Word: serotonin
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...reason is that Paxil, Prozac, Luvox and the others all target the same brain chemical, called serotonin, which seems to govern mood. Too little serotonin, and patients tend to feel negative about themselves and the world around them in one way or another. How that dissatisfaction manifests itself--clinical depression, anxiety, phobias, obsessions, even eating disorders--depends on a complex web of factors that researchers have yet to unravel. But they do know that drugs that keep serotonin from being reabsorbed too quickly into the nerve cells--the so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs--tend to alleviate these...
PROZAC Eli Lilly launched Prozac in 1988. It works by blocking serotonin rather than allowing it to be released from the brain. Though it was initially controversial, more than 35 million people have got a lift from...
Some doctors are worried that emotional development will suffer too. It's one thing to fool around with serotonin levels in a brain that's already hardened and set, but quite another thing to manipulate a young, still elastic brain. And if children learn to medicate depression away, when do they develop the coping skills to weather psychic squalls on their...
...mess with Ecstasy. Doctors report that heavy use of the recreational drug--say, 70 to 400 hits--may cause long-lasting brain damage. Ecstasy appears to attack the brain cells that produce serotonin--the master chemical of mood, appetite and memory...
Doctors used to think eating disorders were purely psychological. Now they realize there's some wayward biology as well. In a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry this month, researchers found abnormal levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain, in women who had been free of bulimia for at least a year. That may help explain why drugs like Prozac and Zoloft, which affect serotonin, have allowed a lot of bulimics to stop bingeing. Unfortunately, the pills don't work as well for anorexia. Nor do they offer a simple one-stop cure. Health-care workers must...