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atracyphd2

Tue, 18 Feb 2003 14:59:52 EST

[drugawareness] SSRI Antidepressants Induce a Sleepwalk Nightmare

 

 

 

 

 

The original title I chose for my book Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? was Our

Serotonin Sleepwalk Nightmare. At the time of the first edition (1994)

everyone argued that no one would know enough about serotonin to understand

that the book was about antidepressants so we went ahead with the name of the

most popular of the SSRIs - Prozac.

 

Now for those of you who have read my book or heard me lecture you are aware

of the reason for the title I chose - my focus on the most serious of the

side effects of SSRIs - the REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD). The largest

chapter of my book is devoted to this disorder which I consider the most

dangerous of all the reactions to an SSRI. I firmly believe that RBD is the

reason for much of the violence we see with the serotonergic antidepressants

and the serotonergic antipsychotics as well as Fen-Phen and Redux which are

also serotonergic.

 

To help those who have not read my book and are not familiar with RBD let me

quote one statement from an article (below) that ran in the New York Times

last month: " REM behavior disorder [RBD] is the only parasomnia routinely

associated with violence. But sleepwalkers have also been known to stab their

relatives, molest children or confidently stride out of third-story windows,

in states varying from confused wakefulness to partial arousal to the deepest

stages of non-REM or slow-wave sleep. "

 

Even though no one else has focused on this disorder as I have for so long

and worked so hard to get the public to see that these drugs are causing the

REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, the following information shocked even me! In

fact I am still trying to catch my breath because the original medical

article is even more shocking than this NY Times article.

 

Let me first give you a little background before you read the article. In

1991 I made a call to Dr. Carlos Schenk, the author of this study. I told him

that I was concerned at how much evidence there was that Prozac (the only

SSRI on the American market at the time) was causing the REM Sleep Behavior

Disorder. I told him what patients on these drugs were reporting that would

show they were experiencing this as a side effect.

 

He listened intently and then told me that there was not any research to back

up my conclusion.

 

I told him that was okay, but that I had ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT that Prozac was

triggering this most dangerous sleepwalk state and that someone had better do

the research because this was something that had the potential of affecting

many people worldwide.

 

Dr. Schenk never called me back to let me know that he immediately began

doing that research. He went back through the records at the Minnesota

Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis where he and his research

partner Dr. Mark Mahowold are known as the leading researchers in America on

this disorder. Amazingly he found in going through the records for the past

41 months that an astounding 48.8% of all those who had come through the

clinic and been diagnosed as suffering from RBD were on Prozac!

 

If that information was not shocking enough as the information reached the

doctors, who then began to watch for this connection, rather than having to

go back through old records to see if there might be someone on Prozac who

had this disorder, found that 80% of those with the signs of RBD were on

Prozac!!! And on top of that the symptoms of this disorder continued in one

patient for 19 months AFTER coming off only short term use of Prozac!! Severe

sleep disturbance continued for months after coming off the drug. Which is

why I mention the importance of using so many natural alternatives to rebuild

after being on these drugs.

 

Of the significance of this information the author of the NY Times article

states, " No one yet knows how common such side effect are, or their

implications — if any. "

 

I would gladly tell them how common this side effect is and how far reaching

the implications are!!!! That is what I have been trying to tell them for

over a decade! Phil and Brynn Hartman would LOVE to explain to them the

implications of SSRI induced RBD if they only could, as would thousands of

others who have lost their lives to this side effect.

 

As I say in nearly every lecture I give, " What could be more terrible than to

chemically induce first of all someone's most horrifying nightmare and then

sleepwalk ? In this way the individual acts out the one thing that is the

most terrifying thing to them. " This is clearly why we have cases of such

loving and caring mothers, like Andrea Yates, killing their children - that

was her worst nightmare. And no one loved Phil Hartman more than his wife

Brynn who even went to a friend's home after shooting him to the friend to

come home with her to tell her if she had shot Phil or if she was having a

nightmare because she could not tell which was real.

 

In my opinion the fact that SSRIs are producing the majority of RBD is

possibly the most significant piece of research we have ever seen on SSRI

antidepressants.

 

Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, Executive Director,

International Coalition For Drug Awareness

www.drugawareness.org & author of Prozac: Panacea

or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare (800-280-0730)

 

 

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HREF= " http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/07/health/psychology/07SLEE.html?pagewanted\

=print & position=top " >

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/07/health/psychology/07SLEE.html?pagewanted=prin

 

t & position=top</A>

 

January 7, 2003

 

When the Brain Disrupts the Night

 

By ERICA GOODE

 

Awake, Jim Smith was an amiable and popular man.

 

As the director of public works in the small town of Osseo, Minn., he could

be counted on to make house calls day or night, attending to burst pipes or

broken water mains.

 

In fall, he hunted deer with buddies, who affectionately called him Smitty.

In summer, he took his family pan fishing for crappie.

 

It was only when Mr. Smith fell asleep that something changed.

 

Wrapped in slumber, he would shout obscenities, kick the walls, punch the

pillows. Sometimes, he hit his wife, Dee, in the back or grabbed her by the

hair. One night, dreaming that he was putting a wounded deer out of its

misery, he came close to breaking his wife's wrist.

 

" I just didn't sleep real sound, " Mrs. Smith recalled. " Once he started

talking or swearing, I would be afraid that the next thing, he would be

swinging his fists. "

 

In an earlier century, Mr. Smith might have undergone exorcism to expel the

demons that possessed him when his eyes closed. In the 1960's, psychiatrists

might have traced his problem to repressed aggression and prescribed a

sojourn on the analytic couch.

 

But in the last two decades, researchers have begun to systematically

investigate a variety of disorders — called parasomnias — involving odd or

dangerous behavior during sleep. One is called REM behavior disorder, in

which people act out their dreams.

 

This was the diagnosis Mr. Smith received in 1987 when he sought treatment at

the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis.

 

Parasomnias are more common than was once thought, researchers are finding.

They can be successfully treated, and most have nothing to do with mental

illness.

 

At the same time, research on such sleep problems is challenging basic

assumptions about sleep and wakefulness, showing that the borders between the

two states are far from clearly demarcated. And in the case of REM behavior

disorder, one of the most studied parasomnias, investigators are finding

surprising links to physical illness.

 

For example, at the annual meetings of the Associated Professional Sleep

Societies in June, Dr. Carlos H. Schenck, a psychiatrist and senior scientist

at the Minnesota sleep center, and Dr. Mark W. Mahowald, a neurologist and

the director of the clinic, will present findings indicating that of 26

otherwise healthy patients in whom REM behavior disorder was diagnosed in the

1980's, 17 went on to develop Parkinson's disease.

 

Other studies, at the Mayo Clinic and elsewhere, have found associations

between the sleep disorder and other neurodegenerative diseases related to

Parkinson's, including a form of dementia known as Lewy body disease and an

illness called multiple system atrophy.

 

Mr. Smith, now 72 and retired, learned in May 2001 that he had Parkinson's.

 

The connection between REM behavior disorder and Parkinson's is the latest

twist in a story that began 20 years ago, when a retired grocer named Donald

Dorff came to Dr. Schenck complaining of what he called " violent moving

nightmares. " In one such dream, Mr. Dorff, believing he was a quarterback

heading for a touchdown, ran forcefully into his bedroom dresser.

 

Wiring his new patient up in the sleep laboratory, Dr. Schenck discovered

that Mr. Dorff's violent behavior occurred during periods of rapid eye

movement, or REM, sleep, a stage that accounts for 20 to 25 percent of

nighttime repose in humans and that shows up on electroencephalogram

recordings as a pattern of electrical activity similar to that seen during

waking. Most dreaming takes place in REM sleep.

 

During REM, the brain dispatches signals to the muscles, telling them to

perform the movements that would be appropriate if the person were awake.

 

In most sleepers, however, another brain circuit also kicks into action

during REM to prevent the dreamer from carrying out those instructions. Nerve

cells transmit chemical messages that paralyze all muscles in the body except

the diaphragm, one small muscle in the ear and the muscles that move the

eyes.

 

Mr. Dorff's problem appeared to be that the normal paralysis of REM was

missing. The same was true for four other elderly patients, described by Dr.

Schenck and his colleagues in a 1986 report documenting the first human cases

of the disorder. In fact, the researchers realized, the patients were acting

a lot like a group of laboratory cats studied in the mid-1960's by a French

sleep expert, Dr. Michel Jouvet.

 

Trying to locate the regions of the brain responsible for REM sleep, Dr.

Jouvet and his colleagues destroyed cells in an area of the brainstem called

the pons. Even with this damage, the cats still entered REM sleep, the

scientists found. But instead of lying still, they stood up, looked around

and sometimes stalked imaginary prey.

 

Subsequent studies, by Dr. Adrian R. Morrison at the University of

Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, showed that the extent of the

behavior exhibited by the animals during REM depended on where in the pons

the lesions were made. For example, when the cell damage encompassed nerve

pathways extending from the amygdala, a brain structure involved with

emotion, the cats would attack humans or other cats.

 

As with Mr. Dorff, who died in 1999, and Mr. Smith, studies show that more

than 80 percent of patients who show up at sleep disorder clinics with REM

behavior disorder are men, middle-aged or older, and most, Dr. Schenck said,

are noticeably placid and good-natured in their waking life. Many display

rhythmic movements of their legs even during non-REM or slow-wave sleep.

 

Most patients also report unusually vivid dreams (sometimes beginning long

before they start acting them out) in which they are being threatened or

attacked or engaging in active sports.

 

One man dreamed that his boss was chasing him with a hatchet; another that he

was being pursued by a lion, said Dr. Bradley F. Boeve, a neurologist at the

Mayo Clinic who studies REM behavior disorder and Parkinsonian illnesses.

 

Sometimes, Dr. Schenck said, a husband will awake from a dream in which he is

protecting his wife from danger, only to find that in fact he has been

pummeling her.

 

" She wants to know why he's beating up on her and he says, `I'm not, I'm

beating up this man,' " Dr. Schenck said.

 

In other cases, patients have no memory of what stirred them to action. On a

hunting trip, for example, Mr. Smith leaped abruptly from bed and began

singing " God Bless America, " to the amusement of his bunkmates. But he could

not recall the dream that inspired this burst of patriotism.

 

An increasing number of studies link REM behavior disorder to neurological

disease. The damage to the pons that in animals suspends paralysis during REM

sleep is not regularly found in humans with the disorder. And it is not yet

entirely clear how the sleep problem is connected to neurodegenerative

illnesses later in life.

 

But recent work by Dr. Jerome Siegel at the University of California at Los

Angeles offers another piece of the puzzle and may help explain a possible

connection to Parkinsonian diseases.

 

Neurons in particular areas of the midbrain, just above the pons, have a

potent effect in suppressing muscle tone, Dr. Siegel has found. In rats,

damage to those areas produces muscle movements during REM similar to those

seen in human patients with the sleep disorder. And the nerve cells in those

regions are very close to, and interconnected with, neurons in a midbrain

center known to suffer cell damage in Parkinson's.

 

" Given the connection between REM behavior disorder and Parkinson's, " Dr.

Siegel said, " the hypothesis that we're pursuing is that the degenerative

process that causes Parkinson's may spread to the region responsible for

inhibiting muscle tone " or vice versa.

 

Brain scans of patients have added to the suspicion that the sleep disorder

in some way signals the beginning of Parkinsonian disease. In 2000, Dr.

Ilonka Eisensehr of the University of Munich reported finding a kind of

" Parkinsonian fingerprint " — a reduction in the enzyme that transports the

messenger chemical dopamine in the striatum, the region of the midbrain where

Parkinson's originates — in the brain scans of patients with REM behavior

disorder who did not yet have any other signs of neurological disease.

 

In a development that experts call troubling, sleep clinics are also seeing a

number of patients who develop some symptoms associated with REM sleep

disorder while taking Prozac, Zoloft or others of the newer generation of

antidepressant drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or

S.S.R.I.'s

 

A 1992 study by scientists at the Minnesota sleep clinic found that 20 of 41

patients taking Prozac for depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder

exhibited " extensive, prominent eye movements " during light non-REM stages of

sleep, a phenomenon the researchers have called " Prozac eyes. " In one

patient, the eye movements were still present 19 months after the man stopped

taking the antidepressant.

 

Other reports suggest that some people taking the drugs experience muscle

jerks or other movements during sleep or waking.

 

Dr. John Winkelman, the medical director of the sleep health center at

Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said he had seen a number of patients

who developed REM behavior disorder while taking S.S.R.I.'s.

 

" A couple of people threw themselves out of bed, " Dr. Winkelman said.

 

No one yet knows how common such side effect are, or their implications — if

any. And other drugs — barbiturates and stimulants, for example — can also

contribute to REM behavior disorder. But the findings, the experts say,

should encourage doctors to prescribe responsibly.

 

" The drugs are very effective, " Dr. Mahowald said. " But it's the physician's

responsibility to make sure the patient's condition is severe enough to

warrant prescribing a neuroactive agent. "

 

On the other hand, some psychiatric drugs are effective in treating the sleep

disorder. Dr. Boeve said he found the drug Seroquel helpful for some

patients.

 

What eventually kept Mr. Smith from inflicting further damage on his wife was

clonazepam, a tranquilizer that Dr. Schenck and other experts have shown

almost always calms patients' turbulent nights.

 

" It helped right away, " Mrs. Smith said.

 

REM behavior disorder is the only parasomnia routinely associated with

violence. But sleepwalkers have also been known to stab their relatives,

molest children or confidently stride out of third-story windows, in states

varying from confused wakefulness to partial arousal to the deepest stages of

non-REM or slow-wave sleep.

 

Other sleep disorder patients, who suffer from a condition called nocturnal

dissociative disorder, awaken and leave their beds to re-enact scenes of

physical or sexual abuse, sometimes cutting themselves with razors or banging

their heads against the wall. Afterward, they remember nothing about their

nighttime behavior.

 

Reports of violence during slumber date back to the ancient Greeks.

 

In Homer's " Odyssey, " Elpenor, the youngest of Odysseus' crew, wakes suddenly

from a drunken nap and runs off the roof of a house, breaking his neck.

 

Simon Fraser, a 19th-century Scot who killed his 18-month-old son by dashing

him against the wall, said he did so while dreaming that a wild beast had

jumped on the bed and was attacking the boy. " I am guilty in my sleep, but

not guilty in my senses, " he insisted.

 

More recently, the defendants in several murder cases have used sleep as a

defense, in one instance successfully: a Canadian, Kenneth Parks, was

acquitted after experts testified that he was in a somnambulistic state when,

in May 1987, he drove 14 miles to the house of his in-laws, where he stabbed

his mother-in-law to death and nearly killed his father-in-law.

 

Such cases, Dr. Mahowald said, make it clear that sleep and waking are hardly

distinct states.

 

In many normal people, he said, detailed neurophysiological studies of the

brain show that the signs of sleep persist for an hour after awakening,

though an EEG indicates that the person is already fully awake.

 

" Most people's concept is that the entire brain is in one state of being, and

that's just not true, " Dr. Mahowald said. " You can have parts of the brain

that are awake while others are asleep. "

 

 

 

 

 

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