If chemicals like oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin are so crucial to our mental health, why can’t we monitor them the same way diabetics monitor insulin?
In: 7327
Because these are neurotransmitters that mostly happen in the brain. With diabetes we can take measurement from blood, but there’s no easy way to do that with the brain.
**EDIT:** Added “easy”.
Because these are neurotransmitters that mostly happen in the brain. With diabetes we can take measurement from blood, but there’s no easy way to do that with the brain.
**EDIT:** Added “easy”.
A couple big problems:
1) there isn’t a quick and easy blood test for that.
2) insulin has a pretty clear safe/ideal range, or rather its corollary in blood sugar does. They…don’t. Our understanding of the full interactions of these and other neurotransmitters is rudimentary where present at all. Even if we could test for it we couldn’t reliably create a sort of green/yellow/red matrix for what each should be at any given moment.
3) they are extremely difficult to reliably modify. With insulin it’s a single variable with the fairly direct solution of providing a fairly predictable amount of insulin replacement according to weight and current level. We don’t have an easily injectible seratonin replacement with predictable outcomes like that. Same for any other neurotransmitter.
So…we can’t *easily* measure them. We can’t easily identify what they should be even if we could measure them and we can’t easily alter the state even if we could measure it and reliably determine a target value
A couple big problems:
1) there isn’t a quick and easy blood test for that.
2) insulin has a pretty clear safe/ideal range, or rather its corollary in blood sugar does. They…don’t. Our understanding of the full interactions of these and other neurotransmitters is rudimentary where present at all. Even if we could test for it we couldn’t reliably create a sort of green/yellow/red matrix for what each should be at any given moment.
3) they are extremely difficult to reliably modify. With insulin it’s a single variable with the fairly direct solution of providing a fairly predictable amount of insulin replacement according to weight and current level. We don’t have an easily injectible seratonin replacement with predictable outcomes like that. Same for any other neurotransmitter.
So…we can’t *easily* measure them. We can’t easily identify what they should be even if we could measure them and we can’t easily alter the state even if we could measure it and reliably determine a target value
Diabetics don’t monitor insulin. They monitor blood sugar. Blood sugar is relatively straightforward to detect. Neurotransmitters and hormones are hard to measure, and it wouldn’t be practical to have people do so in their homes.
Because these are neurotransmitters that mostly happen in the brain. With diabetes we can take measurement from blood, but there’s no easy way to do that with the brain.
**EDIT:** Added “easy”.
A couple big problems:
1) there isn’t a quick and easy blood test for that.
2) insulin has a pretty clear safe/ideal range, or rather its corollary in blood sugar does. They…don’t. Our understanding of the full interactions of these and other neurotransmitters is rudimentary where present at all. Even if we could test for it we couldn’t reliably create a sort of green/yellow/red matrix for what each should be at any given moment.
3) they are extremely difficult to reliably modify. With insulin it’s a single variable with the fairly direct solution of providing a fairly predictable amount of insulin replacement according to weight and current level. We don’t have an easily injectible seratonin replacement with predictable outcomes like that. Same for any other neurotransmitter.
So…we can’t *easily* measure them. We can’t easily identify what they should be even if we could measure them and we can’t easily alter the state even if we could measure it and reliably determine a target value
Diabetics don’t monitor insulin. They monitor blood sugar. Blood sugar is relatively straightforward to detect. Neurotransmitters and hormones are hard to measure, and it wouldn’t be practical to have people do so in their homes.
Another reason is think of your being. You at any given time are a different recipe of neurotransmitters. A little of A and a lot of B makes us happy. A little of A a lot of B plus a tiny bit of C makes us less sad or something else. Much like dna the same inputs just in different degrees can make totally different people. Monitoring them means little when you don’t know what you are even monitoring for and how much
Source: me, eating Doritos and drinking a bud heavy by a fire pit.
Written by me age 39
Diabetics don’t monitor insulin. They monitor blood sugar. Blood sugar is relatively straightforward to detect. Neurotransmitters and hormones are hard to measure, and it wouldn’t be practical to have people do so in their homes.
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