neurotransmitter test

[Zannia54]

I am a 34yo female. I have suffered from anxiety for many years. I have been on pretty much every medication out there on the market throughout the past 20 years. A few years back a doctor ordered a neurotransmitter test on me to see what my levels were at, in hopes to help find a medication that worked for me. The doctor never talked to me about the results just said take supplements. I have since changed doctors but had recently obtained the results of my past neuro test. I was wondering if anyone knows much on how to interpret the results. I am trying to figure out a new anxiety medicine that would work best for me. My results were:
Epinephrine: 5.3 Low
Norepinephrine:18.1 Low
Dopamine: 118.6 Normal
Serotonin: 68.4 Low
Glycine: 1666.0 Elevated
GABA: 10.5 Elevated
I have been taking SSRI's forever and a new doctor wants me to try Cymbalta which is an SNRI. I want to know if that will help with these levels above, or make it worse.
Thanks for any feedback you can give!

[Zannia54]

Paxiled,
Thank you so much for your reply! You know a lot about the science part of things which I am truly clueless on when it comes to that stuff! Good to know about the neurotransmitter test, I can see exactly what you are saying in that it one thing may not mean another. I had a feeling that it was all too good to be true lol. I will give Cymbalta a try and hope it helps with anxiety, but keep an eye on it being too stimulating. I will also talk to my doctor about the liver part of it.
Thanks again!!

[Paxiled]

This is my understanding:  first, nobody understands the brain.  Second, nobody has yet connected neurotransmitter levels with the average person's mental state -- this is a theory concocted by pharmaceutical companies, mainly Eli Lilly when it came out with Prozac in order to sell antidepressants.  There is no evidence people with anxiety have any more or lower levels of neurotransmitters than anyone else.  Keep in mind that any test of any nutrient or bodily function is only a test of that thing at that one moment in time and may be quite different two hours later.  These things vary by the time of day and month and year.  This is natural to everyone.  The only way to accurately test for these things is to test it every day every hour for a month or two and nobody does that outside of research settings.  There are many tests used to measure what drug would be best -- eegs, CAT scans, liver metabolite tests, but none yet has proven to work now -- they're mostly collecting what will hopefully be useful information when the data base gets large enough later.  It's still trial and error because all of these drugs treat symptoms, not causes.  With depression, for example, they're now researching glutamate receptors most of all, and with anxiety most current research is trying to unlock the amygdyla in the primitive brain as it's currently thought to be the source of the problem.  None of these drugs increases the amount of neurotransmitters in your system -- what they do instead is target certain of their receptors, shutting down the rest of them artificially, and preventing the breakdown by enzymes the body naturally does as it prefers freshly made stuff to old stuff.  This allows the old stuff to wash longer in the receptor, providing the desired effect.  To make more of a neurotransmitter you have to feed it what naturally makes that neurotransmitter, for example, B6 and tryptophan for serotonin.  Drugs do not do this, and these substances will only do it if the body recognizes a need for more of them.  Otherwise it washes right out.  As for Cymbalta, if your primary problem is actually depression, as it often is and we don't know it, it might work; it it's primarily anxiety, it could work, but as it targets norepinephrine as well as serotonin, essentially adrenalin, it is very stimulating and might make you more anxious.  Only trying it will tell you for sure, of course.  Snris are also liver toxic and very hard to stop taking, so if you do try it, make sure your psychiatrist really knows how to get people off that drug and will monitor your liver.  (The latter probably isn't a huge deal; you had to do that with the older tricyclics, it just depends on how susceptible your liver is).  Good luck.