Alabama's Morning News with JT
Dr. Beverly Orser says there is new treatments for depression
[MUSIC PLAYING] Looking for excitement? Chumba Casino is here. Play any time, play anywhere. Play on the train, play at the store, play at home, play when you're bored. Play today for your chance to win and get daily bonuses when you log in. So what are you waiting for? Don't delay. Chumba Casino is free to play. Experience social gameplay like never before. Go to Chumba Casino right now to play hundreds of games, including online slots, bingo, slingo, and more. Live the Chumba Life at chumba casino.com. BTW group, no purchase necessary, boy, we're prohibited by law. See terms and conditions, 18 plus. Maybe some new treatments for depression. A lot of people have suffered with depression for quite some time. You may know somebody. You may be one of those people. Then there may be some new options for you. Joining us now to talk about this is Dr. Beverly Orser, who is one of the authors of an article that was written about this, repurposing general anesthetic drugs, drugs rather, to treat depression. Dr. Beverly Orser is an anesthesiologist. Well, command, thanks for being here. Thank you, my pleasure. So one of the drugs that you hear a lot about is ketamine. And it's kind of a powerful tool to treat depression. But it's kind of interesting now that anesthesiologists and psychiatrists, rather, are working together to help in this arena. How does anesthesiology come to play a role in dealing with depression? So the anesthetic drugs that you just mentioned, ketamine, and more recently nitrous oxide, so-called laughing gas, have been around since-- well, ketamine was discovered in 1956. More recently, around 2000, it was discovered that lower doses of these drugs can be effective for the treatment of refractory depression. So that's depression that's experienced by patients that don't respond to the normal or more widely used treatments. And so one wonders, given the time these drugs have been around, why did it take so long to discover the effectiveness of this? That's what our article talks about. The need for anesthesiologists who are the physicians that take care of you in the operating room and in the intensive care unit, they need to work more closely with psychiatrists to understand how we can employ these drugs for, as you mentioned, a group of patients that suffer from depression and have not been responding to the normal treatment regimens. What are the normal treatment regimens, and what does it do to the individual and chemically to the brain to help in that arena? So there's been a class of drugs that target a certain chemical system in the brain that have been around and tried and are helpful for many patients. The monowaming targeting drugs have been the center of treatment for decades now. Ketamine and nitrous oxide and some of the other drugs that are going to be studied in the next little while act on different receptor systems. And it's an area of intense investigation because we don't quite understand why these drugs are being so effective. That said, it appears that they modify the imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory chemicals in the brain that keep our brain functioning normally. And so there are many labs now that are trying to understand how this works because it's very exciting in the sense that the drugs are effective relatively quickly compared to the drugs that target the monowaming systems. When we talk about nitrous oxide and people have used it in a dental office, for instance, the minute you take it away, the effects or benefits of it are gone pretty quick. Like propofol compared to some other anesthesia. So with these drugs like ketamine and nitrous oxide, is it short lasting as far as the effective and benefit for the patient? I think one of the most surprising aspects of the anti-depressant action's ketamine and even the early evidence from nitrous oxide is that the effects persist. And that was really unexpected. I've been an anesthesiologist for many, many years and practiced with the assumption that once the drugs cleared the brain, the brain goes back to baseline state. But ketamine was one of those first drugs to show us that there can be persistent longer term effects. And fortunately, it's a beneficial effect for some patients who have refractory depression. I just wanna note that ketamine does not have this effect on patients that don't have depression. It doesn't create a long-term euphoria. So there's something that the drug also tells us about the problems that are causing the depressive state. And that's another reason why it's of such interest. What wrong is it writing? So that's something that a number of labs, including my own, is working on. - Yeah, I wanna get your thoughts quickly too. The increased amount of drug deaths in this country, whether it's fentanyl or overdosing on ketamine or getting bad drugs on the street, caution people that once again, be careful where you buy these drugs. Make sure you go through a real pharmacist and obviously ketamine and others, like this can be extremely dangerous outside the medical prescription in guidance, right? - I'm really glad you mentioned that. That is extremely important. These drugs are very, very dangerous. They need to be administered by skilled practitioners. And they need to be prescribed by physicians. And I've been practicing for a long time and I have a tremendous respect for the powerful nature of these drugs. They absolutely need to be prescribed. And the patients that are selected for treatment also need to be selected carefully by a psychiatrist. So this is not a panacea. This is not something that should be taken lightly. This needs to be managed very, very carefully. It's promising. But like many powerful medical treatments, it needs to be uncarefully under medical supervision. - Absolutely. Dr. Beverly Orsher, thank you and some optimistic new trends now towards helping folks with depression. Thank you, have a great weekend. - Okay, thank you, sir. Bye-bye, have a good day. - Hello, it is Ryan. And we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we? Just to make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, counting your steps, you know, all the mundane stuff. That is why I'm such a big fan of Chamba Casino. Chamba Casino has all your favorite social casino style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere, with daily bonuses. So sign up now at ChambaCassino.com. That's ChambaCassino.com. Sponsored by Chamba Casino, no purchase necessary. VGW Group, void where prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply.