Posted by pedr on October 9, 2010, at 23:05:16
Hi babblers,
last week I suffered a hypertensive crisis seemingly after drinking one pint of draft beer. A quite frightening and excruciatingly painful experience.It appears to have happened again tonight after drinking a single bottle of lager (my head is still hurting). Oddly I've been drinking this bottled lager the whole time I've been on Nardil and never even had a hint of headache even after four or five of them. Same with white wine.
I'm trying to work out what's changed. The main thing that springs to mind about tonight is that I took my 12mg of Zelnorm (for IBS) along with my 6pm dose of Nardil. Normally I take the Zelnorm in the morning.
Now, I know of no interaction between Nardil and Zelnorm and Google comes up dry too. Neither are reported to be contraindicated by the other on their PDR's. AFAICR Zelnorm cannot cross the blood-brain barrier and exclusively acts on serotonergic receptors in the gut. Therefore pharmacologically, this cannot be the cause. But I'm no p-doc of course.
Has anyone heard of any Zelnorm-Nardil interplay? Does anyone have any other suggestions as to why I've suddenly had 2 strong reactions to beer? Here are the symptoms:
--last week: 1 minute after finishing first pint got neck pain, then strong headache at base of skull. Constantly increasing in intensity and moving forwards towards forehead. Within 5 minutes it was unbearable. After 30 minutes the pain settled around right eye for about 2 hours, slowly decreasing as did my blood pressure (sounds like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papilledema#Signs_and_symptoms ). For the following three days I had intermittent, strong headaches but bottled lager was OK.
--tonight: sipped first bottle, headache came on very rapidly after about 5 minutes. Immediately settled around right eye primarily, but whole right-side of skull very sore to touch. Right eye bloodshot and painful to see with, especially light. Ended up taking hot bath with lights out to combat vasoconstriction and lower BP which helped. +4 hours still have quite strong headache (and am typing with makeshift patch over right eye!).
I'd really appreciate some ideas because I am fairly concerned. Not just about these episodes but of the prospect of giving up beer... o_0
Pete
Treatment Resistant depression, anxiety, OCD: 13 years
IBS-C & GERD: 8 years
Current meds: 90mg Nardil, 300mg Zantac, 20mg Prilosec
poster:pedr
thread:965213
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20101009/msgs/965213.html