Posted by susan C on August 25, 2001, at 13:49:04
In reply to Re: What IS the MARTIN JENSEN bk about?!, posted by JohnL on August 25, 2001, at 6:11:04
John Thank you for a summary, I appreciate the benerit of your experience...a question for you...how can you get to maximum dose in only 2 weeks, or fivce days...I often have SE if I go up to quickly, I did a trial of 5 months on depakote to find possible amount, after 4 weeks showed it helped some, with what i like to call 'reluctant' side effects. Meaning: the slight benefit is better than the non overwhelhming side effects...I have the book on my list to investigate and Dr dash bob, I will order it through your link :o)
Susan C.> > I can't quite get a handle on what this book is all about from the posts here - could someone indicate what it discusses and what the TITLE is? Is it available in large bookstores? Thanks.
>
> The book is called "The Successful Treatment of Brain Chemical Imbalance". Last time I looked it was available at Amazon.com, and also in local retail stores. The quickest easiest way to get it though is directly from his website. It is very reasonably priced.
>
> There are several basic ideas in the book, listed below:
>
> 1. The closer a drug is to targeting the real underlying chemistry problem, the quicker it will work and the better it will be tolerated.
> 2. The farther away a drug is from targeting the real underlying chemistry problem, the longer it will take to work, if it ever works at all. The drug can work, but does so indirectly through chain reaction domino effects, resulting in delayed response, or no response, and increased side effects.
> 3. There are ten different general categories of brain chemical imbalance, all of which can result in similar psychiatric symptoms. For example, while most doctors treat depression with SSRIs, that assumes a chemistry of low serotonin, which is only one of ten possible general problem areas.
> 4. Rapid fire trials of drugs are tried in order to weed out the duds and to highlight the good ones. This is for comparison. Generally three drugs from each category are tried. Then later you go back and choose the favorites for longer term trials. There are superior matches and inferior matches. Quick trials can separate the two, because superior matches almost always show some kind of hint of a good response in a very short time (which relates to #1 above). When a drug happens to hit a bullseye, it is usually quite obvious and encouraging. Longer trials are still needed for full response, but the short trials allow you to eliminate inferior matches to shorten the list of drugs to consider.
> 5. All responses to drugs, whether they be bad, good, or neutral, provide clues as to what the real underlying chemistry problem might be. The book helps provide ways of looking for the clues and understanding what they mean.
>
> While Jensen uses 5 day short trials to identify the superior matches, I personally think it should be about 2 weeks. So I modified his strategy for myself to two weeks. The cool thing about his method is that it is not written in stone, it can be customized to fit each individual patient. The general principles still apply, but you can modify or vary the details.
>
> I have a lot of psychiatric books. But if I had to choose to keep just one, Jensen's book would be the one. It is the only one that provides realworld down to earth methods and strategies to make this hit-and-miss game have some reason to it. Other books are great for theory and general principles, but Jensen's book is great for hands on details. It is designed purely to help a patient get well in the shortest amount of time, and it provides all the tools to accomplish that.
> John
poster:susan C
thread:76220
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010822/msgs/76369.html