Posted by bleauberry on November 30, 2008, at 10:40:04
In reply to Cymbalta overdose/rejection?, posted by Zoomzoom on November 30, 2008, at 10:06:49
Ask ten different doctors or people and you'll get a variety of different opinions. Ok, so this is just mine.
With any medication, the lowest effective dose is the best dose.
These meds take 6 to 12 weeks to fully manifest themselves, while early hints can be seen by week 1 or week 2.
At other forums I have seen people do very well on 15mg cymbalta, or 5mg prozac, or 3mg lexapro, where they did poorly at the so-called therapeutic doses.
With all this taken into perspective, it would seem to me to make sense to return to 30mg and stay there for at least 6 weeks before making a decision on any dose changes. You already saw hints of good things happening. See if that trend continues.
There have been numerous studies on a wide variety of meds that compared two things: 1)Continiued treatment at a partial-response dose, versus 2)a higher dose. In most cases, the continued treatment at the lower dose was equally as effective as the higher dose, except that it took longer to get there and it had far fewer side effects. In other words, 12 weeks at 30mg cymbalta stands a good chance of being as good as 6 weeks of 60mg.
You have to be your own judge. These are just some thoughts to ponder. Personally I would never go to a higher dose unless the lower dose had proven itself unsatisfactory. Two weeks is not enough time to prove that one way or the other. I would never go to a higher dose just because that's what the manufacturer says to do, or because a doctor is following pharm rep instructions, or just because it is the so-called correct way to do things, or just because that's what someone else did. There is no correct way. Nobody knows you better than you. Not your doctor or the drug manufacturer or the person who wrote the drug label's dosing instructions.
poster:bleauberry
thread:865882
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081123/msgs/865890.html