Posted by barbaracat on March 22, 2005, at 14:51:11
In reply to Re: Dysphoric Mania » barbaracat, posted by CareBear04 on March 22, 2005, at 12:44:45
i don't know if my body is better or less able to metabolize lithium. i think i'm definitely more sensitive to it because a dose like 450mg now is .5, whereas a year ago, it would be like .2. there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with my kidneys, so it's just an unexplained change. once i got over the fear that i needed 1800mg to function, i like the lower dose better.
**Yes, it feels much better to not be drooling, eh? You know, there are many substances that interact w/lithium such as coffee, fiber (psyllium, flax), ibuprofen, even milk. Maybe something in your diet or med combo has changed - so hard to pinpoint these variables. Very important to get extra salt in the diet, like a good sea salt. I always put a pinch in my water which prevents the bloat I get from drinking alot of water because of lithium making me thirsty.
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> you mentioned dropping the therapeutic range down to include 0.4. do you happen to know what the therapeutic range used to be? i remember reading in kay jamison's _an unquiet mind_ that the therapeutic doses were much higher then, and that she was often toxic from her prescribed dose.**I believe it was around .8-2.0 or .9-2.0(2.0 and above is now believed to be toxic). People used to regularly be given 1,500-1,800mg. A Babble Bud I'm communicating with's pdoc insists anything under .6 is worthless. I disagree. You have to go by individual results.
poster:barbaracat
thread:461961
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050322/msgs/474077.html