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Other Brain Effects

Ketamine may work in other ways in the brain, too. Buy cheap legal ketamine nasal spray online in uk

Some nerve cells (neurons) in the brain involved in mood use a chemical (neurotransmitter) called glutamate to communicate with each other. The nerve cells need glutamate receptors — think of them like catcher’s mitts for glutamate — in order to join in this communication.

In the brains of some people with depression, those nerve cells don’t get so excited by glutamate anymore. It’s as if the glutamate receptors — the catcher’s mitts — are deactivated or weakened. Buy cheap legal ketamine nasal spray online in uk

But after people with this particular problem receive ketamine, those nerve cell connections get restocked with new glutamate receptors. It’s as if ketamine helps make new catcher’s mitts for the glutamate, so that the nerve cells can respond to it again.

Research suggests that though ketamine’s main action is in glutamate receptors, it needs opioid receptors to have its antidepressant effects, too. For psychiatrist Alan Shatzberg, MD, who did some of the research that uncovered this, that’s concerning. Buy cheap legal ketamine nasal spray online in uk

“It may not matter, but it does concern me, personally, that ketamine works through an opioid mechanism,” he says. The worry, which other researchers have mentioned in studies of ketamine, is that people might require larger and larger doses of ketamine over time in order to feel its effects — as is the case with opioid painkillers. The spreading and tapering of treatments over time should help reduce this risk.

Of course, any comparison to opioids raises the question of the risk of addiction.

“I think it’s probably less addictive than opioids, but it’s not without its risks,” says Shatzberg, who is the director of Stanford University’s Mood Disorders Center. Indeed, case studies have described people who showed signs of addiction or abused the drug. Buy cheap legal ketamine nasal spray online in uk

Because it’s an off-label treatment, it may be too soon to tell whether the risk of addiction or tolerance outweighs the possible benefits. It’s important to note though that some recommendations suggest it may not be safe for people who have a history of substance abuse. Many clinical trials have barred people with substance use problems.

It also may not be safe for people who have schizophrenia. “At the antidepressant dose, ketamine transiently worsens their symptoms of psychosis,” Krystal says.

Reshaping the Brain

As for the drug’s action on glutamate receptors: Regrowing and reactivating synapses helps the brain’s ability to change, which may help it shift out of depression. That may also explain why antidepressants or psychotherapy that didn’t help before ketamine may help afterward. Buy cheap legal ketamine nasal spray online in uk

Before ketamine, Winograd says he only went to therapy because his family begged him to go. “After I started to feel better,” Winograd says, “my therapist started to make more sense.”

As for Coulter-Scott, she’s only four infusions into her six-dose treatment, and already she says she sleeps better at night. Trouble sleeping is a common symptom of depression. Raising her 4-year-old granddaughter on her own, she says, she still feels stress, but it doesn’t come along with the darkness and anxiety that she had lived with until now. Buy cheap legal ketamine nasal spray online in uk