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On 20040417 (Sat) at 0941:27 -0500, Lynn Maruska wrote: > Any experiences with taking Wellbutrin for depression and experiencing PD > symptoms? Doctors have discounted the connection because symptoms are > unilateral but ..... I had noticed when I'd increase my dosage of > Wellbutrin my PD symptoms increased. Recently had to stay off Wellbutrin > for a couple of days because of stomach flu. All PD symptoms reduced and > even seemed to be gone. Dr. put me on lower dosage of Wellbutrin with > extended release. Within a day symptoms returned. I also take low dosage > of Effexor. All symptoms on left side. Had shingles a few years ago also > on left side. Perhaps Wellbutrin exasperates PD symptoms. Sounds familiar, except in my case it's the right side and the symptoms appeared for the first time when I tried Effexor last July. They seemed to get milder after I stopped taking Effexor, but unfortunately, they didn't go away (and seem to be slowly worsening month by month since then). I don't think Effexor was a cause, but perhaps it acted as a trigger. Since the chemistry of both PD and most antidepressants is understood only at a fairly superficial level, there could be some as yet unknown relation. Most doctors work empirically; they can hardly do otherwise, since it would be more than a full-time job just staying current in all the fields a GP needs to know about. Even specialists tend to read review literature rather than original science. Having to make life-and-death decisions on insufficient evidence (even when the reading is done, science itself can be incomplete or plain wrong) tends to make some physicians appear dogmatic; I think it's a kind of psychological defense against fundamental insecurity. I don't mean that as a criticism, either: medicine is a hard job, and that's one of the factors that make it so. -- | G r e g L o u i s | gpg public key: 0x400B1AA86D9E3E64 | | http://www.bgl.nu/~glouis | (on my website or any keyserver) | | http://wecanstopspam.org in signatures helps fight junk email. | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn