Neurotransmitters and Psychiatric Drugs: A Metabolic Reinterpretation

Introduction: Do You Take Medicine Because of a Lack of Serotonin?

For decades, we have heard the explanation that “mental illness is due to chemical imbalance in the brain, and medicine corrects that imbalance.” If you are depressed, you increase serotonin, and if you are anxious, you regulate GABA.

However, Dr. Christopher Palmer of Harvard Medical School says in Brain Energy that this contains only part of the truth. The real effect of psychiatric drugs depends not on neurotransmitters themselves, but on how they change our cells’ ‘metabolic system.‘

1. Neurotransmitters are the ‘Result’ of Metabolism

Many people think neurotransmitters command emotions, but in fact, every process of making, secreting, and reabsorbing neurotransmitters is possible only when there is mitochondrial energy. In other words, imbalance of neurotransmitters is only a consequential signal that metabolism is not smooth.

While psychiatric drugs act on receptors in the short term to change mood, long-term recovery is only possible when the drug improves the function of mitochondria or increases the energy efficiency of cells.

2. Two Faces of Drugs: Improving and Interfering with Metabolism

Interestingly, psychiatric drugs are like a double-edged sword from a metabolic perspective.

Positive Effects: Some antidepressants or anticonvulsants have the effect of reducing inflammation in brain cells and increasing mitochondrial efficiency. In this case, the drug becomes a tool to restore metabolism.
Negative Effects (Side Effects): Conversely, many psychiatric drugs raise blood sugar, cause weight gain, and worsen insulin resistance. This means that the drug can damage the brain’s metabolic health in the long run. This is exactly why symptoms improved after taking medicine, but the body became heavy and metabolic diseases occurred.

3. A New Attitude Toward Drugs: Utilizing Them as a ‘Metabolic Stepping Stone’

Dr. Palmer does not advise rejecting drugs unconditionally. Instead, he advises utilizing drugs from the following perspective:

Buying Time: When symptoms are so severe that you don’t even have the energy to start metabolic improvement (exercise, diet, etc.), drugs serve as a stepping stone to temporarily pull up energy.
Metabolic Monitoring: While taking medications, you must carefully check your metabolic indicators such as blood sugar, weight, and inflammation levels.
Ultimate Goal: The goal of drugs should not be life-long intake, but to develop metabolic basal fitness while receiving help from drugs so that the brain can regulate energy by itself.

Conclusion: Fundamental Task That Medicine Cannot Solve

Psychiatric drugs can be an umbrella that temporarily protects us from a storm. But in order to walk under a clear sky again after the rain stops, we must restore our own cell’s metabolic health.

Drugs can regulate serotonin levels, but they cannot create mitochondrial vitality for you. When you organize your own metabolic system while receiving help from drugs, true recovery without side effects finally becomes possible.

In the next post, we will look at ‘hormones,’ the hidden hands that command our body’s metabolism and determine brain energy.