The Street Drug That Can Cure Depression | Men's Health News

No wonder clubbers are so happy all the time.

Could the high from a popular street drug cure your everyday lows? Quite possibly, according to a new study in the journal Science.

Researchers found that within 40 minutes, a single dose of ketamine?a club?drug people take for its hallucinatory effects?can quash suicidal thoughts and relieve depression.

That?s a far cry from waiting weeks for an anti-depressant to kick in?and though it?s not a solution today, it could provide depression researchers insight into the possibility of new treatments for the debilitating disease. (In the meantime, try these 5 Easy Fixes to Lift Your Mood.)

Ketamine (or ?special K,? as you might have heard it called) works by increasing the number of connections in your brain, says Ronald S. Duman, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and pharmacology director at Yale University.?Picture a healthy neuron as a Christmas tree, he says. It has plenty of branches to connect with other cells. In depressed people, stress hormones attack these connections, essentially destroying the parts of your brain responsible for regulating mood. But ketamine blocks one of those damaging hormones, allowing your brain to re-grow its broken branches, says Carlos A. Zarate, Jr., M.D., chief, section treatment and neurobiology of mood disorders at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Patients in the Science study reported that their depression lifted after the hallucinatory side effects abated, and that they felt naturally happy for up to two weeks. And even when the drug wore off and symptoms of depression returned, people reported?fewer suicidal thoughts and felt happier than before they took the drug.

Current anti-depressants?don?t rebuild your brain. Instead, they?re based around an older understanding of depression. While researchers currently believe dying branches are responsible for the disease, the old consensus was that low levels of certain chemicals in your brain were to blame, Duman says. So older drugs (think SSRIs, such as Prozac, Zoloft or Paxil, among many others) were designed to boost the levels of chemicals like serotonin that researchers associated with happiness. That approach works for some of the most severe cases , but for people suffering from mild to moderate depression, the benefits of SSRIs are virtually indistinguishable from placebo treatments, according to a 2008 study in PLOS Clinical Trials. (Learn Why All Men Should Care About Depression.)

For now, ketamine remains illegal?in high-enough doses, its recreational side effects mimic schizophrenia.?And while approving a street drug as a cure for depression is a long way away, researchers are working to limit the negative side effects, isolate the good parts, and re-analyze how we treat depression today.

In the meantime, depression?s most natural cure has also been shown to alter your brain?s functioning: exercise. Breaking a sweat boosts the levels of the amino acid?tryptophan in your brain. Because your body can convert tryptophan into serotonin (one of the chemicals responsible for regulating your mood),?you experience a natural mood boost, according to a 2012 study in?Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise. (Consider that Your #1 Reason to Hit the Gym.)

Additional reporting by Madeline Haller

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Source: http://news.menshealth.com/drugs-depression/2012/10/17/

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