Antidepressant blood levels?

[ForeverAnxious]

Has anyone here gotten their blood levels taken to see how much natural antidepressants your body is releasing and did it help you and your psych to find the right medication for you? I'm going to get my blood levels taken very soon cause I'm treatment resistant.

 

[missmeyet?]

I'm curious, do you know what the actual test is? Or what specifically they are testing?

 

[ForeverAnxious]

Hey I am sorry I was mistaken you can only test to see if a medication will work well for you or not by getting your blood drawn you can't test to see what natural antidepressants your body is releasing

 

[bunge]

I may be wrong but I believe that they can only do an enzyme test to see if you would possibly metabolise one med better then another...im not sure how helpful you will actually find it.

 

[ForeverAnxious]

Sorry to confuse you but I was mistaken, you CAN get your dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine tested. It's called a catecholamines blood test.

 

[ForeverAnxious]

Yea you can do that too bunge!

 

[bunge]

Yeah I knew about catecholine tests but I thought that was more useful in diagnosing some neuro conditions.

I think they would gave to do two tests at least and a few weeks apart to gain a understanding of your personal blood levels.

IDK, it smells like expensive un-needed testing to me but im not a doctor.lol

 

[blight12]

Well this is interesting: catecholamines blood test.

I specifically wanted to have family member have this shit tested due to anxiety issues and the doc said no such thing is possible.
I will look into this and prob do it myself if it exisits. I always heard that diagnosis for related issues was difficult due to no testing was possible for dopamine, serotonin, epi, gaba etc.

 

[bunge]

^
Well the catecholine test will only test for catechol (organic compounds that are a benzene with two hydroxy groups) and is used to test dopamine, noradrenaline and adrenaline.

Its main use is in diagnosing neuro conditions, as damage to certain areas of the brain releases lots of these chemicals, although moderate amounts are released through stress.
The issue with using this test to measure psychological stress is that all these chemicals have a halflife of only a few minutes, so unless they test you during an anxious episode, high levels could have been washed away already.

 

[blight12]

Ahh thats to bad, would be nice for a real test for psych treatments.

 

[bunge]

^
Blood tests for bi-polar meds are commonplace because its very important to keep a consistant blood level.
Also drugs like lithium are toxic as hell if they over-accumulate in tge body.