TREATMENT FOR THE ACHING MISERIES: PYRIDOXINE
There are two drugs that doctors at St Thomas’ Hospital are using to cut back the amount of prolactin their patients produce during the last half of the month. One is Vitamin B6, or pyridoxine, which they estimate helps nearly sixty per cent of patients whose symptoms are depression, headaches or breast swelling (at the time of going to press the results of a properly controlled trial of pyridoxine has not yet been published). This vitamin had already been used successfully to treat some women on the Pill who developed depression and headaches. Taking the Pill can sometimes cause a shortage of Vitamin B6 and when this happens, your brain can’t make enough of a substance called 5-hydroxy-tryptamine, and when that happens you get depressed. Some doctors treat the depression by giving their patients more Vitamin B6. Others, who seem to me to have rather more sense, advise their patients that the Pill doesn’t suit them and persuade them to try some other form of contraception that doesn’t have side-effects. A leaflet on Vitamin B6 treatment can be obtained by sending a stamped, addressed envelope to PMT Clinic, Gynaecology Department, St Thomas’ Hospital, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1. Pyridoxine is obtainable off prescription (as ‘Comploment’, which contains 100 mg of pyridoxine) but as the daily starting dose used at St Thomas’ is considerably lower it is obviously sensible to follow the recommendations given in this leaflet, if you decide to try it for yourself.
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