Tom Cruise was among a veritable who’s who at a New York Friar’s Club recently, where “Today” show co-host Matt Lauer was royally roasted. Cruise was one of many celebrities invited to lambaste Lauer – a tongue-in-cheek lambasting, of course – but he was invited because of one particularly memorable appearance on “Today” back in 2005. Perhaps you remember the appearance.

Cruise came on the morning program to promote his then latest film, War of the Worlds, until Lauer broached the topic of some comments he had made regarding Brooke Shields and her use of antidepressants. Cruise was, and is, avowedly against antidepressant use because he believes it “masks the problem,” as he put it at the time. When Lauer questioned Cruise’s assertions, the former “Top Gun” called Lauer “glib,” saying he knew things about antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs that Lauer didn’t know…and that he ought to read up on it before acting like an authority on the topic!

While Cruise’s patronizing, condescending attitude toward Lauer was off-putting and rather sophomoric, Cruise’s fundamental argument was a sound one: there’s no question that antidepressants work for most people, but they do mask the fundamental problem and often wind up creating more problems than solving them.

The latest study that shows the negative health effects of antidepressants usage is with regards to the white matter in the brain and how the use of certain antidepressants can throw the body’s central nervous system for a loop.

For the central nervous system to function, it requires a communication system: white matter, grey matter form the brunt of this system. For the sake of simplicity, white matter is like the telephone operator of the brain, allowing the gray matter to submit nerve message to other areas of the brain and spinal cord. Without the white matter – or to continue with our metaphor, the telephone operator – signals can’t be received or sent, causing communication issues and a fundamentally flawed central nervous system.

You can understand, then, why researchers would be concerned about the fact that many elderly men and women taking a certain kind of antidepressant (tricyclic) were 77 percent more likely to have developed lesions on the white matter within their brains. They found this after performing two MRI scans of approximately 2,000 participants over a five-year period. The first time the participants received an MRI none of them were taking an antidepressant. The participants were all over the age of 65 at the beginning of the study.

Not only does damaged white matter pose problems for the central nervous system in terms of communication issues, but it also increases the risk for multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease; lesions forming on the white matter in the brain and spine are characteristic of both MS and Alzheimer’s.

As with most initial studies, the researchers can’t be sure to this point what’s causing the lesions to form on the white matter, but they do believe tricyclic antidepressants played a role. Tricyclic antidepressants include Tofranil, Pamelor and Vivactil to name a few. The more common antidepressants – like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil – are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. The Duke University Medical team has since published their study in the journal Stroke.

Again, I didn’t agree with Cruise’s method of attack against Lauer; he sounded quite snobbish in his defense against antidepressant use. But his fundamental argument was spot on – there are certain things one can supplement with to help alleviate the symptoms of depression, side-stepping the side effects associated with them. Please read more about these under “depression” in my A to Z health listing found on the left side of the screen.