Antidepressants Blog

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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Few of us who drive stop to think what sort of state we are in before we get behind the wheel. Yet driving demands intense concentration and very quick reactions and these are just the qualities that will be most impaired by being off-balance. So let someone else drive if you can, or make your excursion at a later date. But if that’s not possible and you have to drive because you have absolutely no option, make a point of driving more slowly than you normally would. And whenever you stop at traffic lights or junctions, check that you are as relaxed as you can be. Drop those shoulders, relax your feet, don’t grip the wheel so hard and smooth out the wrinkles in your face. It might intrigue the man in the car alongside you, but it won’t hurt him and it could do you a lot of good. Try to take a break every fifty miles or so and have a rest and something to eat and drink. In fact, treat yourself and your car with great care and caution. And remember the golden rule of the road. When in doubt, don’t! This applies particularly to drinking. At any time of the month it’s stupid to drink and drive and we all know that. But just before a period would be the very worst time to run such a risk, because it takes far less alcohol then to make you drunk. And on top of that, your judgement isn’t all that it should be so you might not recognize the warning signals that drink is beginning to affect you until it’s dangerously too late.

Whatever you are doing, practise relaxation as frequently as you can; it is doubly helpful to women who are off-balance. Firstly it will allow your-body to produce the hormones it really needs to get you back on form again. And secondly it can give you the physical means to slow yourself down when you’re rushing and you know it’s dangerous. It really does help if you can do the more hazardous and tricky jobs more slowly than you normally would. Of course, it’s better still if you can hand them over to someone else. But for most of us life doesn’t provide help like this and we have to get on with things as well as we can. So if there’s no one else around, remember to relax and breathe in a lower gear so as to slow yourself up, then take plenty of time over what you’re doing.

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