Posted by marolync on October 14, 2002, at 10:03:19
In reply to need info on side effects - help, posted by Mrs. M on October 13, 2002, at 22:37:33
I know what you mean about eye headaches, but your doc may be right, that these are not directly attributable to the effexor. It could be that in your previous state of emotional distress, you were not able to feel some physical pains in your body which you can now attend to.
I found that having professional, theraputic massages helped me so much to figure out some things about how I "metabolize" stresses in the muscles of my body. For me, there were a lot of connections between head, eye, jaw, neck, and upper back tensions. For a while, I focused on giving myself gentle massages to my eye sockets, and was stunned to find little hard spots in there which produced exquisite pain when they were first rubbed even gently. Don't try this while driving, I found that when I had been massaging these spots for a while, I couldn't focus that eye for some time! However, while you are driving is a great time to do jaw massage for yourself. I found spots which were unbelievably tight, and when I had been working on them a while to relieve them, there were referred areas of great pain behind my ears, or up into my temples, which sometimes persisted for weeks. It is important to get plently of sleep and drink LOTS of water as you do this.
Finally, if you can find a yoga class which is offering a comprehensive class of more than one hour in length, which includes breathing exercises, warm up asanas, and a full series of postures including inversions and forward and backward bends, RUN, do not walk, to two or three classes a week there. You may find that your hips, or your elbows will open up, thereby making it clear why your shoulders or back also cannot open up, which is why your head is so congested.
I have found that yoga class is really good for some of the withdrawal symptoms, counterintuitive as that may seem. When I am really symptomatic, my headstands are pretty wobbly, and sometimes I skip them. But overall, yoga helps alleviate the side effects.
poster:marolync
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021012/msgs/123584.html