Posted by lil' jimi on October 6, 2003, at 22:22:12
In reply to Checking in..., posted by Peter on October 6, 2003, at 19:39:48
hi Peter,
i'm thinking that we have a confusion here that we should clear up for you ...
you write:
> He said that if my mood is not recognizably improved, we would take the next step of increasing the lex dose. However, I'm concerned about doing this. The lexapro prescribing info that describes the outcomes of the various placebo-controlled trials state that those groups who took 20mg lexapro experienced DOUBLE the SE's than the placebo and 10mg lex groups; it also states that there was no real evidence that the 20mg group experienced more therapeutic effects than did the 10mg group. But, on the other hand, I've heard from many posters that they increased from 10mg and experienced a profound increase in therapeutic effects. But if the stats are correct, do I really want to, by increasing the dose, risk double the side-effects (the ones I just recently got over were bad enough in and of themselves) with a chance of not experiencing any increase in therapeutic effects? I'm confused as to what to do. >... now i respect that you do have several irons in the fire about your options here ...
... i am addressing only one of your considerations ...
... but i feel this is a case of comparing apples to oranges ...the study's statistics comparing 10 mg's to 20 mg's side-effects have to be comparing groups who start out at 10mg versus 20mg respectively ...
i see this as too far a reach to be compared to a single user going from 10mg to 20mg ...
... because this amounts to comparing the SEs of someone going from zero to 20mg ...
... to the SEs of someone going from 10mg to 20mg ...i feel these are not analogous
... on a theoretical model level, it stands to reason that, after having 10mg of lexapro prime the neurochemical pump, so to speak, one's NTs are well on their way to adaptation to lexapro and one has acheieved half the struggle toward a 20mg dose already ... in this view it would be expected that the SEs from going from 10mg to 20mg would be half those of going from 0mg to 20mg ...
... in terms of the reports from our posters who have increased their dosage from 10mg to 20mg, there has been a very consistent pattern with few exceptions, that the 10 to 20 adaptation SEs are very minor compared to the original adaptation from beginning at 10mg ... these reports would suggest that these 10 to 20 SEs are trivial compared to the initial SEs and easily much much less that half the original start up SEs ...long story short: i do not believe that possible SEs from increasing to 20mg should be nearly that much of a factor in your considerations ...
... i had similar SEs when i went up to 10mg from 5mg compared to when i started out at 10mg (for one day) and then went to 5mg (0 to 10 one day, to 5 for a month) ... similar in the sense that they were very like the quality of the initial SEs ... but i'd say not even a 10th the serverity and maybe half as long ...
just to give you a little more to chew on there with the ol' pdoc ...
and thanks for checking in!
take care,
~ jim
poster:lil' jimi
thread:109458
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031004/msgs/266149.html