You should check out this interesting press release. BASEL, Switzerland, March 31, PRNewswire. Yet another epilepsy drug is showing anti anxiety effects as well. It does beg the question, is there a relationship between epilepsy and anxiety? Let’s start here

Synosia Therapeutics today announced the start of a multi-site, Phase II clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of rufinamide (SYN-111), a sodium channel blocker, as a potential treatment for general anxiety disorder.

The name Rufinamide should not cause fear as the date rape drug, because they are not the same thing, flunitrazepam is the date rape drug. Rufinamide is a triazole derivative. They are not the same thing so let us return to the article.

“Given the extensive safety experience available from previous studies, we believe this structurally novel compound has the potential to relieve anxiety without the adverse side effects of current treatments,” said Stephen Bandak, Synosia’s chief medical officer. “There is a real need for new treatment options without the limited compliance associated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or the risk of dependence of benzodiazepine-based treatments.”

Whoa! Now that is some claim to make. It’s a claim I like and hope for, because I know that sooner or later my doctor will take me off of Klonopin and I’ll be right back where I was before, malfunctioning. So this little press release offers some hope. Interestingly, when they first marketed the drug they were not allowed to offer it as an anti anxiety.

This bears watching.

Tags: Research, articles by Stephen
No Comments »

This is an article that should cheer up some people. It seems the the anti-depressent Paroxetine is safe for pregnant women in their first trimester.

Motherisk partnered with centres from around the world that study and provide information on the safety of medication in pregnancy to follow up on 1,174 women in Canada, the US, Australia, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, and Israel who called such centres with regard to the use of the drug in early pregnancy (when the fetus’ heart develops). Data was then compared with the outcomes of an equal sized group of non-exposed infants. The rate of cardiovascular defects was 0.7 per cent in each group. As the incidence of heart defects in the general population is approximately one per cent, the rates in this study were slightly lower than expected.

That quote should make it clear they did not come to this decision lightly. Read the complete article here.

Here’s another article that I offer for a taste treat if nothing else. Subordinate Monkeys More Likely To Choose Cocaine Over Food It’s interesting that submissive monkeys want cocaine more than food. What does that say about our affluent Cocaine users?

Alicia, over at her Mental Health Notes, blog for b5media, has posted an article Saturday Sanity: Drugs And Government Issues. Alicia’s site is always worth checking out.

And now for all us messy people out there is this article, Why a spring clean is good for you. It took me years to realize it, but the state of my house, workstation, or car, was a sure indicator of my mental state at that time.

On a completely different note, The Healthy Geezer: Senior Years Aren’t Always Serene.I think we can learn here that just because mom or dad seem to be getting along fine, they might be be at all.

Tags: News, articles by Stephen
No Comments »

Mary Murry, R.N., C.N.M., wrote an article that I think should be mentioned here on the Anxiety Report. Miscarriage is something that very few people talk about with any real understanding. In her article, Murry makes it painfully clear when she says,

“When we discover that we are pregnant, we don’t think of zygotes, embryos or fetuses. We think of babies. We think of sons and daughters. We start planning the minute we know we’re pregnant. So when a woman miscarries she loses a baby. It doesn’t matter if she is 7 weeks or 15 weeks.”

That is a potent paragraph. The moment that the woman knows she is pregnant is the moment that baby becomes the future, is human, is hers! What Murry teaches us is that the sadness and sense of loss is very real. But it’s a piece at the bottom of the article that cause me to post it here,

We just don’t talk about it with anyone. This is when the silence can end. These women know your sorrow, your loss. Talk to women who know your sorrow and loss, and share your feelings. You can do it here, or on other sites just for women who have lost babies. You will find a community of women who understand.

Let’s rethink that statement into some that says, We anxiety people don’t talk about with anyone.  But we can find others who know out situation, just like the woman who miscarried can find a place to share sorrow and loss.   We can talk to others in the same boat as we are, share our feelings, and determine how best to push forward in the never ending process of living our lives.

Tags: articles by Stephen
No Comments »

Here’s a story that caught my eye because my father was an alcoholic.

“Reshaping of the DNA scaffolding that supports and controls the expression of genes in the brain may play a major role in the alcohol withdrawal symptoms, particularly anxiety, that make it so difficult for alcoholics to stop using alcohol.”

The idea in the article/study is to make alcoholism easier to cure by making the withdrawal less terrible. My father was unable to quit until Diabetes claimed both of his legs.

This is another story I posted on Topix.com today, because it actually have good advice in it, and it came from the television show!

A Link Between Antidepressants And Type 2 Diabetes This is interesting because

Lauren Brown, researcher with the U of A’s School of Public Health, found people with a history of depression had a 30 per cent increased risk of type 2 Diabetes.Lauren Brown, researcher with the U of A’s School of Public Health, found people with a history of depression had a 30 per cent increased risk of type 2 Diabetes.Lauren Brown, researcher with the U of A’s School of Public Health, found people with a history of depression had a 30 per cent increased risk of type 2 Diabetes.

These are just a sampling of the stories that broke today.  Throughout the day I will make new posts, and later include some of the more interesting clinical trials.

Tags: articles by Stephen
No Comments »

The Sea of Klonopin

The Sea of Klonopin is 40,000 feet deep, and when you take the first couple of pills you’re held gently on the bottom.
It’s restful there, you’re neither asleep, nor awake, but half-dreaming.
Then I saw it was my mind, and a waiter comes to the table where I lay
And brings a menu called “Inner Self: Known and Unknown.”
Some are beautiful, and those you bless, and as it’s blessed it rises
through the Sea of Klonopin.

You remain with the waiter, and he warns me now the menu of self
will begin to bring fears and insecurities, old time guilts, “with things you’ve
never seen before, or thought about; all brought to you on heaping platters
of ugly, multicolored slime”

Then Klonopin says “notice it is all before you in chains! The ugliness you see here is powerless, it is here for you to judge.”

O, then I prayed, “Lord, Jesus, Blessed Mother, Saint Therese, and all the angels and saints that love me, come to and help me now.” (Guess I’m outed as a Catholic now.)

That niggling fear you never really understood, the one that waited
in the left corner of your mind, always ready to signal the neurons
to fire, fire, fire!

Your judgment is swift. “I reject you.”

Upon which words the servants of Klonopin remove the chains,
and it becomes waterlogged, part of the bottom of the Sea of Klonopin.
A mere stain where once a terror stood. And so with the next,
and the next. The number of things you have judged away
from you are now waterlogged and cannot rise…

Yet — miracle! You do rise

During Ascent, Depression tried to attack me from my left shoulder blade,
and Klonopin walked it out the door like pair of Vegas enforcers.
It was gone from me, and my shoulder
has been quiet since then, too.
Later a rush of adrenalin came out of the back of my chest,
I knew that it was the onset of a doozy of an attack. Again, the Klonopin enforcers came
and took that rushing adrenalin threat out a side door,
where I hope they beat it to death.

All the while I rise through this Sea of Klonopin, off and on moments of . . .
So much of what it touches and fixes are little receptors in our brains, covering them over with tens of thousands of feet of Klonopin protection. Everything runs, all of me is in working order, but my own neurology can misfire and put me into four days of torment.  Klonopin, son of Bromazepam, and all you Benzodiazapines, thank you.

Tags: articles by Stephen
No Comments »