Blog Archive
Patients’ stories abound demonstrating the rapid and robust antidepressant and antianxiety effects of ketamine. And there is substantial scientific research to support the efficacy of ketamine in treating depression and other mental health conditions despite the medication not having FDA approval to treat these conditions. The issue now is if...
If you have any interest in new treatments for mental health conditions, you cannot escape being bombarded by the hype around psychedelic medicines. Until recently, this class of compounds were shunned by the medical community as dangerous, unpredictable, and abusable. Psychedelics include psilocybin/major mushrooms, LSD, MDMA, ayawaska, ibogaine, DMT,...
Should You Believe in Science? Strange question but more people are asking it in the last few years especially with confusion, misinformation, and politicization around COVID. Now, I’m no expert about COVID and how to safely avoid and treat it, although plenty of my non-healthcare professional friends and family ask...
When patients with depression who have not done well with traditional oral antidepressants come to my clinic for other options, I often offer ketamine as one potential treatment. I tell them the standard ketamine therapy for someone in a current depressive episode is six to eight ketamine administrations over two...
Many of my patients who come to me for a treatment resistant evaluation wonder what's wrong with them that the typical antidepressants don't work. They hear about friends, family, co-workers, etc. who get on Prozac, Lexapro, Zoloft or some other such drug and live happily ever after. Except maybe for...
For the last several decades, treatment of depression consisted of either anti-depressant medications or psychotherapy or some combination of the two. The one exception was electro convulsive therapy or ECT, reserved for the most severe cases of depression in which someone might stop eating, be completely unable to function, or...
I would love to answer this question in a very precise scientific manner with extensive research studies to support my conclusion. Unfortunately, the research on this question doesn’t exist. So, I can give you my opinion based on observations and experience as well as from the little bit that we...
So sorry to mislead you, but psilocybin (magic mushrooms) is not ready for prime time. I admit you were manipulated to read this blog, but so are the thousands of articles online that suggest that psilocybin is a safe and proven treatment for all kinds of psychiatric disorders. They imply...
If you've tried all the non-medication suggestions to help you sleep and you're still having issues, sleeping medications can be a safe and effective option. But try to use them as a temporary solution and continue to search out healthy ways to manage your sleep. If you have to go...
There are many reasons why you may not be able to sleep. The number one reason is poor sleep habits. Eating or drinking foods with a lot of caffeine that can keep you up such chocolate, teas, and sodas. Some foods may say they have no caffeine but may have...
Ketamine is an anesthesia and pain management medication developed over 40 years ago that doctors and patients soon recognized had a surprising and unintended effect- those who had not done well with the typical antidepressants prescribed by doctors who took it had a very rapid and dramatic improvement of mood...