Posted by King Vultan on June 5, 2004, at 11:08:19
In reply to Starting dosage for Nardil, posted by mark57 on June 5, 2004, at 8:23:44
> I'm going to be starting Nardil in a few days (after 10 days off of Lexapro) and I was wondering what others may have used as their starting out dosage for Nardil and how quickly they increased it. On the bottle I have it says to start at 3 x 15mg/day for 1 wk, then 4x15mg/day for a week, 5x15mg/day for wk, then finally 6x15mg/day. My pdoc left a message for me saying he thought this may be starting too fast and wanted to talk about changing it. He hasn't had much experience with the MAOIs.
>
> Thanks!
>You don't necessarily have to go all the way to the maximum dose depending on how you do at some of the lower dosages. Many people seem to take 60 mg/day, which is kind of a standard dose. My doctor, who has over 20 years of experience with Nardil, had me start at 3 x 15 mg/day for 1-2 weeks to see if I could tolerate it. I then went to 60 mg for two or three weeks. He asked that I call in and let him know how I was doing at that time to see if going up to 75 mg/day was indicated.
Since I had experienced no real adverse or therapeutic effects on 45 mg/day and only adverse effects at 60 mg/day (mainly insomnia), I gave that information to his nurse, and she called back and relayed his instructions to go up to 75 mg/day. I stayed on 75 mg/day for about another three weeks (which did have therapeutic effects), made another appointment, and we decided we might as well go up to 90 mg/day, as it seemed uncertain that I was getting the full therapeutic effects at 75. So 90 mg/day is currently where I'm at, and I've been at that dosage for about a month and a half.
One of the references that I frequently post links to (sorry, I am at home on my pathetic webtv--it is a little difficult for me to post it right now) expresses the notion that the minimum effective dose of Nardil is 1 mg/day per kilogram of body weight. I weigh 150 lbs, so for me that figures out to 68 kg = 68 mg/day. In my case, there was some truth to this, as I did not experience noticeable therapeutic effects until I got up to 75 mg/day. I have seen reports from people who apparently are on the big and heavy side who are taking more than the regular maximum of 90 mg/day (the most I've seen is 9 x 15 = 135 mg/day). My doctor was unaware of this dosage to weight school of thought for Nardil, but he said the highest he had ever gone was 105 mg/day.
Todd
poster:King Vultan
thread:353987
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040602/msgs/354006.html