Serotonin is the hormone what makes us happy, so why aren’t we just injecting it into our body/taking it as tablets to get out of misery on command?
In: Biology
Your computer runs on electricity. Why can’t you just shove more electricity in, and get a faster computer?
Because the system we know about is 50x more complicated than that. Shoving more serotonin in would undoubtedly have both short term and long term side effects that we don’t want.
Plus, we know there’s a bunch of stuff about the neurotransmitter/mood/brain system that we don’t understand or even know about yet. So in reality, it’s probably 250x more complicated than just shoving more serotonin in.
And that’s not even scratching the moral/legal/ethical discussion. Let’s say we figured out how the neurotransmitter/mood/brain thing worked in the finest detail. Further, let’s say that if we just dumped chemical x in the water supply, everybody would be happy, and nice to each other. Would it be right to do that? Would it be right to even allow people to take the happy chemical every day for the rest of their life? How would that affect relationships? How would it affect society? Your kid dies or your wife leaves you and you don’t give a shit, because you’re just happy all the time. etc etc x 100.
Serotonin cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, which is a membrane that separates our central nervous system (brain, spinal cord) from our peripheral nervous system (the rest of our body including muscles, digestive system). If you took serotonin as a pill it would make you have to poop, as that is the effect of serotonin on the digestive system. People do, however take SRIs (serotonin reuptake inhibitors) or SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). Neurons communicate by sending neurotransmitters (Serotonin is a neurotransmitter) to each other. There is a gap between each neuron called the synaptic gap. When neuron A sends neurotransmitters to neuron B, not all are taken in by neuron B and remain in the synaptic gap. Neuron A then reuptakes the neurotransmitters that are remaining in the gap. SRIs and SSRIs block neuron A from reuptaking serotonin by effectively “closing the gates”. Therefore, more serotonin can reach neuron B, and so on, as it has nowhere else to go.
There’s two reasons.
The first is serotonin doesn’t make you happy – maybe if it did we could inject it. Some people with depression do better on tablets that “increase your serotonin” but many don’t, and depression isn’t unhappiness, and there’s a lot more going on.
The second reason is you have to get the right amount of serotonin in the right place. The antidepressant drugs you’re probably thinking of increase serotonin in a particular place – the gap between two nerves in part of your brain. That seems to work with some depression, like I said.
But there’s a tumour that some people get that makes and releases lots of serotonin into the gut. The people who get that tumour don’t get happy and relaxed. They get diarrhoea and maybe they die.
That’s what antidepressants are, they basically stimulate the body to release more serotonin, enhance the effect of serotonin and maintain more serotonin in the brain.
So why when you take Antidepressants, you need to wait at least a month before feeling the effects of i t?, and why it only works for some people and not others (60 % 40 statistically) This would mean that serotonin doesn´t cause direct happiness, but in constant high amounts in the brain it seems to change some neurological processes that relieves depression. (that’s why it takes antidepressants a month to work).
Depression its related to inflammation and cognitive impairment, It is presumed that depression can literally lower your IQ, because parts of the brain that are chronically inflamed start to die off in the brain. it seems that high amounts of serotonin stimulate Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, wich makes new neurological pathways that fix previous inflamed ones. this could be why antidepressants work for some, Their depression were related to some kind of inflammation and low neuroplasticity associated with low serotonin, which its just one case of depression.
In a few words: depression it’s not hormones, there are a lot of very complex process that are happening behind each case of depression, and they can have very differences causes. there is no direct cause, just possible causatives: Inflammation, Low Dopamine, Gaba/Glutamate dysregulation, Low Serotonin, Neurodegeneration, Autoinmune responses, external virus/bacterial infections,Vitamin deficiency, etc…
There are a lot of great responses here but how did monoamine oxidase get left out? It’s the enzyme that metabolizes tryptophan-based neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. You can’t administer these NTs, even IV, because this enzyme works *extremely* quickly to render them inactive. MAOIs are drugs that inhibit this enzyme and help to perpetuate the existence of these NTs. They aren’t used as much anymore because of their risk for serotonin syndrome. When taking these drugs, even cured meats that contain tyramine, like salami, can cause SS, as well as dextromethorphan (Robitussin).
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, sure. High levels in the brain don’t necessarily make you happy and low levels don’t necessarily make you sad. We know antidepressants help severely depressed people recover but they do pretty much nothing to people who are mildly depressed except give them side effects. Antidepressants increase serotonin so people wondered if high serotonin makes you happy. The real story is more complicated. Antidepressants probably have other ways they help depressed people and happiness is probably a lot more complicated than high serotonin.
Outside of the brain serotonin does very different things. The name sero tonin kind of means toning of the blood (think serum toner). Serotonin does funny things to the “vascular tone” and by this I mean how strongly the blood vessels contract. It seems to cause both construction and dilation, or both squeezing shut and opening.
If we gave a tablet that raised body serotonin outside of the brain you would probably go pale then red and get a horrible headache. Oh and diarrhoea. And maybe nausea.
It’s weird. The brain is made up billions of interconnected neurons. Networks of these neurons work together and with other networks to regulate behavior, emotion, movements, and all other brain functions conscious or unconscious. SSRIs are a class of medications that block a channel of communication between individual cells, causing the network around it to change. Whats funky is that we can’t predict how it changes—all we know is that when we pull on this metaphorical lever, some peoples mood and anxiety get better.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3044645/
Serotonin does not directly cause pleasure, and neither does dopamine for that matter. If any neurotransmitter is established to cause pleasure in the normal sense of the word, it would be endorphins (endogenous opioids).
Lots of reasons:
– Serotonin cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. Ingesting or injecting it would have no effect.
– The correct serotonin levels can vary a lot from person to person, and too much can cause some *very* bad effects.
– Presuming you could somehow get serotonin into the brain, your brain would see all this excess serotonin floating around and stop producing it on its own. You then become wholly dependent on the external serotonin.
– Low serotonin levels are not always the cause of depression. Personally, SSRIs (drugs that slow *removal* of serotonin) don’t work for me. I have to take drugs which act on *dopamine* (welbutrin).
Nothing will make you happy except re-aligning your life with the Higher Purpose – that He who sent you into this life expects for you. Until you realize this, the spirit in you will remind you of the wrongness of your current life direction.
Change your understanding of life, or you’ll all perish! (Luke 13.5)
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