Dear Health Insurance Company Representative,
Thank you for being a part of the system that helps to reduce the cost of health care for me and my patients. I appreciate your commitment to collaborating and serving patients by covering the charges from unexpected healthcare fees. Because of your services it allows for greater coverage to a large group of people for disease prevention, improving health, and fully living life.
This piece was published first on BreastCancer-News.com. For more information about the author, Nancy Brier, click here.
“No fresh flowers,” my doctor said. “Avoid salad. No uncooked food. And don’t bring visitors home.”
Treatment for breast cancer took the better part of a year, and a lot of that time, I spent alone. No wonder cancer sometimes comes with depression.
I have a dream that one day our society will view mental illness and chronic pain with deep understanding, compassion, and respect.
I have a dream that people will be able to feel their feelings and express them fully.
I have a dream that ketamine will be covered by insurance companies, so people can get the treatment they need.
Major depressive disorder affects nearly one in four teenagers. Some characteristics of this disorder include irritability, fatigue, and low self-esteem. A major concern for this group in particular is suicide, especially since suicide is the third leading cause of death amongst teenagers. With traditional antidepressants, SSRIs, taking weeks to months to be effective and with over 40% of teenagers being non-responsive to traditional treatments, ketamine therapy may be a fast-acting treatment alternative.
Patients who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are plagued with flashbacks, arousal dysfunctions, and avoidance symptoms. Unfortunately, there are few treatments that effectively treat all of PTSD’s symptoms. Research presented at the Society for Neuroscience suggest that ketamine may aid in ridding patients of fearful memories at the root of this disorder.
You don’t have the time nor money to get infusions, or perhaps you are not ready...whatever your reason is, we get it. As much as we love educating about ketamine and providing ketamine infusions, we’d love a world so healthy that we wouldn’t need to be in business.
However, the reality is there are a lot of people hurting, and we are honored to help them. But back to you all who aren’t ready or don’t ever want to find themselves in a ketamine clinic - here are 6 strategies to help you avoid getting a ketamine infusions:
As the only creatures in the animal kingdom to knowingly deprive ourselves of sleep, lack of sleep can be devastating for humans. Lack of sleep has remarkable effects on emotions, personality, and actions. Otherwise, patient parents will snap at unruly children, or a calm store clerk will react aggressively to a rude customer. Not only are our overtired bodies detrimental to interpersonal relationships, but to our health.
Researchers hypothesize that neurogenesis, or neuron growth, is an antidepressant action. This hypothesis is linked to the understanding that nearly all antidepressants increase birth of granule neurons in rodents. Ketamine, however, has such rapid antidepressant effects, within hours, suggesting that the mechanisms involved with ketamine are not involved with neuron birth. Instead, researchers hypothesized that ketamine’s rapid effects are due to it enhancing the maturation of neurons born previously.
According to a study published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology in 2018, specific brain waves are related to the anti-anxiety effects of ketamine. The brain waves involved in this function are called theta waves, found in the right frontal area of the brain. Ketamine can treat a wide variety of neurotic disorders, such as depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and PTSD, but researchers do not conclusively understand how ketamine works to relieve the symptoms of these disorders.
Bipolar disorder will affect 4.4% of U.S. adults at some point in their lives. It can cause dramatic shifts in the mood, energy, activity, impacting a person’s ability to live fully. One of the symptoms of bipolar disorder is anhedonia, which is the loss of ability to seek pleasure. Effective treatments for anhedonia have traditionally been lacking, but fortunately, recent research suggests that ketamine can help.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic condition affecting 1 in 40 adults and 1 in 100 children in the United States. This disorder is characterized by intrusive, repetitive thoughts and behaviors. Interfering with work, interpersonal relationships, and in general, patients’ enjoyment of life, OCD can have a devastating effect due to its debilitating nature. The only FDA approved treatment for OCD are serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs), but the effects of these are limited. Meaningful improvement can take up to 6 to 10 weeks and symptom relief is limited. To find a better way to treat this disorder, researchers at Columbia University conducted a study involving ketamine infusions.
Affecting about 37 million Americans, migraine headache attacks can be extremely painful and have a debilitating effect on patients’ lives. Associated with sensitivity to light, sound and smells; nausea; and vomiting, migraines can inhibit patients from going to work or enjoying day-to-day routine.
Those unresponsive to typical migraine treatments may feel particularly discouraged. When first and second-line drugs fail, what is a migraine sufferer to do? Fortunately, ketamine may be the answer!
She doesn’t want to get out of bed, she’s not the woman you knew, worse off she doesn’t want to hold her new baby. She is your wife, girlfriend, sister, or daughter. She is a new mother, and she has postpartum depression (PPD). She knows something is off, but she is so deep in the weeds she doesn’t know where to begin.
Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a painful, disabling neurological condition. Previously known as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD), it affects 1.2% of the adult chronic pain population. Women are affected more than men, with a 3:1 ratio. CRPS can develop after trauma, minor injuries, or surgery. The signs and symptoms are classically clustered into four groups.
Ketamine as a rapid antidepressant has been replicated in numerous studies. More recently, ketamine has been shown to help patients with obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and treatment-refractory anxiety disorder (TRA disorder). However, some patients reported a recurrence of depressive or anxiety symptoms after a single treatment. This recurrence of symptoms leads to the question: How long can patients’ symptoms improve with repeated ketamine dosing in anxiety?
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a chronic disorder that arises after severely stressful events. PTSD is characterized by its disabling effects—hyperarousal, avoidance, and re-experiencing symptoms. Affecting an estimated 7.8% of the general population, PTSD is particularly diagnosed among people who have experienced interpersonal violence. Survivors who suffer from PTSD do not have many options in reducing PTSD symptoms, because few modern pharmacotherapies—treatments using drugs—are effective.
The unique story of ketamine began in 1956 with the synthesis of the drug, phencyclidine. Found to be a remarkable anesthetic for monkeys, phencyclidine was then used on humans after numerous animal testings. Unfortunately, the side effects that researchers observed in some patients were concerning. Instead of waking peacefully from anesthesia, some patients experienced acute emergence delirium lasting hours after their operation was over. They described feeling sensory deprived and the loss of sensations in their limbs. Further studies concluded that phencyclidine produced a sensory deprivation syndrome.
At Reset Ketamine, we take a bio-psycho-social-spiritual approach to medicine. Dr. Ko's medical training is from the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry. This is where the biopsychosocial model was founded. For example, when someone comes in with chest pain, we’re not only looking at the organic or biological causes of chest pain, i.e heart attacks, pneumothorax, aortic dissection, fractures, pneumonia, costochondritis, etc.
