHD sugar addict
| I would generally substitute sugar with fruit and that
| prevented me from finding out that even my ostensibly healthy
| diet had too much sugar in it.
| Tarsul wrote:
| do you substitute your fruits with vegetables? Maybe I should
| try it as well but then again my daily apple is one of my
| highlights.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The most direct substitution was cheese, lactose does not
| appear to have the same effect on me as fructose or
| sucrose.
|
| I mostly eat kale for vegetables, this also helps with
| subclinical insulin resistance and inflammation. I think
| roasting vegetables may end up being too sweet.
|
| I did an extended 5 day water fast to kick start the
| microbiome changes I undertook it as an experiment and the
| effectiveness in lifting brain fog suggested that it likely
| had a microbiome component.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| i thought most cheese has way less lactose, if any, than
| milk?
| edwcross wrote:
| Would you mind citing which kind of cheese you eat?
| Because much cheese has little to no lactose, and also
| goat lactose does not necessarily have the same effect as
| cow lactose. Finally, the fats and proteins in cheese
| affect digestion and possibly sugar absorption.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Honestly when battling sugar cravings it would be rather
| large chunks of parmesan cheese because I find it rather
| sweet. I assumed that was due to lactose but perhaps I'm
| wrong about that. It could also be that even a small
| amount of lactose tastes sweet after a while of not
| eating sugar.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| It is important to note that extended water fasting will
| have adverse effects for some people. It is not
| recommended to do it for that long.
|
| "" The water fast lasts for 24-72 hours. You should not
| water fast for longer than this without medical
| supervision because of health risks. ""
| https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/water-fasting
| reliablereason wrote:
| You say sugar, but are you referring to glucose or fructose?
|
| There is a meaningful amount of scientific literature
| connecting fructose and inflammation.
|
| The AVERAGE human can only digest about 30g of fructose a day.
| Some substantially more, some substantially less.
|
| A can of soda or three apples is about 30g of fructose.
|
| Inflammation (high- and low grade)then being a second step
| linking to anxiety.
| Tarsul wrote:
| I am talking about the sugar in sweets. My daily apple does
| not appear to heighten my anxiety.
| reliablereason wrote:
| I have heard people say that eating fibers together with
| fructose(like when eating a apple) reduces the impact of
| fructose, as fibers create a lining on the gut wall
| reducing the absorption rate.
|
| Sounds reasonable. But i have had a hard time finding
| evidence verifying that hypotesis.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| i'm pretty sure this saying is well agreed upon by the
| mainstream medical community. (not a medical pro myself,
| but follow a lot of articles and podcasts from mainstream
| sources)
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Athletes consume 50g of fructose (and 50g of glucose) per
| hour. It's actually fairly easy to train yourself to this
| level.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Heads up, I don't think there's a link between eating sugar and
| risk of developing diabetes. Obesity is a risk factor but not
| sugar itself.
| Tarsul wrote:
| Maybe. But eating sweets makes me eat more anyway. Which
| leads to me gaining weight. So it's the same anyhow.
| strken wrote:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S216183132.
| ..
|
| There's a complicated relationship, according to this meta-
| analysis. Eating sugar in isolation from other sources of
| nutrition is a risk factor. Eating fruit, or eating sweetened
| foods with redeeming qualities like yoghurt and wholegrain
| cereal, is probably inversely correlated (with lower
| confidence). These seem to be true even when controlling for
| BMI.
|
| Looking at the meta-analysis, it's hard to say there's no
| link. The authors suggest that fibre might mitigate the
| impact, and that adding sugar to otherwise healthy foods
| might encourage higher consumption of them.
| iaaan wrote:
| I recently started consuming relatively large amounts of fiber
| (standard daily dose of whole psyllium husks mixed with water)
| and I feel noticeably less anxious than on days when I don't
| take it. Fiber has been shown to interact somehow (I'm not
| super familiar) with the body's insulin levels. I wonder if it
| is related to what TFA is saying.
| amelius wrote:
| I get a similar feeling when drinking milk. Maybe I'm becoming
| intolerant.
| veunes wrote:
| Yeah, the brain might not be the only place we should be looking
| when it comes to mental health.
| keernan wrote:
| I've suffered with social anxiety for a very long time. Thirty
| years ago a doctor prescribed a MAOI which immediately
| transformed me into a social butterfly (which in hindsight was a
| very difficult transition). This forever proved to me what the
| doctor had told me: it is all about chemical balance in the
| brain.
|
| The problem, of course, was the danger. I could die within
| minutes if I ate fermented food without taking the antidote I
| always carried. Problem with that was the risk was almost the
| same if I took the antidote if it wasn't needed.
|
| I therefore only stayed on the meds for maybe 6 months (during
| which time I went from 150lbs to 225lbs).
|
| I've never found an alternative substitute. I've taken meds that
| help lessen the anxiety, but never found anything else that
| literally changed who I was (making me an incredibly social
| person).
|
| PS: I think it was Nardil. I wasn't having any issues with
| depression. The doctor was specializing social anxiety and in
| particular in the use of Nardil to help. He also told me that the
| chemical balance in my brain indicated that, without Nardil, I
| would almost certainly become a hermit in my 70s. I'm 72 and his
| prognosis was spot on.
| pogue wrote:
| That's quite interesting. In my experience, I've suffered from
| severe anxiety and depression my entire adult life. I spent
| years working with a psychiatrist trying every SSRI on the
| market. None of them seemed to help in the slightest, until I
| asked to try Eldepryl (selegiline), an MAO-B. It helps greatly
| with depression, but hasn't helped with anxiety. An MAO-B has
| the advantage of not having any issue with tyramine (the cheese
| effect) that you're referring to.
|
| I've never heard of Nardil, but I'll have to look into it.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I am always cautious about offering any kind of medical
| suggestions online. Please take this with a grain of salt:
|
| I struggled with anxiety and depression, treated with anti-
| depressants and such
|
| After years of that, a doctor suggested I test for ADHD and I
| got medicated for that after the test was positive
|
| After being medicated for ADHD, I had much less anxiety and
| basically no depression. Turns out that both Anxiety and
| Depression are potentially comorbid with unmedicated ADHD
|
| It might be worth asking about. It could be that you need
| stimulants, not antidepressants
| basisword wrote:
| You didn't mention therapy in your comment. Was this something
| you tried? Personally I've went from hermit > normally social
| thanks to CBT. It's very hard work, you need to find the right
| therapist, and you have to continually work on it but it gets
| easier.
| afro88 wrote:
| My social anxiety sky rocketed at 19 and didn't start to settle
| down until 23/24. I never knew exactly why, and that's always
| troubled me a bit. A microbe population getting out of hand
| sounds possible, as my diet and surroundings changed drastically
| at 19. Interesting stuff.
| basisword wrote:
| >> surroundings changed drastically at 19
|
| Couldn't this be the easier explanation? People at that age
| tend to move away from home, go to college or start work - all
| big changes, all highly social and potentially stressful
| changes. Mental health issues leading on from this is
| understandable and anecdotally I've saw it in several friends.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| People who grew up in a certain SES class (of their parents)
| also tend to take on poverty-conditions when in college (oh
| man all I can afford this week are these cup noodles), and
| not to mention frequent destruction of the microbiome with
| alcohol. It's probably very disrupting. Maybe has something
| to do with why those who have a predisposition to having a
| psychotic break tend to have their first around 20.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I feel all such studies should be headlined with: In mice: blah
| blah blah.
|
| and then if the research is farther along:
|
| In <other animal>: blah blah
|
| and finally if ever
|
| In humans: blah blah blah.
|
| I keep reading storie about what happens to mice in studies but I
| am far more interested when the research has been able to get to
| human trials and results are coming in.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| oh yea fore sure but I have just given up on life. I have my job
| and apartment and I will rot here.
| hggh wrote:
| (2023)
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