Ketamine: a new hope for depression with the rapid relief of suffering.
Northern Virginia ketamine infusion center is a specialty treatment center offering ketamine services as a therapy for treatment resistant depression, postpartum depression, suicidality, bipolar disorder, OCD, anxiety, and chronic pain conditions including CRPS.
What is ketamine therapy?
Ketamine has been FDA approved for an anesthetic purposes since 1970. It is also FDA approved as Spravato since 2019 for treatment-resistant depression. ketamine is one of the safest drugs in the world, and it has been placed on the World Health Organization’s essential medicine list in 1985. Ketamine therapy is a modern way to rapidly treat mood disorders such as treatment-resistant depression with success in over 70% of patients.
Ketamine effectively treats over 70% of patients who have suffered from treatment-resistant depression.
Successful treatment with ketamine can occur within hours to a few days of initiation of therapy.
Many patients have suffered for years having utilized traditional antidepressant therapies, TMS, and even ECT. ketamine still can be highly effective even in the most difficult to treat cases.
Intravenous ketamine therapies over the course of two weeks given as a series of six infusions lasting 40 minutes each can result in significant response or remission in patients who have suffered for many years. This treatment is even more effective than the FDA approved Spravato.
Ketamine therapy improves wellness
A typical antidepressant only affects symptoms of low mood and sadness. Traditional medications may take up to two months to begin to work, if they work at all. We know that only 30% of traditional medications will be effective within two months, meaning that you will suffer the experience of depression with the loss of fulfillment In the excitement that you deserve. Likewise, if the antidepressant does not work, you will have to try another medication which has even a lower chance of working. Traditional medications for depression also have side effects of weight gain, sexual side effects, and emotional blunting ( the loss of excitement and the joys of life or anhedonia).
Do you suffer from brain fog? Do you feel that you’ve lost your ability to think, plan, and remember the basic things in life such as a phone number? Do you feel like you’re getting Alzheimer's disease? Frequently a doctor will put a patient on a stimulant such as Adderall because it almost seems like ADHD. The reality is that depression causes the loss of cognitive abilities. People lose the ability to make decisions, plan, have executive decision-making, and even verbal memory and working memory such as the ability to remember a phone number. This is a problem when your job requires high cognitive skills. You may find yourself overwhelmed and unmotivated.
Do you suffer from low motivation?
Are you on that hamster wheel of negative self-talk, self-sabotage, low self-esteem, and loss of hope? Are you ruminating about all the negative things in your life?
Do you feel anxious all the time? Are you so anxious that sometimes it doesn’t even feel like you are “depressed,” but rather just anxious.
Ketamine has been shown to improve wellness factors such as:
Increasing motivation
increasing sense of hope
improving brain fog
Improving a sense of happiness
decreasing rumination
improvement of self-esteem
improvement of fatigue
improvement of anhedonia ( the loss of pleasure in life)
Normal antidepressants do not tackle any of these problems.
Ketamine works through a unique rapid mechanism of neural plasticity
The mechanism of Ketamine’s action is complex, but it is primarily an NMDA receptor antagonist that results in a brief glutamate burst and results in the production of proteins involved with synaptic growth, neural plasticity, and even neurogenesis (the formation of new neurons). Ketamine affects the glutamate system, a neurotransmitter involved in learning and representing over 60% of all the neurotransmitter load in the mammalian brain. This effect is rapid, robust, and present in over 70% treatment-resistant patients.
Am I a candidate for ketamine therapy?
Anyone is entitled to receive ketamine therapy if they do not have medical conditions that would require a prior medical authorization such as heart attack, stroke, schizophrenia, uncontrolled blood pressure, liver failure, or kidney failure.
Ketamine provides a rapid response for depression and mood disorders in over 70% of treatment cases and results in remission or significant improvement in patients who have suffered a prolonged mental health journey. These results can occur within days of the start of treatment.
