Looking at a POSSIBLE PTSD BREAKTHROUGH

[thedrifter]

[For those interested in this topic, please see comments at the end of the email text...

Subject: [VeteranIssues] '70s-era blood-pressure pill can curb
stress-related nightmares

From: George de Randich
TO: ColonelDan

Drug may finally end war in vets' recurring dreams '70s-era blood-pressure pill can curb stress-related nightmares Monday, September 9, 2002

By CAROL SMITH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
At night, Johnny Banks Jr. is still an 18-year-old artillery soldier in
Vietnam reliving the horror of learning he's just fired on women and children.
"I can't get it out of my mind," said Banks, now a retired longshoreman with six grown children.
Banks fired long-range 105 mm howitzers from a base five miles behind the front lines.
Soldiers would radio back the locations of the targets, then report what the shells hit.
"Sometimes ! they would tell us we'd hit a herd of elephants," he said.
"The first time they told me we hit a village with women and children, I started crying."
That memory, one of three recurring combat dreams, still makes him sweat and shake at night.
"Those certain three, I will have until I die," he said.
Banks, 53, is one of thousands of veterans and other trauma survivors who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder-related nightmares -- so vivid and disturbing they can be disabling, even driving some to contemplate suicide.
An effective treatment, however, may be within reach. A nearly obsolete blood-pressure medication has unlocked Banks and others from the endless rewind of their torment.

For many, nightmares are the worst symptom of PTSD, a psychiatric condition that develops after an intense, terrifying experience. The long-lasting symptoms may include
flashbacks, emotional numbing and increased agitation. Between 25 percent and 50 percent! of trauma survivors experience such dreams.
Combat veterans are classic victims of post-traumatic stress
nightmares, said Dr. Murray Raskind, a psychiatry professor at the University of Washington.
But civilian traumas, ranging from slayings to physical and sexual
abuse, also can trigger the nightmares.
Unlike other types of nightmares or night terrors, PTSD dreams have been virtually
impossible to treat, said Raskind, who is also head of mental health services at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle.

A serendipitous discovery by Raskind may change all that. Prazosin, a blood-pressure drug introduced in the 1970s, but since superseded by better medications, appears to
prevent nightmares, an unexpected side effect that could aid thousands.
The drug is no longer under patent protection and costs just pennies a dose.
That's the upside.

The downside is that without a profit potential, no major
pharmaceutical firm has stepped! forward to fund studies for a new application for the drug.
Raskind has scrounged his own funding to do several small studies already published and a larger one due for publication within a few months. He is relying on word of mouth to get other
doctors to use the drug for their patients.
"I'm proselytizing all over the country," he said.
Raskind, whose primary research field is Alzheimer's disease, made the discovery almost by accident. Five years ago, he was recruited to help run a veterans support group and admitted he had no clue how to help them.
"I was used to working with people who can't remember," he said.

"Suddenly I had patients who couldn't forget."
The dreams, most of which happened just as the veterans were falling asleep, would leave them anxious and sleep-deprived. They would wake up disoriented, in a "fight-or-flight mode," sometimes lashing out physically at their partners.
Raskind tried all sorts of medications to stop t! he night torment for his patients, including anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs and sleep aids.
"But even if it got them to sleep, it could still be a real mess," he
said. "Then they would be stuck in this nightmare without waking up."
The only drug that helped was alcohol -- and then only for a few hours.
But alcohol also compounded other problems for many of the veterans.
Frustrated, Raskind went to the literature and learned a distinctive feature of PTSD nightmares is that the body releases adrenaline during the dream.
Regular dreams, including typical nightmares, occur during deep sleep when adrenaline pumps are turned off, and the body is virtually paralyzed, he said.
Clue in hand, he remembered using prazosin as a young medical graduate.
He knew it worked to lower blood pressure by blocking the effect of adrenaline on blood vessels. He also knew it could cross into the brain, something not all drugs can do because of a
natural line ! of defense called the blood-brain barrier.
The pill has meant release from years of torment for Larry Scott, now 55, who endured heavy shelling as a 19-year-old Navy Seabee during the 77-day Keh Sahn siege, one of the most intense battles of the war. Scott has a recurring nightmare
that two Viet Cong soldiers are about to burst into his bedroom.
He would sometimes wake in a panic, hitting the floor and going for cover.

"I would have to tell myself, 'You're not in-country,' " he said. The
dreams made it hard for him to work as a Boeing Co. welder.
Since starting the drug, he has stopped using alcohol and stopped having nightly dreams. When he does have them, he's better able to control his reaction.
"I can sit at the edge of the bed, and think things out and not be
trashing the room," he said.
Banks, too, has seen relief. He used to get only about three hours of sleep a night. "After a nightmare, I'd be anxious and tend to want to be ! by myself," he said.
"My family knew to leave me alone.
"Now I don't have as many," he said. "I'm glad it came along."
The research group at the VA has begun treating veterans and victims of other wars with
the drug as well.
An elderly female victim of the Holocaust experienced her first
dream-free sleep after more than 50 years of daily nightmares.
A Korean War vet who had been a prisoner of war for four years "finally stopped fighting the war in his sleep," according to his wife.
For Scott, the nightmares are farther apart now.
"The bogeyman is still waiting for me," Scott said. "But now I can slap him back."
P-I reporter Carol Smith can be reached at 206-448-8070 or
carolsmith@seattlepi.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

COMMENTS...
Since I live here in the Puget Sound area, and I am currently
participating in a PTSD group session, I am going to forward the above email to my physician for the
group. I will report back to you what I learn from him about the above topic material (which may not be till the middle of next week after my session).

I already have a few "groups" I forward info on, ie, Concurrent
Receipt, diabetes, etc., to other members/vets. I really don't like inundating the TLCB listing w/ "ongoing" similar
threads, so I would like to establish another group listing for the
purpose of PTSD. Since I receive info about this topic from two of my other email addys, I
will be forwarding that info from those sites. If you'd like to partake in receiving that info (PTSD), please send an
email to both addys, and in the subject box, please write down...

PTSD Emails

Please respond to:
bzaza@att.net and vetzaza@yahoo.com

For those on the other already established lists, they can verify that the info I forwad on is legitimate, and there is absolute privacy in regards to the email addys and mailings.
It is dealt with in a most professional manner. As "Ghostman" phrased, "wanted to save them all", I would just like to be of help to as many as I can with the dissemination of viable info.

Sempers,

Roger


Will try to keep a watch on this............

[Arrow]

it would end years of PTSD related nightmares for me...this past week has been one of the worst weeks I have had in a long time.you go to bed exhausted and you get up exhausted it is such a terrible cycle that somedays you just feel like givin' up..thank you Roger...it would be a God send..for many of us.....

[DMZ-LT]

Have told this once. I am in a barn in Gettysburg , Pa. it's 1864 , I am in a half fallen down barn in a corner facing down hill looking down at a slope into a wood line, alone. An NVA point man comes out of the woodline . I let him come on . Behind him is a line of NVA . I start to sweat - I wake up - a lot. Thank you

[SEATJERKER]

...it was the shooters friend saying "come on Leroy" just before he puts his gun to the side of my head, and pulls the trigger, I would awaken with the muzzle flash, kicking, and struggling...
...took 18 years before I knew his name was Calvin...

...would welcome anything that would relieve the nights