Posted by SLS on June 9, 2015, at 23:31:04
In reply to Re: CBT vs Seroquel or Abilify or Latuda » SLS, posted by legm82 on June 9, 2015, at 22:52:49
> > By the way, my lithium blood level is at or below 0.4. It won't have antimanic properties at such a low level, but it can still exert antidepressant effects. Also, 150 mg/day of lithium will help prevent Alzheimer's Dementia. For me, 300 mg/day serves both functions, and is unlikely to affect thyroid or renal function. You can always have blood tests to monitor these. If I go higher in dosage with lithium, I experience flat affect and a feeling of greater depression.
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> > - Scott
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> Hi Scott
>
> Do you have tremors with Lithium? What side effects do you have to face in order to continue your therapy with Lithium? It is a very stigmatized drug, and really scares me a lot.Your reluctance to take lithium is understandable. It is a drug with a narrow therapeutic index (the range of dosages that helps without hurting). Some researchers think lithium should be used first. I think it depends on the type of bipolar disorder being treated. At 300 mg/day, I experience absolutely no tremors. The dosage is too low. I start getting tremors at 900 mg/day. I have taken as much as 1500 mg/day during a period of mania. It seems to me that most people using lithium as a mood stabilizer (prevents both mania and depression) end up at 1200 mg/day.
Some work was done at Harvard about 15 years ago that found that lithium at low dosages helped when added to fluoxetine (Prozac). The average effective dosage was 450 mg/day (300 - 600 mg/day). Interestingly, they found that increasing the dosage of fluoxetine to 60 mg/day without taking any lithium helped even more.
- ScottSome see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.- George Bernard Shaw
poster:SLS
thread:1079546
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20150520/msgs/1079602.html