Posted by softheprairie on November 8, 2010, at 0:09:41
In reply to Desipramine for pain - Ed? Scott? Link?, posted by Maxime on November 7, 2010, at 23:14:08
You can try it and see. I take desipramine and really love it. I take it for depression, and treat a bit of pain relief as bonus. But, I don't think it will help all of your pain. I am still taking some ibuprofen and acetamenophen for my menstural pain today (effectiveness-wise, just the ibuprofen works best for me, but I do worry some about it harming my stomach, so I have compromised and partly gone to the less-effective but gentler-on-the-stomach acetamenophen). I take 400 mg of desipramine daily. The normal upper limit is usually 300 mg. I had a malabsorptive weight loss surgery this summer, and was crying more there for a while and my blood level of desipramine was below the optimal/therapeutic range, so we went higher. It takes quite a while to ramp up the doses (at least for me, it did). Ironically, since you are wanting to take it for pain, I did face headaches for a while each time I moved to a higher dose.
I do find it more or less weight-neutral.
There can be cardiac side effects. I got a fast heart rate from it (over 100 beats per minute, aka tachycardia) (even at a lower dose than I am currently at). I also felt heart palpitations and some anxiety from it. My family doctor put me on a beta blocker called Bystolic/nebivolol to slow down my heart rate, and it also helped with the heart palpitations and anxiety. Otherwise, my EKG showed my heart rate was fine.
Two other adjuncts I take are liothyronine and perphenazine.
poster:softheprairie
thread:969091
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20101107/msgs/969105.html