There is a company called Genesight Testing. They can send you a cheek swab which you twirl against your cheek and send back to them. They can then test that swab and based on your genetic makeup can predict which psychotropic meds, pain meds and one other class of drugs which escapes me at the moment, your body can metabolize. They can also tell how fast you will metabolize a given drug.

They will send you a list of drugs your body can metabolize along with a list of drugs that you may not metabolize properly or maybe metabolize too quickly or too slowly. This can eliminate the bouncing from drug to drug that doesn't work.

You can look on the web for Genesight.com. They can give you a list of doctors in your ZIP code who do this testing. Even if your doctor isn't registered with genesight you can have another doctor do the test, explain the results to you, and then you can have that report made part of your medical record and you can share it with your doctor.

Any doctor can register with Genesight. It's free it takes about 15 minutes on the telephone. Many doctors are too busy to do this and not all doctors believe that they need help prescribing for their patients.

Both I and my adult son I've had Genesight testing done and have found it to be very useful as we both live with depression. We're both doing well now because we both have the right drugs. I know that Mayo is offering a similar test at this time. This is new for them. Both my test and my son's test were covered by insurance and I think I was on Medicare at the time mine was done. If you are insurance doesn't cover it they have a sliding fee scale and it's not prohibitively expensive.

Of course it doesn't guarantee results but it can save you from taking a drug that your body cannot metabolize. It can also help with regard to dosing because if you metabolize are drug much slower that the average patient, you could end up with too large a dose or on the other hand if you metabolize a drug much more quickly than the average person, you might have to take the drug more often for it to be effective. I hope this is useful information.

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