Recent publications suggest that a significant number of our wounded warriors are coming back from desert deployments with PTSD for which there is no perfected remedy. I believe that there is now good cause to
examine a low cost and evidence based based alternative to the use of SSRI’s (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors) as the primary protocol. One very significant downside is that the military cannot employ soldiers on
active duty that are using SSRI’s. Another issue might be that SSRI’s do not address the underlying pathology.
The etiology of PTSD is complex and worth a comment. American soldiers are almost always on the heavy side of tissue iron loading (not measured by blood iron studies) and chromium deficiency: this is caused by their diet and
a lifetime without sufficient sweat. Sweat causes excretion of iron/chromium. The iron is readily replaced but the chromium is not.
The excess tissue iron blocks the proper levels of chromium absorption and retention. The deficiency of tissue chromium reduces the efficiency of insulin signaling and the downstream ability for cells to absorb, iron, chromium, glucose, and amino acids.
Iron accumulates in the liver and other organs. The Substantia Nigra Pars Compacta actually consumes iron in the production of neural transmitters and is one segment of the brain that does become iron deficient. When loaded with iron, the liver secretes hepcidin in most healthy individuals. Hepcidin down regulates the deliverable HCl at mealtime. Low stomach acid prevents the complete digestion of meat proteins and the proper absorption of amino
acids through the gut. Americans lose 1% of their muscle mass each year from their early twenties because of this hypoaminoacidemia.
During desert deployments, American soldiers lose significant amounts of iron and chromium in sweat. The blood levels of iron and chromium are lower because of insufficient digestion of meat (low iron and chromium absorption from the gut into the blood, and low
absorption of iron/chromium from the blood into the substantia nigra pars compacta and all other parts of the body).
Optimizing insulin signaling efficiency increases glucose loading into the hippo campos for cognitive enhancements, increases tryptophan loading into the brain for serotonin conversion-increases perception of well being, and increases iron loading into the substantia nigra pars
compacta for dopamine and neural transmitter synthesis. Optimizing insulin signaling efficiency can be accomplished with Intravenous Chromium Chloride or by applying a chromium fortified topical lotion.
http://www.ajcn.org/content/30/4/531.abstract
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/27/11/2741.full
http://info.med.yale.edu/therarad/summers/Sci198/fromMetalsinMed.pdf
Orally ingested chromium supplements have been proven to be inferior in the optimization of chromium via the transferrin receptor. Modern humans ingest daily approximately 1000 times the amount of iron as they do chromium. The iron easily wins the affinity/abundance battle for space on the safe transport protein transferrin and the chromium is chelated into a useless salt and excreted by the kidney without biological impact. Avoiding the iron rich environment in the gut is of paramount importance in optimizing the biological impact of chromium. It is the transdermal delivery of chromium that makes such a dramatic impact on optimizing the insulin signaling transduction event. This is accomplished in a dramatic and an immediately observable way by optimizing the bio-availability of trivalent chromium.
PTSD for which there is no perfected remedy.” PTSD for which there is no perfected remedy.”
There’s no perfected diagnosis, either. Just the theory that war is stressful and the existence of many, many styressed out people. And not that I’m saying there isn’t something wrong with them. But what if, PTSD didn’t actually exist? Or, at least, not in the form we know it? Would anyone know the difference? Can psychiatrists be trusted to know what they’re talking about? I don’t think so.
Maybe soldiers should be given a pension, no matter what they did and what they feel, so that we can rest assured they’ll at least be comforetable for their whole lives. And if that means we blowe money on people who could very wekll support themselves...well, that’s what we’re doing anyway. This way, anyway, we’ll avavoid massively deluding ourselves by pretending we know that of which we speak.
Deploying troops taking SSRI's could be very dangerous is the reason. You don't need a guy out in the field all of the sudden thinking his platoon is the enemy. Serotonin balance is a very delicate manner not even some physicans take serious enough when writing SSRI scrips. Once it migrates from the stomach to the brain you in effect have a soldier having LSD type experiences.
PTSD requires years of therapy a lot of times which is out of a shrinks area. Sending a soldier with PTSD back into combat is a sure way of complicating the disorder or bringing a relapse. The mind has had enough carnage for years to come.
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