This Is Your Brain On Drugs Psychiatry Podcast

It's almost January and I'm releasing Part 2 of my November Updates. Today I'll be discussing several topics. Seltorexant, Ketogenic Diet, and Fecal Transplants for Depression. Consta is generic. Uzedy and Lumateperone have new indications. New drugs that may get approved for ADHD and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Hyperemesis gravidarum associated with depression. A case of menstrual psychos...

Today I will continue talking about all the methylphenidate formulation medications. This will be part 2 of 3 of the truckload of methylphenidate medications. I'll discuss the patch Daytrana, the long-acting liquid Quillavant XR, the long-acting chewable Quillachew XR, the extra long-acting Aptensio XR, the oral disintegrating tablet Cotempla ODT-XR, and the much delayed release Jornay PM. You may...

Today I will be rounding off my information on macro and micronutrients and diet advice, so it's a bit of a hodgepodge. I'll cover cholesterol and protein, and then I'll talk about healthy foods for your brain. These are foods I've been talking about during this whole nutrition section, but I think this gives a good summary of the foods that we have some research on to suggest it is good for menta...

I'm finally putting out part 1 of my November updates episode. I recorded it a while back but its hard to put out 2 episodes in a week! Today I'll be discussing several topics. New information for you and me on mechanisms of action of vortioxetine, great new data on pramipexole for depression, a new drug on the horizon for schizophrenia? Dangers of Tramadol by itself and in combination with antide...

Today I will start talking about the methylphenidate products. I'll start with the oldest ones, brand names Ritalin, Methylin, Metadate, and Concerta. This includes capsules, tablets, liquids, and the special osmotic capsules used by Concerta. I will mention short acting and long acting versions of Ritalin. I'll compare all these and let you know when I think it might be best to use each one. This...

Today I will be talking about another macronutrient, fats or fatty acids. I did an overview of fats in our omega-3 fatty acid episode, but I didn't really go into detail about the other fats, and there is a lot of controversy surrounding the fats, most particularly saturated fats and seed oils which contain the dreaded omega-6 fatty acids. A lot of people hate saturated fats but are ok with omega-...

Today I will finish the amphetamine medications that we talked about on the last episode. I will be discussing lisdexamfetamine or Vyvanse(r) and the amphetamine base medications, Evekeo(r), Evekeo ODT(r), Dyanavel XR(r), Adzenys XR-ODT(r), and Adzyenys ER(r). You may be less familiar with those other than Vyvanse, so I will go over my usual stuff where I tell you how each of these differs and is...

Today I will be continuing with ultra-processed foods and the sugar, fructose. What is it? Where does it come from? What does it do in the body? And why is it a problem? I mean this stuff comes from fruit and fruit is good, right? So, how have we messed this stuff up in modern society? After fructose, I will be talking all about artificial sweeteners. What are the most common types? What are their...

Today I will start discussing the stimulant medications used for ADHD. I will be starting with the amphetamine medications. First, I'll talk briefly about methamphetamine, which is actually a prescribable option, but then I will cover all of the dextroamphetamine and mixed amphetamine salt medications. These include medications you have heard of such as Dexedrine, Procentra, Zenzedi, Xelstrym, Add...

I've been waiting a long time to do this episode. It seems like ultra-processed foods are being talked about a lot this day, but what exactly are they, and what's bad about them? Which ones should we avoid and which ones should we not worry about so much? You may think you know the answer to these questions, but my guess is that there's a lot you don't know, and that's because there's a lot that i...

On today's episode from my ADHD season I will be introducing the stimulant medications. I'll do an overview of all of the stimulants that we will be discussing on the following several episodes. I'll discuss what symptoms you can expect to respond well versus not so well, the different durations of actions, the history behind these medications, and the mechanism by which they work, specifically th...

Today I will be covering a very controversial topic, the ketogenic diet. I thought it appropriate to discuss it now while I was going over nutritional aspects of mental health. So, first I'll talk about carbohydrates; what they are, what they do, do we need them. Then, I'll talk about what the ketogenic diet is, how to do it, and what conditions there is some evidence that it may be useful for. At...

On today's episode from my ADHD season I will be talking about the aspects to consider when deciding which medication to choose. I'll talk about why you might consider amphetamines versus methylphenidate. Next, I'll discuss aspects to consider when getting a patient to the correct dose of the medication. Also, these medications have a wide range of how long they work for, so there's a lot to consi...

Today I will be continuing with the lifestyle medicine series, and I will be continuing to talk about nutrition. I will discuss the general way of eating that I advocate for most people, which is a plant-based diet. This doesn't mean no meat products. It means a diet of at least 90% plants. And I acknowledge that it isn't for everyone, but on the whole this is the diet that will lead to a healthie...

On today's episode from my ADHD season I will be discussing non-pharmacological treatments of ADHD, so basically everything that isn't medication. I'll start off going through the treatment algorithm from stage 0 to stage 5. Today's episode will be stage 0, the first line treatment. It's better to not use a medication if we don't have to, so let's learn what those options are. I'll talk about life...

This is the episode that I've been waiting a year to do. I'll be talking about Lifestyle Medicine as a treatment for obesity, mental health, and overall health and chronic illnesses. These are techniques that will benefit everyone and are fairly easy and cheap to do. They are also fairly simple. A lot of folks want to make this stuff more complicated that it is so that they can make money off of y...

Welcome back to part two of my September edition of my psychiatry quick takes episode series. It's been a busy couple months in the news, so I have several more tidbits for September. Today I'm going to talk about a new study on long-term medication treatment of ADHD, psychosis caused by bromide poisoning after consulting ChatGPT, more information about kanna, another study showing that gabapentin...

Today we switch back to ADHD and I will be talking about adult ADHD. I'm an adult psychiatrist and I practiced in the military so this was one of the largest issues that I treated as many of my patients were younger folks, many of which struggled in school prior to joining the military. There isn't a lot of formal education on this topic and yet we see tons of online information of folks talking a...

Welcome back to my second episode covering several snippets of breaking news on psychiatric medications. In these episodes I don't deep dive like normal, but instead cover several important breaking news items that affect psychopharmacology and give my quick take on the news. Some of this will be trial results, FDA updates, interesting papers that were recently published, and anything else I can c...

Today I will be presenting my second episode on obesity medicine. I will go over how obesity reeks havoc on every system in the body, what medical conditions are increased by being obese, the increased risk of psychiatric disorders from obesity, and the long list of cancers that are at increased risk from obesity. I think you all will be surprised just how much obesity impacts health. Many of you...

Flipping back to ADHD today, I continue with the background information. I'll go over how to diagnose. I'll go over the criteria but of course I'll be giving you the subtleties of how to flush that out. I'll also talk about both mental health and medical disorders that often go along with ADHD, and I'll talk about the long list of other diagnoses that may look like ADHD with a special focus on bip...

Today I will start a new season of This Is Your Brain On Drugs Psychiatry Podcast. I mentioned the dual season of ADHD with Obesity Medicine and Lifestyle Psychiatry on the previous episode. Last week I started with ADHD and today I will start the series on Obesity Medicine. I'll do an introduction where I talk about measuring obesity, rates of obesity, trends over time, and etiologies of obesity....

Today I start a new season of This Is Your Brain On Drugs Psychiatry Podcast. I will do a dual season where I will go back and forth each week between a season on ADHD and a season on Obesity Medicine and Lifestyle Psychiatry. Today I will start with ADHD. I will do a background on ADHD and discuss its possible causes. I think you will enjoy this introduction and discussion on the background of AD...

I had an after thought after finishing the depression season, and that is what happens when someone has depressive symptoms that looks like a depressive disorder but it isn't? We will cover all of these diagnoses and their treatments in the future but I think it is prudent to have a discussion on how depressive symptoms look different in different illnesses and how that can affect the medication t...

Today I will finish up on psychiatric procedures for depression. I will discuss bright light therapy, vagal nerve stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and cranial electrotherapy stimulators. Some of these are really cheap, others expensive; some are really invasive, some not at all. So there is a range of accessibility. Most of these are quite effective and adverse effects are generally...