In a world where things go wrong and people get sick, every once in awhile something comes along that makes things right again. I’m talking about something that’s so dramatic in its solutions we’re tempted to call it a “miracle.”
But we won’t.
We’ll call it a game-changer.
Because IV ketamine treatment is changing history.
Nothing elicits our excitement like a tool that helps people to the degree this one does. So many people with complex co-morbid psychiatric disorders drop their shackles of symptoms …and discover they’re free to live rewarding lives.
IV Ketamine Restores Brain Circuitry
Ketamine does exactly that in the vast majority of those who were before hopeless in their condition. People whose severe illnesses prevented them from working, from building relationships, from enjoying anything. People whose lives were at risk because symptoms like suicidal thinking were made worse by their own despair.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declares depression and other severe mood disorders the leading cause of disability throughout the world. And yet, until the last several years, at least a third of these people could not be helped.
But, in the last decade, an often-abused anesthetic has emerged as a game-changer that millions were searching for.
Ketamine — so safe and effective that the WHO lists it as one of its 10 essential medicines — is now rising as one of most effective and extraordinarily restorative treatments we’ve ever had.
But to be clear — and to be fair — there are still some who don’t benefit. We continue to watch for more research that helps us understand why. And to look for and learn ways to possibly help them and more.
New Study Throws Open the Shutters on Synapse Restoration
A study just released this month by Conor Liston of Weill Cornell Medicine, and colleagues, revealed yet more than we knew before about how ketamine works to achieve this remarkable restoration.
Dr. Liston is a leading researcher in the field of circuitry specific to the prefrontal cortex and its impact on cognitive and emotional processes. It’s the dedication of researchers like Dr. Liston, and a host of others, that has helped us understand and use the benefits of ketamine for our patients. We never take our neuroscience researchers for granted.
The combined effort of research teams like Dr. Liston’s in the U.S. and Tokyo resulted in expanded understanding of just what happens when ketamine reaches the brain in someone who’s stressed and depressed.
Of course their work is performed in the laboratory with lab animals, but gives insight about what happens in the brains of people, and how ketamine restores brain circuitry for them. Insights like this are changing the course of psychiatric treatment.
Ketamine’s Active Role with Neurons and Dendrites
The researchers used a “cutting-edge” technology that included light microscopes and allowed them to view the tiny dendrites and dendritic spines of synapses (in the medial prefrontal cortex) over time, so they could see what happens there over several hours, and then what happens after more than a day.
It turned out that the neuronal circuits changed first, with a readily observable change in behavior, in the initial 3 hours after ketamine. (Hold that thought: the circuit activity changes first.)
Then, over the next 12-24 hours, they saw that the number of spines had increased by well over half of those that had been lost during stress.
So they realized that the new spines and synapses were the result of the improved circuit activity.
Extraordinary.
New Technology Opens New Doors
This is the first time we’ve had an inkling into the timing of the effects and repair instigated by ketamine. The improvement seems to be a one-two punch. Once the spines survive a few days, they form new connections, and then within another 2-7 days, improved behavior and function became apparent.
This brand new discovery of ketamine’s effects helps us understand that there can be an immediate response to ketamine, and then a longer lasting reversal of symptoms that occurs a little later.
Both of these functions are important.
Old Treatment Replaced by New Insights
Remember that the old premise for treating depression was to increase the availability of neurotransmitters like serotonin to improve the movement of signals in the brain. For some people this was enough to help relieve the depression.
But in too many others, it did very little to relieve anything. We know now that stress prunes the signaling structures themselves. Stress from life, illness — whatever — breaks down, weakens, and destroys the synapses. The dendrites, dendritic spines, and synapses that are the highways the signals travel must be rebuilt. Without these structures, neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine can’t do their job.
Ketamine comes along and reverses this destructive process. It repairs damaged circuits, rebuilds new dendritic spines and synapses, increases connections, and lubricates signals with neurotransmitters … in the medial prefrontal cortex and in other key parts of the brain, too.
This revelation about how ketamine restores brain circuitry will most likely contribute to the ongoing development of new psychiatric drugs. We’re excited about the possibility that new medications can be designed to do all of this before they’re used by physicians for our patients.
Getting Closer to Bigger Breakthroughs
So we have a new paradigm, a new pattern to build upon. We may see over 80% response in patients with ketamine now, but we’re shooting for the time when researchers can improve upon this across the board… to be able to truly relieve psychiatric suffering — hopefully in our lifetime.
And we keep getting closer.
The Modes of Response Vary
As it stands now, there are some people who are so responsive to ketamine treatment that they feel remarkably better after the first infusion, and with each treatment, they become more and more hopeful, brighter, more joyful, more creative, and more resilient.
There are others who sense nothing for 3 or more infusions, then finally experience improvement, relief, and eventually joy just like the first group. These may require a few more than six infusions to reach that point.
Then there are those who may have 8 or 9 infusions. They may experience a few days of improvement throughout the process, but seem to keep losing the beneficial effects. In those cases, we explore other body systems and serum levels to find areas that need to be treated so the “treatment-resistance” can be penetrated, then with another infusion or two they finally achieve the same joy and resilience. We call it remission. And we fight for it.
Still, of course, there remains that small group who don’t seem to improve, so we continue to press on, to explore reasons…and possible solutions.
Science …and ART
IV ketamine treatment is the most remarkable treatment for mood disorders we’ve seen. And clinicians and researchers are looking beyond “mood disorders” all the time. Addictions and substance use disorders, for example, were considered to be disorders of motivated behaviors and treatment focused on teaching behavior control. We’ve learned so much, and while treating these disorders is complex, we’re finding IV ketamine can play a dramatic role in reducing craving and contributing to abstinence. “Dramatic” is an understatement.
Overall, the administration of IV ketamine treatment is both a science and an art.
Ketamine Treatment is a Process Toward Restoration
At Innovative Psychiatry in South Windsor, CT we encourage our patients to have patience with the process. To hold a commitment to see it through to fulfillment. And to consider a “booster” infusion if benefits subside or fade — whether it’s once every year or two, or twice a year…or every 3-4 months, if necessary.
Because every brain is different, and every life has its own unique character and pitfalls. It may be necessary to build and improve the infrastructure in your life. To accept yourself and others as they are, and learn to embrace the joys of life and ignore the stressors. All of this can help strengthen your remission and help it last longer.
If you’ve suffered the symptoms of a disorder without relief from treatments or medications, call us.
We’re committed to your restoration and eventual joy.
To the rediscovery of your best self,
(I tried to post this on the Spravatto blog, but somehow lost that page. Please peruse my following post and feel free to place it publicly in the appropriate location, should you feel so inclined )
I am a former surgical first assistant. I owned a perioperative staffing agency in Dallas, Texas, and in 1997 after leaving a hospital, I was robbed & shot point~blank in my chest, leaving a bullet painfully lodged over my left lung against my spinal cord with crippling CRPS. I know ketamine well. There were vials in every OR, out in the open, before drug abusers ‘found it’, and it soon became a scheduled substance. I remember ordering them for anesthesia, at just a few dollars per unit, if that. I had read about John Lilly experimenting with it in the 1970’s, to treat his migraine headaches, and finally tried it out myself out of complete desperation. An anesthesiologist friend had thankfully urged me to try microdosing with it one day, which I finally did with much trepidation (I only knew it was an anethetic agent at the time, and it was not something I wanted to try outside of a clinally monitored environment), it is the only thing that got me through many years of thoroughly miserable events that would have killed most other people. In any event, fast forward to now, 23 years later, and it seemed like ketamine had become ‘a nectar for the gods’, and quite unavailable to the common man. Spravatto seemed to be the milestone I had been waiting on progress to make, however after I researched the molecular chemistry of esketamine, I was puzzled as to why they were literally trying to ‘improve on Coca~Cola classic’, but I’ve learned from the opiate crisis, that all you need to do is follow the money. And that’s truly where it’s going with Spravatto. There was no need to tweak with ketamines existing chiral form, excepting to profit from ‘a new drug’, no need to make ‘designer ketamine’, except pure profit. People who enjoy speed drugs, like d~methamphetamine, however it’s chiral opposite l~methamphetamine does next to nothing for those drug users, and esketamine reminds me of just that.
Esketamine is NOT ketamine. It simply cannot be, or they couldn’t patent it. While we may be able to thank J&J’s Jensen’s Pharmaceuticals for bringing some much needed attention to a relatively old drug, they are not to be thanked for gifting us anything else and it wasn’t done to help people, unless you just happen to be a Wall Street investor living in a totally different world.
Thankfully, my doctor ordered me affordable compounded ketamine nasal spray, which has utterly replaced the 900mic BID buprenorphine buccal films (which I sarcastically refer to as a GMO, ~genetically modified opium) that I had been prescribed for my, at times intractable pain (more power to those who have found some pain relieving solace with bupe, but I did not). Ketamine, in it’s powdered form, compounded with an aqueus nasal insufflation base, been a life~altering game changer for me, in just the first week of usage. Not to mention, I don’t have to tolerate the only~to familiar ‘opiate glares’ that ER doctors seemed to have permanently plastered on their faces these days when chronic pain patients come in. I wasn’t addicted to opioids, I was dependent on them, and the fashion in which they were suddenly withdrawn from those who truly necessitated them was nothing short of being literally murderous to a vast many of unfortunates who just couldn’t go on another day feeling like that. This post is for them, the ones who haven’t reached the shore, because their arms were just too tired to swim the waters anymore. “May your’ struggles have not been in vain.”
It is important to note that I have been utilizing this treatment modality of nasal insufflation for only a week now and that targeting the chronically acute neuropathic/musckuloskeletal pain from which I suffer from has been it’s primary purpose of intent, but with that diagnosis comes an almost certain amount of depression. I am pleased to be able to report that it has worked bilaterally; a welcome enchantment with both conditions. My doctor has referred and been accepted to a local ketamine IV infusion clinic, however insurance has not kept up with the cutting edge medicinal times, so it has already been denied on multiple occasions, despite the clinical efficacy that it has demonstrated for me, which had been forcing me to have my fiance’ rush me to our hospitals ER just to receive the IV infusions on an emergent basis. This spray changes everything.
My message, if I had one to shout to the suffering masses, would be this; hang on… it’s coming and if you do, you too may in all likelihood be one of the ones who also gets to reign in the benefits of this newly emerging therapy. Just hang on.
I hope this helps some one. I really, really do.
Best regards;
~Richard Mark