Benzodiazepines

Benzodiazepines include drugs such as Valium, Xanax, Clonazepam, Librium, Lorazepam, and various other drugs that are classified, among other things, as anti-anxiety medications.  These drugs are highly addictive, and almost certainly need to be tapered off of slowly.  Our addiction medicine specialist may choose to taper the client using the drug they are currently on, or switch them to a medication that has the same effect, yet is safer to taper off of.

If a person has had a long standing issue with anxiety, they of course may have misgivings about stopping their medication.  They may have tried to quit before, only to have a resurgence of their symptoms; the cause of the anxiety still being present. 

Whether the person can identify a traumatic life incident in the past, or has a currently stressful situation, or it is a complete mystery to them why they are anxious, they are suffering from an altered biochemistry.  For example stress raises Cortisol.  High Cortisol causes someone to be anxious, not able to sleep and also can cause heart disease, memory problems, chronic headaches, and obesity.  Cortisol is released from the adrenal glands (kidney area), and the cortisol then acts on other endocrine glands to produce things like adrenaline. This is the hormone a person gets a dose of when they have, for instance, just avoided a car wreck.  It is also the hormone a person is under the influence of when they are experiencing road rage. Using a diet that produces a calming effect rather than a stimulating one, and through the use of Cortisol suppressing supplements, which are made from substances normally found in food, a person can achieve a more optimum brain chemistry and succeed at lowering their stress level without being drugged.  Once the internal environment is in balance, a person can best handle external factors, such as traffic jams, and relationship woes.

Additional supplements are used to help push forward the chemical reactions that allow for sleep.  For instance Tryptophan converting to 5HTP converting to Serotonin and then past the blood brain barrier to form Melatonin, a neurohormone, is instrumental in allowing a person to wind down and get a good night rest.  Each one of these steps has factors which facilitate the reaction moving forward, such as Niacin.  For someone who was low on Niacin, a common problem, the entire reaction would backslide to produce the Niacin necessary for other biochemical processes, such as energy metabolism, DNA repair, and detoxification processes. Since the reaction is moving backward toward Niacin, rather than forward to produce Melatonin, sleep is sacrificed.  Simply supplementing with Melatonin helps, but may still result is the reaction moving in the direction on Niacin, so may be of limited use.  It is also important that a person has adequate levels of B6, B12, folic acid, Magnesium and other such things catalyze reactions along the way.

Tryptophan is an amino acid, and amino acids are building blocks of protein. There are 20 standard amino acids, and then still others which are present in the body and have undergone post-translational modification.  Amino acids compete against each other in many ways in many reactions, especially reactions which carry amino acids across the blood-brain barrier.  Many diets are Tryptophan deficient, which will lend itself to irritability, sleeplessness, and depression as well as other health problems.  Other diets, while having an adequate Tryptophan, may be heavy in other amino acids, which will out compete Tryptophan and will manifest the same symptoms of irritability, sleeplessness and depression. This is a case where supplementing may have to be combined with dietary corrections in order to create the necessary balance.

 Nothing on this Web-site is intended to be taken as medical advice, and always consult with your doctor before altering your medications