Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission
Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
Click the orange button to the right to learn more about what you can start doing today.
- You are here:
- Home »
- Blog »
- non-conventional therapies »
- Myeloma – Depression, Anger, etc?!?
Myeloma – Depression, Anger, etc?!?
“the large number of questions that were submitted suggest that there are many, many depressed patients who would benefit from having better-tolerated therapies, yet remarkably few controlled studies of potential remedies.”
Depression? You’ve been diagnosed with a type of blood cancer that you’ve never heard of. It came out of nowhere. And your oncologist just told you that the average life expectancy of the newly diagnosed MM patient is 5-7 years!!!.
Yes, MM is complicated. And yes, a diagnosis of an incurable blood cancer is life altering. But I am here to tell you that there are many simple steps you can take now to feel better, increase your response to treatment, feel better all around.
I am not a psychiatrist or any sort of medical professional. I readily admit that depression is a complicate issue that I know little about. I am a long-term cancer survivor and cancer coach. I am blogging about the articles linked and excerpted below because of my own experiences and research into a common occurrence in cancer care called “over-treatment.”
I read the article below through the eyes of a cancer survivor who lives with long-term and late stage collateral damage brought on by several years of aggressive conventional oncologist therapies. Therapies that resulted in two remissions, two relapses and my oncologist remarking “there is nothing more we can do for you.”
Is it just me?!? Is the author of the article below talking about experimenting on his patients hoping for a response rate of 40%-60%?
The author refers to this “response rate” and then questions the many short, long-term and late stage side effects that aren’t known or researched.
Balance the experimentation and collateral damage (side effects) of toxic therapies for depression with studies that cite the same success rate with non-toxic depression therapies such as curcumin, omega-3 fatty acids and/or moderate exercise such as yoga and it seems clear to me that evidence-based, non-toxic depression therapies should be the first line of treatment for major depressive disorder.
Please scroll down the page, post a question or comment and I will reply to you ASAP.
Thank you,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
To Learn More About Diagnostic Criteria for Multiple Myeloma Click Now
Efficacy and safety of curcumin in major depressive disorder: a randomized controlled trial.
“This study provides first clinical evidence that curcumin may be used as an effective and safe modality for treatment in patients with MDD without concurrent suicidal ideation or other psychotic disorders.”
Omega-3 fatty acids in major depressive disorder A preliminary double-blind, placebo-controlled trial
“From the preliminary findings in this study, omega-3 PUFAs could improve the short-term course of illness and were well tolerated in patients with major depressive disorder…”
Solving Clinical Challenges in Major Depression
“Of course, the relevant change in DSM-5 reflects the fact that it is neither justified nor helpful to try to differentiate grief from depression when the individual presents with a full depressive syndrome (a recurrent episode of MDD in this case). Specifically, studies have shown that depressive episodes of bereaved individuals are very similar to those experiencing other kinds of stressful life events…
With respect to pharmacotherapy of depressive disorders, there were several questions about differentiating the role(s) of the more recently introduced antidepressants from the generically available first-line therapies, as well as questions reflecting abiding concerns about the widespread use of second generation antipsychotics (SGAs) relatively early in treatment algorithms. I think it is fair to say that vilazodone and vortioxetine are not simply “me too” drugs and both offer some potentially unique properties compared with FDA-approved SSRIs…
No session on MDD is complete without a number of cases and a slew of questions about treatment-resistant depression. There is little uncertainty about the efficacy of SGAs when used as adjuncts to otherwise ineffective antidepressants: multiple positive placebo-controlled studies have established the efficacy of risperidone, aripiprazole, olanzapine, quetiapine, and brexpiprazole for this indication. However, real questions persist about cost-effectiveness and the best practices to mitigate risks of weight gain and other adverse metabolic effects and to help ensure patient safety during longer-term use of SGAs...
The results of a recently published study that compared therapies for veterans with treatment-resistant depression are generally consistent with this approach: adjunctive aripiprazole was only nominally more effective than adjunctive bupropion…
Vigilant monitoring of weight during SGA therapy and assertive intervention when patients continue to gain weight despite sound clinical management are essential strategies to keep the benefit to risk ratio on the favorable side...
As reported by a Task Force of the American psychiatric Association,7 there is ample evidence that an infusion of a sub-anesthetic dose of ketamine (typically 0.4-0.5 mg/kg infused over 40 minutes) can have rapid and dramatic effects for people who have not responded to multiple trials of standard antidepressants. Antidepressant effects generally persist for 4 to 7 days after a single infusion and typically are not linked to psychotomimetic or dissociative adverse effects. Response rates typically range from 40% to 60% after one week of therapy and preliminary results suggest that the benefits may be sustained by once or twice weekly infusions on an ongoing basis…
Nevertheless, there are many important questions to be answered about longer-term efficacy and safety of such extended courses of intravenous ketamine therapy.9,10 That said, the remarkably rapid efficacy of a treatment that does not directly target monoaminergic neurotransmission has had a revitalizing effect on drug development and it is possible that other medications with less “baggage” than ketamine will be identified that exert antidepressant effects via modulation of glutamatergic neurotransmission…
With respect to managing the adverse effects of our more and less commonly used treatments for depression, the large number of questions that were submitted suggest that there are many, many depressed patients who would benefit from having better-tolerated therapies, yet remarkably few controlled studies of potential remedies. Beyond weight gain, which is more strongly associated with use of adjunctive SGAs than antidepressant monotherapy, treatment-emergent sexual dysfunction is an endemic problem with the SSRIs and SNRIs…