The Weird Connection Between Antidepressants and Cancer

You might think that antidepressants  are only for your brain.

After all, people take them for brain stuff.

Depression, anxiety, OCD, and so on. But there’s research to  suggest that antidepressants may be able to help with stuff all over the body.

Stuff like cancer. Yes, really. We do not clickbait around here.

Here’s how this would work and how it could start helping people soon.

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There are several different  types of antidepressants, and they work by adjusting the balance of neurotransmitters in the brain.

Each of the medication types  might have different side effects, and people might respond better to  one antidepressant over another, even within the same class.

For today, we’re just going  to talk about two main types: MAOIs and SSRIs.

MAOIs were the first  antidepressants on the market.

The acronym is short for  monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and as the name suggests, it works by blocking an enzyme called monoamine oxidase.

The usual function of monoamine  oxidase is to break down neurotransmitters in your brain,  like serotonin and dopamine.

While every neurotransmitter is complicated, these two very generally are  involved in helping you feel good, so you might think “hang on, I need those.” But breaking down of it is an  important part of maintaining balance and making sure you don’t  get too much of a good thing.

But sometimes, you don’t have  enough of the good thing, and monoamine oxidase is slashing too many of your feel-good chemicals.

That’s where the inhibitor in MAOI comes in.

The MAOIs basically say, “Good  job, enzyme, but that’s enough for now.