Antidepressants Blog

Fringe benefits which come unasked as a result of these relaxing mental exercises. These were matters that were easy to discuss and record—better sleep; greater ease at work; less tension in the home; better sexual response; and improved responses, both mental and physical, in many other aspects of our life.

But there is something else, something much more elusive, something much more significant. I have experienced it. I also know that others have experienced it, although they have rarely told me so.

You may easily think to yourself, “Well, how does he know?” I know in the same way as you will know when it comes to you.

When I was asking him about the nature of meditation, the yogi saint of Katmandu told me, “You can show a child a banana, but you cannot tell him how it tastes.” Taste the flavour of your relaxing mental exercises. Taste it deeply. And you will know what I mean. This that is greater than all the rest.

I have tried to write as if I were talking with you in my consulting room. If you were here with me, I would ask you to drop me a note just to let me know how things have gone with you.

As a doctor I want to know the result of my treatment. If the treatment is not quite orthodox, it is all the more important that we know the result. Please, if you have had help from this let me know. What was your trouble? How long had you had it? Then these ideas can be put to others with the additional weight of your own experience.

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On the whole, these deformations consist of localised flattenings and bulgings of the margin of the pupil. In this case one should note whether these distortions appear in the right or left eye, and whether they are found in the upper, lower, nasal or temporal sectors. A sunken condition of a flattened segment leads to inward bulging, corresponding to an increase of all symptoms.

All asymmetrical deformations of the pupil are reliable indications for assessing the condition of the nervous system, as well as to imply a disease condition of those organs whose areas are localised in the sector corresponding to the flattened segment. This second point is very important.

Flattening of the left pupil margin in the upper sector indicates psychic disturbances. Flattening of the lower sector of both pupils indicates severe muscle weakness affecting the legs.

Flattening of the pupil margin in the nasal sector indicates disturbance arising from the spinal cord and its nerve trunks, and includes physical and mental conditions. Temporal flattening corresponds more with hormone disturbances. From cerebellum to gonads, including suprarenale, pancreas and heart, these organs stand in close hormonal relationship. From this arises the clinical picture of vegetative dystony.

Flattening of the pupil margin in the upper sector of the right iris is more often seen in conditions associated with hysteria, whereas involvement of the same sector of the left iris indicates a predominance of melancholic states (see also right iris: Uterus-Cerebellum line, and left iris: Rectum-Cerebellum line).

Right temporal sector flattening suggests disturbance of the liver and consequent effects. In this case, the patients are suffering from liver encumbrance arising from hereditary preconditions caused by faulty nutrition and mode of life

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There are two drugs that doctors at St Thomas’ Hospital are using to cut back the amount of prolactin their patients produce during the last half of the month. One is Vitamin B6, or pyridoxine, which they estimate helps nearly sixty per cent of patients whose symptoms are depression, headaches or breast swelling (at the time of going to press the results of a properly controlled trial of pyridoxine has not yet been published). This vitamin had already been used successfully to treat some women on the Pill who developed depression and headaches. Taking the Pill can sometimes cause a shortage of Vitamin B6 and when this happens, your brain can’t make enough of a substance called 5-hydroxy-tryptamine, and when that happens you get depressed. Some doctors treat the depression by giving their patients more Vitamin B6. Others, who seem to me to have rather more sense, advise their patients that the Pill doesn’t suit them and persuade them to try some other form of contraception that doesn’t have side-effects. A leaflet on Vitamin B6 treatment can be obtained by sending a stamped, addressed envelope to PMT Clinic, Gynaecology Department, St Thomas’ Hospital, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1. Pyridoxine is obtainable off prescription (as ‘Comploment’, which contains 100 mg of pyridoxine) but as the daily starting dose used at St Thomas’ is considerably lower it is obviously sensible to follow the recommendations given in this leaflet, if you decide to try it for yourself.

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