Mitochondria are the chemical factories that move us around.
They think for us.
They direct and power our cells.
Mitochondria give us life.
There is a study on mitochondria and a certain unusual antidepressant medication called Tianeptine.
Mitochondria are now thought to be responsible for depression.
The mitochondria get into a low energy state.
They get stressed out.
They stop producing as much ATP to power the neural cells.
ATP is adenosine triphosphate.
It’s an enzyme that powers our cells.
And without that energy, the cells cannot function.
Depression in the brain means the mitochondria are depressed.
Everything points to depression being a disease of the brain mitochondria.
And so it makes sense to look for ways to repair or re-energize the mitochondria.
Before I get into the study, I want to talk about tianeptine.
Tianeptine was invented in France.
It’s a prescription drug marketed under the name Tianeptine, in much of the world.
But in the United States you don’t need a prescription for Tianeptine.
You can just buy it as a powder from various mail-order sources.
Not that I advise you to do that.
Tianeptine helps major depression.
It helps anxiety.
And it works very differently than the SSRI drugs such as Wellbutrin, Zoloft or Prozac.
These drugs theorectically work by freeing up serotonin in the brain instead of using it up.
I say theorectically because they don’t actually know that this is what these drugs do.
But that’s another newsletter.
Tianeptine works very differently — by suppressing serotonin.
Serotonin causes more anxiety and more depression, so lowering serotonin is a good thing.
In fact, they’ve even used tianeptine for asthma.
Because asthma is caused by an increase in serotonin.
Tianeptine has treated asthmatics very successfully.
It’s kept them from needing more asthma medication over a long period of time.
Tianeptine works by causing the blood platelets to soak up more serotonin.
The platelets get rid of serotonin through the lungs.
This lowers our serotonin and results in less depression and less anxiety.
So now getting back to tianeptine — stressed out depressed mice recovered nicely with tianeptine.
In the study, the reseachers stressed out some mice.
Then they divided the mice into two groups.
One group of mice was treated with tianeptine.
The second group of mice was left untreated, they did not receive the tianeptine.
Then they sacrificed the mice.
The researchers looked at the neurons and brain cells under microscopes.
They analyzed various proteins and enzymes compounds that were found in the mice brains.
Then they compared the brains from the two groups of mice.
I’ve highlighted the column here that showing the percentage change between the tianeptine mice and the regular mice.
It turns out that as the mitochondria get more depressed in the brain, they switch their metabolism from oxidative phosphorylation to glycolysis.
This is same metabolism that cancer cells use.
And it’s a completely inefficient form of metabolism.
We talked about this before, when talking about the famous “Warburg effect”.
It’s related to, but not causing cancer.
Cancer cells are chronically in a state of glycolysis, even in the presence of sufficient oxygen.
It turns out that this is a very bad metabolic state to be in — it’s a very inefficient and metabolically depressed state.
So when someone is mentally depressed, their mitochondria and their brain cells are depressed.
What tianeptine does is it revives the mitochondria.
It helps them get back into the higher, more efficient state of energy production call oxidative phosphorylation.
The increase after tianeptine treatment will have a beneficial impact on brain metabolism.
I want to encourage you to discuss tianeptine with your doctor if you’re looking at an antidepressant medication.
Especially if you’re not doing well on Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Prozac and the like.
Those other drugs often suppress the libido.
Tianeptine does not.
Tianeptine does not seem to affect sexual performance.
So you may find that it’s a useful drug in the event you need a drug for depression or anxiety.
Unfortunately, doctors in the United States just don’t know much about it.
But you can certainly suggest they take a look at the literature on tianeptine and that you give it a try.
Citations
The effect of chronic tianeptine administration on the brain
mitochondria: direct links with an animal model of depression
http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/667/art%253A10.1007%252Fs12035-016-9807-4.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007%2Fs12035-016-9807-4&token2=exp=1462218726~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F667%2Fart%25253A10.1007%25252Fs12035-016-9807-4.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Farticle%252F10.1007%252Fs12035-016-9807-4*~hmac=b81a8f41cfbb6dfe7f6fe33e921978d679aafa278e6f6dfdbd2c55a210ea34b7
Treatment of bronchial asthma with tianeptine
https://journals.prous.com/journals/servlet/xmlxsl/pk_journals.xml_summary_pr?p_JournalId=6&p_RefId=872567&p_IsPs=N
See this for more on Anxiety, and see more on Mental Health, and for more information see effects of Tianeptine on Mental Health.