Do you ever heard about ketamine? If not then you really need to know about ketamine, has well known history of abuse of drugs. Ketamine could be a most promising drug in the treatment of severe depression in years.
Basically ketamine drug belongs to dissociative anesthetics and basically used for the starting and maintenance of anesthesia.
A drug could be hold a property of most promising option as well as a threat to the human health. This case is also similar with ketamine; it could be a promise or a peril. This all depends on the mechanism of action of ketamine on the brains.
Ketamine works on receptors present in the cortex and subcortical region of brain and induces so called “dissociative anesthesia”.
Ketamine induces a state of anesthesia, providing pain relief and sedation in limited use of ketamine while excessive use of ketamine results in amnesia, a medical condition associated with the deficit in memory.
You can say under the guidance if doctors and medical practitioners this is good for health but if cross the limit, it will be a big trouble.
Most f the doctors generally won’t prescribe ketamine as an antidepressant to you yet. Researchers are still appraising ketamine for that. This might be the revolutionary medicine if it could save people from the depth of depression instead of knocking out the people.
Alleviate the pain
Ketamine has a quite interesting history as it was used on the battlefield of Vietnam War for the treatment of injured soldiers.
Ketamine alleviate the pain at lower dose and cause sedation it also helps gone through surgery as painkillers in the place of addictive painkillers like morphine.
Misuse of ketamine manipulates your sense of sight and sound and you can suffer from hallucinations and could be lost the touch of your surroundings.
Even you can lose control on your body. You would be unable to speak or walk on your own. Hence it has been called as a date-rape drug.
President of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, John Abenstein says “Outside of the clinic, ketamine can cause tragedies, but in the right hands, it is a miracle,”
Life of ketamine as antidepressant?
Although ketamine belongs to general anesthetics named a class as dissociative anesthetic, also helps in relieving sign of depression.
Revolving severe depression literally could not be a miracle, if it happens then consider lucky yourself to bless with this miracle.
Many researchers are doing research in various people who have tried other treatments or those who are in the hospital for the treatment, whether it helps in the treatment of depression or not.
FDA has not yet approved ketamine as a promising drug in the treatment of depression. However, some psychiatrists doing experiments in their patients who have suffering from severe depression with suicidal property or without it.
This statement given by John Crystal, MD, Chief of psychiatry at Yale- New York haven hospital.
It has been shown in these studies shown that people having severe depression administered ketamine either by IV route or in the form of nasal mist for once a week in the supervision of medical experts. As a result it can relieve symptoms of depression in duration of few hours.
Due to having different physiological structures, it has been shown that some of people who tried ketamine got better while some people suffered from distorted eyesight or sound.
The main purpose of the research is to determine and fix the dose enough to treat depression and small as possible to avoid side effects, Krystal says.
Doctors do not know about the safety of ketamine. For a long term use it will be fine or not is the concern of research.
Krystal gives a statement that if drug alleviate depression and get approved by FDA, doctors may ne start the use of ketamine in the treatment depression in upcoming 3-5 years. He also developed the nasal mist which is a kind of inhaler being tested.
How does ketamine work in depression?
Generally people have antidepressants for the couple of the weeks. As these medicines need a proper time to develop an environment enough to have affects in your system.
But ketamine has different mechanism other than other antidepressants as it start works s it leaves your body, krystal says. Researchers are not sure enough that how exactly and why does it works in this manner.
One of the theories tells that ketamine triggers connections to re-grow between the cells of brain that involved in the mood.
This effect is named as profound and krystal also says that ketamine has the efficacy of far more rapid working than other antidepressants pills.
Thomas insel, MD says “Recent data suggest that ketamine, given intravenously, might be the most important breakthrough in antidepressant treatment in decades,”
In future, doctors may start the use of ketamine in order to help people suffering from severe depression until other antidepressants are going to start work. But like other psychedelic drug, PCP, ketamine would never be purchased at local pharmacies or chemists shop.
Thomas insel says that “While the science is promising, ketamine is not ready for broad use in the clinic. We just don’t know enough. But with the excitement generated by early results, we will have more information soon,”
Ketamine still has a dark side and has been used as in shadow and known to be a street drug, the risk is knockout quickly.
What happens if ketamine is being abused?
Although ketamine may work as a miracle in depression, on abusing ketamine at high dose, people gat hallucinated and feels like place in a k- hole. This situation experienced by people when they are going to lose their consciousness
There are some sides effects of ketamine are as follows:
- Blurry vision
- Confusion
- Dizziness, faintnessor fainting
- Sweating
- Feeling too excited, nervous, or restless
- Trouble peeing, or needing to pee often
- Pale or bluish lips, skin, or fingernails
- Chest pain, discomfort, or tightness
- Shortness of breath, trouble breathing
- Convulsions
- Problems with swallowing
- Fast, slow, or irregular heartbeat
- Hives, itching, rash
- Bloody or cloudy pee
- Delusions
- Puffy or swollen eyelids, face, lips, or tongue
- Unusual tiredness or weakness
