Ketamine Therapy To Cure Your Depression? How Ketamine Works

How Ketamine Can Cure Depression, Anxiety, Pain, and More

Ketamine is an anesthesia medication that has been used safely for decades in the operating room. Unlike other medications, patients treated with ketamine were found to have less pain after surgery. This led to research in low-dose ketamine for chronic pain, depression, anxiety, addiction, and other mental health conditions.

Ketamine Changes Key Neurotransmitters in Your Brain: GABA

Ketamine is a powerful NMDA receptor antagonist, meaning it changes the effect of neurotransmitters on it. The neurotransmitter most affected by ketamine is likely gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). The changes in this neurotransmitter are believed to mediate its mental and physical effects, in particular, neuroplasticity and synaptogenesis. Traditional anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications, like Zoloft or Xanax, don't act on the same receptors as ketamine.

Why Neuroplasticity is so Important with Ketamine: Cognitive Rigidity

Depression, anxiety, addiction, and other mental health diseases are not the result of a single diseased thought. Mental health disorders are the result of repeated, diseased thought patterns - not just one or two. The concept of habitual, diseased thought patterns is critical to understanding mental health disorders and how ketamine can cure them.

Neuroplasticity is a powerful doorway to healing

Repeated Diseased Thought Patterns = Habits

Cognitive rigidity is one of the most powerful forces in our brains. Cognitive rigidity refers to rigid, inflexible thought patterns, the opposite of cognitive flexibility. This prevents us from changing mental states or making new discoveries outside our comfort zone.

The more rigid our personality becomes, the harder it is to break destructive habit loops. Addiction and obsessive compulsive disorder are easily understood as hurtful habit loops. These individuals become some rigid in their patterns that they can't break the cycles of addiction of obsessions.

However, similar behavioral habit loops can also lead to chronic pain, anxiety, depression. Perseveration and rumination are the hallmarks of anxiety and depression, and these both represent rigid thought patterns that are difficult to escape. Chronic pain is particularly related to rigid thought patterns.

How Ketamine and Neuroplasticity can Break Habit Loops

Ketamine causes a dissociative effect in us. During this disassociation, we are able to gain a better understanding of our cognitive rigidities. Instead of living inside these loops, we gain a perspective from outside these habit loops.

This perspective is believed to be therapeutic with new neural connections in the brain. This is the neuroplasticity effect of ketamine.

A Powerful New Perspective, but it Needs a Guide

This new introspection is powerful and therapeutic for many conditions. This is particularly therapeutic for treatment-resistant diseases like depression and anxiety.

When IV ketamine therapy is given with a guide, the experience can be integrated to allow for long-lasting relief. That guide needs to be trusted by the patient to release the vulnerabilities and denials that once cut the grooves of those rigid thought patterns.

A "bad trip" is uncommon, but more likely without the right guidance

Harmony Infusion: Rapid, Lasting Relief with Ketamine

Harmony infusion provides ketamine infusions differently than other services. First, using infusions instead of mail-order medications allows for faster dose adjusting. But more importantly, the medication alone rarely provides a long-lasting cure. The combination of ketamine with our holistic medical treatment helps treat the root cause of disease. By treating the root cause, patients are able to rediscover themselves and live with greater purpose and less reliance on medications.