OCD and low Gaba levels

[Lollob]

Has anyone with OCD been tested for hormones and neurotransmitters? Found very low Gaba, high estrogen, low testosterone and high histamine levels. Wondering if anyone has had OCD improvement with boosting Gaba, balancing neurotransmitters and hormones?

[Serendipity16]

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[Candace_Marie]

Very interesting... I hope someone responds

[SelfHealthTerrier]

Hi there! In researching not only my OCD, but other health aspects and concerns as well, the path so often bumps BACK into the world of neurotransmitters and their seeming infinitely complicated contributing factors to just about anything that can happen in the body! Because of this, I asked my Dr. to refer me to have my hormones and neurotransmitters tested. (Granted, a LOT has physically happened to me this last year, but I wanted to see at what level of involvement my own personal chemical composition might be adding to everything that’s been going on). She refused. (I have Kaiser, and who knows what the many reasons for the refusal may be?)

I then took it upon myself to research neurotransmitter testing, and where one might get it done, and since finding that it is SO expensive, I also began looking up reviews of the labs who DO do it, to see if folks reported it being worth the money. This is where things got even more interesting, and have led me down a rabbit hole of research that, interestingly, led me to this exact health community social website to begin with.

I’ve read that it can be eye-opening and life-changing to get an idea of what’s going on with your personal chemistry. I’ve also read that the reason Dr.s don’t really refer out for this testing is because there doesn’t really seem to be a reliable way to acquire the information, which is also always shifting do to the many functions of our body on the daily. Because the info we’d truly need centers on the amount of these neurotransmitters in the brain, and they cannot easily, or often at all, cross the blood/brain barrier, a urinalysis is a poor form of testing, as is saliva, and even blood is not thought to give a truly accurate account. I’ve been researching everything from Dr.s who approach medicine from a more holistic approach, naturopaths, and Dr.s who are dug in and entrenched in the western approach sponsored by Big Pharma. And there ARE valid points coming from both camps. Sigh.

So, this is frustrating, especially since both sides are saying opposite things, and there are proponents and nay-sayers on both sides trying to discredit the other, and it’s impossible to know who actually has Humanity’s best interest at heart, as even the more naturally and compassionately-minded seeming Dr.s I’ve looked up seem rooted in making as much money as possible.

I’ve played around with supplementing on my own with amino acid precursors L-Tryptophan and L-Tyrosine for the serotoninand dopamine affects, but have also recently read about how if the doses are not in the proper complimentary amounts for the balance YOU specifically need, (and how can you find this out without expensive testing that supposedly doesn’t work anyway?!) this can actually lead to depletion of the other neurotransmitters.

Let me know if you want to discuss this further, and I can provide links and references to the published papers and so forth I’ve been researching. There doesn’t seem to be an easy or clear answer to this at all, but the more we all talk about it, hopefully that can clear at least SOME of the confusing fog for some of us!

All The Best,

SelfHealthTerrier

[LuvSun in reply to SelfHealthTerrier]

Thanks for sharing your information