View Full Version : So I got a new Dr...
The first thing he asks me is how long I've been on sertrline 50mg. I tell him a year - ish - I'm not sure.
He asks me how it's going.
I tell him for the first time in 10 years I feel human. So, very well.
And he replied - so when do you want to start tapering them off then.
I'm really sick of people, including doctors telling me - or anyone - that antidepressants are unnecessary medication. For the first time in my life I'm able to look after and support myself. I'm not saying I want to be on medication forever and I don't consider myself to be dependent on it, I'm not more dependent that someone on antibiotics. I'm so frustrated that no one seems to accept that.
Did you ask him why he wants you to stop?
I would urge you to think very carefully before coming off your medication.
Some time ago I thought I was better. Doctor told me to come off the meds.
I crashed big time. Sadly when I reinstated the same medication it did not work.
If you have something that works, enjoy feeling good, and keep taking it for as long as you feel comfortable.
I've been on 50mg Sertraline for a while now. I started 4 yrs ago on 100mg, then was reduced to 75mg. My Dr is quite happy for me to stay on them as it's only classed a maintenance dose.
I agree with Carolin
Don't be bullied into stopping them, they're helping you. Listen to your body.
you don't have to come off it if you don't want. He can't undermine your previous doc like that.
MyNameIsTerry
22-12-15, 23:32
you don't have to come off it if you don't want. He can't undermine your previous doc like that.
Why not? He/she is now both ethically & financially responsible for the treatment.
These meds are supposed to be temporary and unless you get passed a GP into the experts, the general view of treatment of mild/moderate is what is in a GP's mind.
Mine was like this and I echo Carolin's advice. I let mine withdraw me and 6 months later I relapsed even worse. Looking back I know I hadn't dealt with my issues, they were being masked I want working in them because I felt pretty stable.
Don't let them rush you, ignore their attempts to save cash at your cost. Reduce very slowly and spend a load of time seeing how you are before you take the final decision to withdraw the lower dose.
Thanks guys! Feels good to hear other people agree, it's so easy to feel isolated when you have a mental illness. I think he just thought I was "better" so it was time to come off them?
There is no chance I'm coming off them. I was pulled off medication about ten years ago, I won't let a Dr treat me like that again. I might ask for another Doctor if he brings it up again. I'm going back this week, I'll talk to him about it.
I've even told multiple Doctors that my main issue is doing well, getting back on my feet and then 6-12 months later I relapse, and every time it was worse than the last. It happened over and over and over. I feel like I've made personal developments that would stop me getting as low as I used to, but I can't deny that I'm still very vulnerable.
Good for you, HalfJack! Not to be confrontational, Terry, but I wonder just who it is that dictates that these medications, antidepressants, are "meant to be temporary"? Your health service covers their cost ... Maybe it's the health service, and they pressure GPs? It seems in fact that GPs aren't "meant to be" prescribing them, in the sense that they aren't specialists in mental health, and therefore can be very uncomfortable doing so. And some are truly clueless, so that may be for the best for their patients! Anyway, being medical doctors, their focus, IMHO, seems to be to resolve health problems with pharmaceuticals, referrals to surgery, and generally do their best to support their patients to recovery. With your indulgence, I would like to suggest that generally, they don't view our mental diagnoses as being chronic and ongoing. The exceptions would be bi-polar disorder, and serious disease of the brain which can be controlled with drugs.
My argument is that, if I have a chemical imbalance (i.e. not enough serotonin available to the active parts of my brain), then how is this not going to be chronic and ongoing? It is making up for a deficiency in my brain system. If it takes a medication to rebalance my brain's function, then how is it supposed to remain balanced, without it?
Put another way, it isn't just a matter of kick-starting vital functions in my brain that weren't working, and it can take over from there. My medication works as it tweaks away adjusting the different brain chemicals (mine also affects norepinephrine and at high doses, dopamine too). Like a little mechanic, turning valves to shut off the uptake of vital serotonin, and increase charges between the cells. ... My brain didn't have a good mechanic. If it had had one, then I wouldn't have been suffering from depression. That is how I see it.
We are taught that anxiety and depression both require more than the mechanic, they also require us to meet the drugs halfway through maintaining behavioural changes and tools in our own hands, so to speak. And some days, a little more than halfway. That's important. Positivity is huge, huge, huge. Looking for the bright side, problem solving. Distraction techniques. Putting on a happy face and tone of voice before asking yourself if you're "feeling it", lol! I am getting good at that now and it really helps. :D When the anxiety symptoms start, I remind myself that that is all they are, just symptoms. My moodbrain is essentially my inner child, and I need to be the firm, loving parent, calming its fears and refusing to let it dictate how I think and operate. Then again, that's how I view parenting children, I believe it is wrong-headed to let children call the shots regarding one's life! We are, essentially, the adult companion to our inner child, loving and caring and nurturing, but also reassuring and disciplining like a good parent needs to be. We cannot feed into baseless fears, or, in my case especially, just give in to tears and over-reactions. My inner child's winter comfort zone becomes a trek from the bed to the fridge, ha ha ha ha! But I am not a baby, I am an adult, and have more responsibilities and interests than that, obviously.
But, so yeah, this is your decision, HalfJack, and by now you know how you function best. Good luck to you, I say keep on doing what you're doing, and you'll keep getting what you're getting! xx
Marie
MyNameIsTerry
28-12-15, 22:55
Isn't that the medical view of antidepressants worldwide? We have guidelines for the length of time you should stay on them which in some cases can be longer than the patient believes they should.
These conditions are recognised as chronic in the sense of people lifelong. They have disability cover over here but you are not classed as disable, it's just to prevent the old discrimination that took place under old style stigma. But an anxiety disorder isn't seen as chronic like say my asthma is. It is accepted I will needs meds for my asthma all my life, but not my anxiety.
GP's would just dish out meds and leave you on them for life perhaps? Some of them e.g. Citalopram, Sertraline, etc are so cheap they cost them less than our subsidised prescription charge so for those of us still paying one, the NHS makes a profit off us. The subsidised charge is always sold to us as saving us money on meds - it's a lie in some cases. In truth, how much does a repeat prescription cost when compared to how much a GP earns in 10 minutes?
Some GP's accept some patients need ongoing meds for mental health but not all of us. It's a complicated affair though because everything should be rules out & tried before settling for that.
Sounds like a contradiction in medical care, to me. And here is where the controversy comes in. I say: If we view the brain as a vital organ in trouble, then where is the sense in leaving it untreated? How long does our quality of life have to suffer before everything has been "ruled out", and we are "settling for" meds? I agree that other forms of treatment need to be considered and incorporated when helpful. Like CBT or group therapy. And I am not saying every type of mental illness will be benefited from them.
To be honest, I should probably stop popping off about anxiety, since it is not my primary problem. Although, it is the one that causes me the most trouble with other people. And, I can see where tools and techniques could be helpful in preventing me from becoming overwhelmed. Now there may be an example of what you're talking about, Terry! :D
However, I too have heard of crushing disappointments when folks try to come off of meds, and the relapse makes their life worse than before they started meds in the first place. My heart goes out to them. (And I feel for you Carolin, having your med stop working for you after the break.) Particularly with anxiety, I can see dysfunction as the end result of relapse. Poor decisions, unacceptable behaviour leading to relationship breakdown. Job loss. Many of us end up on the street. My husband was patient when I came home from work and put on my pajamas and went to bed. He's pretty good at ignoring me, lol! I mostly went without antidepressants for years, because for me, any I had tried didn't make me feel normal. I would feel out of it, and numb. To me that's not good. And "calming drugs" like benzodiazapenes are addictive after awhile, so not a real solution for either depression or anxiety long term. I get that. I am so glad my doc had something beyond the same SSRIs I had tried. So far, it's still a work in progress, but I am better.
But, I figure since my depression disorder stems from lack of daylight, then unless the earth shifts in a major way, or else we win the lottery and move nearer the equator, I will need to stick with the meds for life. I'm okay with it. I titrate to maintenance dose for the summers, and only hope it doesn't poop out on me!
MyNameIsTerry
29-12-15, 06:51
Part of the problem with this issue Marie is that they still haven't proved whether low Serotonin is a cause or simply caused by it. Then we have all these meds and many of them, whilst tested & licenced, they still can't say exactly how they work on us. You would normally expect to know that first but maybe the medical world differs to the rest of us business people? I suspect a lot of this us the rush to market to replace the older meds though. We just got something slightly better than what we had before, not something from a best practice perspective.
And now we have studies of therapy, Mindfulness, etc that show the same improvement rates as some of these meds. Those are all natural, but costly by comparison and we lack the staff. It would make more sense to me to use those to correct the problem instead but I know it depends on severity as you know what it's like trying to engage in anything when you are severe, it just doesn't happen.
The thing is, I went over 30 years before this happened to me. So, why now? Has something declined in my brain chemicals? If so, how do I keep them at higher levels because the decline will only go further as I age. Sadly, you have to come to places like NMP to talk about this as doctors won't know or have little interest in such a question, they are more interested in treating it short term I find.
You are right that cost will be an issue but I think that's more for the NHS. Sadly, the NHS is not national at all, it's made up of independent trusts & CCG's with an overarching governance. We get cases where one local trust refuses a med yet one a mile aware from the patients house will offer it. That's not just mental heath, there have been cancer reports like that!
When it comes to GP's, they just want you out of the surgery quickly as you only get 10 minutes. If the drug is cheap, it will cost them less to repeat prescribe it than keep working through lots of solutions to actually help you. If the drug is one like Pregabalin, look how fast they are crawling all over you. GP's and the NHS are very different people. GP's are largely unregulated from what I believe and only last year they started auditing them on key indicators to find many hundreds were poor and some dangerous to health (maggots in treatment rooms stood out). You can think of them as contractors, our service providers as they are probably called.
I wouldn't put it past GP's to dump people on cheap drugs for many years and not because it was the right thing to do, just the easier thing to do. They also just don't have the knowledge to make a decision about your permanent needs, that's really for psychiatrists to me, certainly over here...if I want an antibiotic I would trust a GP.
Yes, I know they are not sure exactly what are the myriad of possible effects which take place when we take some of the SSRI/NRIs. They know enough that these do increase serotonin, which is thought to be the brain chemical responsible for lifting mood. Etc. They know that they work by preventing the "re-uptake" of circulating serotonin in the brain, by targeting the receptors for it, shutting them down. Thus, providing for the increase of circulating serotonin.
In the case of SNRIs, they know that at higher doses, receptors for norepinephrine are also treated. This is what is responsible for the "energizing" effects that can keep a depressed person moving. And that at some even higher point, those for dopamine, another "feel good" chemical, come into play.
Finally, they know that, like most drugs, these are metabolized by the liver, and can theorize about that, but are not quite sure what goes on there. The fact that it is metabolized by the liver is passed along to prescribers.
They know about side effects, and must report these by strict law. ... I agree that it is shocking how, even with such gaping holes in knowledge base of them, these drugs are widely prescribed and used. But, it seems that they have found that at least some of the drugs work for some of the people. Some of the time. They do not know who they will be, or why. The only thing most GPs can do is to switch patients from one drug to the next within a class, or try them on one or another in a different class. Depending on the diagnoses and symptoms of these patients, they have kept track of which prove to be more helpful for which type of disorder. Further, they have stumbled across certain positive effects for afflictions such as nerve pain, migraine headaches, and other "off-label" use.
A crap shoot? Yup. And I agree that it is unbelievable in this day and age that they do not know more about antidepressants, and effective mental illness treatment generally. No one speaks about Mindfulness here, except maybe in a yoga class, lol!
Medications like SSRIs and the like are not straightforward, like most antibiotics. But they are the best that so-called modern medicine has right now, pharmaceutically speaking. And Western medicine is pharmaceutical and surgical based. Period. And since most people won't get to see a psychiatrist, it has become the responsibility of the same GP who chooses your antibiotic to choose your antidepressant. I am not pushing antidepressants, Terry, and I wish I knew why anxiety and OCD has struck you out of nowhere! I am glad that there are these other forms of treatment out there, especially where drugs fail people. I am cheering you on with all of the kind of programs you have at your disposal! By the way, your system has way more than we have. We have no mental health helpline that I am aware of, except for suicide prevention etc. which are based in major centres such as Toronto, and accessed by an 800 number. No mental health "teams" or visiting nurses here. In order to see a psychiatrist (relatively) quickly, one has to turn up suicidal in the emergency ward and be admitted to hospital by a doctor or psych nurse.
At the end of the day, though, we are in the same boat with landing up at the mercy of our GP. It has been a stroke of luck that mine happens to take an interest in mental health, researched it, and has some experience in treating SAD. Once he diagnosed me, he chose the drug that I'm on because he himself has had success with his patients with it. I remind myself that this is "only" my second full winter on it, and so I am still trying to hit an optimum dose. Even at that, I know it isn't going to be the same for me as it is for people without SAD. My medication gives me only an approximation of what "normal" brain chemistry is. As I have said, so long as it keeps me above the pit, I am grateful, and try to do whatever else I can past that.
As you say, when it is severe, it just doesn't happen, and I hate to admit it, but I probably couldn't get to therapy when my depression is severe. However, if my med can help me to put one foot in front of the other and get out the door of a day, then it makes it more likely to happen. THIS is probably the only and best reason for me to be on meds. And I concur, more referrals to help need to be done where there is help to be had. GPs can do that at the same time as writing up the scrip. I don't blame my doc. There is boom all here, unfortunately.
... I will be looking at some kind of counseling in another town I will be at for while, upcoming. I'm a little nervous, really. I hear you though, and others on here too. If it can help keep me from becoming overwhelmed like I do sometimes, then I need to learn the tools.
I count on the support here too, Terry. I have dodged many a bullet, and found hope when the going got tough, many times, through the help of our friends here. I have managed to get at some core issues too, which is probably why the opportunity to talk them over with someone trained to help has come along! If we pay attention ... things often happen like that!
Marie xx
MyNameIsTerry
30-12-15, 07:36
There are no mental health lines where I am, unless you are already in their care. No crisis team, that's for the GP's. Accessing help is 12 months away other than the IAPT route and as the NHS itself admits, that's for mild-moderate. So, with severe you go through IAPT to get very limited help, often a floundering therapist, to then be put in a 12 month queue. No psychiatrist involved. You get accessed quicker but after that any treatment is 12 months away so I guess you have to hope the assessment gets you a psychiatrist. I don't know, my GP won't even refer me off to that service so I'm dumped or need to complain. I walked away.
So, it perhaps depends where you live in the UK Marie because services are pretty poor in my city. Getting quick access to anything here means you need to be a substance abuser or a harm risk, if not you go to the back of a very long queue with everyone else. IAPT has improved things in that you get help quicker but I've learned that help comes with a hefty price attached to it, namely a stripped down service with limited ability to help you...it's basically a funnel approach to healthcare.
I don't know why I am like this now, but I do know of the events that led up to it and it was a major amount of stress. The OCD is a result of the drug, it wasn't there before, I reckon it's the activation element since OCD works like that anyway. It's probably just too stimulating for me but I don't know what the damage will be underneath now since so much of this is learnt behaviour. I can recall some elements being there before I started this but it all went BOOM when this med was introduced so I suspect it severely intensified some existing tendencies that were never a problem before.
Anyway, I said that because whilst I can see 6-12 months where my health was declining, along with al the extra pressure, prior to this I lived on stress, poor diet, plenty of alcohol, lack of sleep, etc and I loved it all. Something changed. Something one day snapped in me as a result of ongoing pressures I never realised. Chemicals decline with age so maybe there is something in that? But it can't be this simple or we would all be in SSRI's.
I have no problem with people being medicated for life, if it works it's better to pay <£10 a month for happiness. But only if it has to be that way. I'm open to trying various things because I need to be, my GP would just throw pills at me otherwise because he has 10 minutes so cannot really help no matter what his knowledge. I don't think he's a bad person, they have always been great for things before this, but in terms of my treatment he could have been replaced by a machine. I envy people on here like you who have good GP's because it must be very reassuring to know going to see them isn't just a box ticking exercise to justify patient care in case they get picked up later. That's how mine feels. I derive little to no benefit from talking to him and I find his knowledge of the things we talk about on here to be far inferior to many people like yourself.
But should I have a complex physical disorder, what happens? My GP would refer me straight off to a specialist. A few weeks later and I may have an appointment. (longer in many cases, of course). My mum had a rash that didn't respond to meds, she was referred to a dermatologist. All sorted. My dad & brother found lumps, off they went to a specialist and all sorted. 9 years on and I'm yet to have a single test and I haven't seen my GP for approx. 2.5 years and he hasn't noticed.
They really need a simple chart in front of them that says if you have X, Y & Z see part A, then refinements from there and out pops a treatment plan. Until you have tried meds you know there will be no understanding of reaction so it should be based on the most likely one to help for what you present with. That just doesn't happen. Mine started me on Citalopram, which isn't licenced for anxiety yet ignored Sertraline which is the first go-to drug recommended by NICE. The second time I find myself on Duloxetine because "it's more for anxiety" which is garbage, it's for MDD, GAD, etc. NICE & NHS guidelines tell them to push you back on the previous one if that worked. Mine did. Or try another SSRI, not march you straight down the path to harder meds in higher stages.
This is a big part of the problem with all this, GP's running their own islands. They are so inconsistent to each other. If they did what yours does, based on guidance and experience, we wouldn't have half of these problems.
Maybe it is somewhere in the middle between our systems? We have more but it's being misused and you have too little but at least they get it right? The NHS is a well known dinosaur of an operation and has lacked quality protocols in so many areas but they naturally look towards the hospitals. Anything GP level and you may as well be addressing a different system based on the trust and then you go to the GP's who operate independently from each other under the trusts so it gets even more incoherent.
SSRI's can be difficult to understand when one works for one and not for another. I think there must be something in the strength of how they affect different neurotransmitters outside of Serotonin. It's easier to understand when you compare Ven & Duloxetine but with the SSRI's they do work on more than just Serotonin as well, just weakly. The thing is when they say "weakly", they are not all the same and some are stronger than others. Maybe there is something in that, I don't know but given we now have liver enzyme testing that could determine which meds are a no-go we may have a way of ruling certain ones out because they will be too harsh. Sadly, I doubt the NHS will implement that since it's cheaper to just try them, the cash will outweigh the patient need as it so often does over here.
Take all the support you can get your hands on, Marie. Counselling is a good idea and sometimes we need some guidance to get over hurdles. I would do it again. My GP blocks it now as do the service themselves as you get one go with them so it's private only by the looks of it but I won't rule out going back to it if I really need it. When I started with IAPT they told me I needed more intense therapy but had to go the low intensity route first and I grabbed it with both hands as some help is better than none. It's a proactive thing to do. You are a clever person and will use what they give you and blend it with the rest to find your path forward. You've never struck me as someone who doesn't keep working through it.
Goodness Terry, that is so well written and accurate.
Maybe the access to proper services , and GP referrals should be highlighted in parliament ? You really have highlighted exactly where NHS mental health services fail.
How I wish an appropriate minister could read some of the posts on here and see just how badly mental health patients are treated.
Ever thought about being an MP Terry ?
Hahaha wow this got very interesting!
Anywhere I've lived they don't even care if you're going to kill yourself they just leave you to it.
Although the seratonin thing isn't proven, that doesn't really change the fact that some people don't produce enough of it or are prone not to, so taking people off of medication after 12 months for no reason other than 12 months having passed isn't a rational move. The entire point of medicine is evidence based, but if they're not making decisions based on evidence it's just bad practice.
I think for me it's a shock too to be told it's temporary. That's never something I've been told before. Shouldn't a Doctor have told me that by now? Like if if could mess up my liver surely they would have mentioned that before I started taking them? Now I'm a bit worried. Although I guess if I had to pic a way to go, I'd rather die of liver poisoning while sane than suicide.
The NHS fails mental health because it didn't cover mental health when it started, and they technically don't have to cover mental health now.
For some reason mental health and "physical health" are still separated in medicine in almost every way imaginable. Doctors don't even need to accept it as a medical issue to qualify. I'm pretty sure they can still go their entire education without once consulting mental health treatment. That might have changed now, but I doubt it.
Yes, over here the medical schools have given it short shrift too, and probably only touch on it due to the pharmaceuticals involved. I gather though that my doctor believes that mental health is a part of one's overall health, and can be physically based (in the brain). He is quite good in the areas in which he has been schooled. He was trained in South Africa, I am not sure what their programs are like, and of course, physicians will have their own ideas of treatment approach, all within the existing umbrella of drugs and surgery. My doc has told me that he doesn't believe in taking supplements, and that he knows nothing about alternative medicine. Therefore, he hadn't really been willing to test my Vitamin D level even before the provincial government disallowed that test here (cost saving). Which is a shame, considering the connection between D deficiency and depression. And the access to prescription-strength vitamin D. He also sniffed at the possible applications of therapy lamps, and it was left to the pharmacist to talk to me about them. This is where they are mainly found here, near the pharmacy counter.
On the other hand, since beginning his practice in Northern Canada, he has obviously noticed an increase in SAD disorder amongst his patients, and set about accordingly to find what can help, within his sphere of practice. Which is traditional Western medicine. I can't imagine he had many patients like me in South Africa, so that's why I figure he has educated himself on the condition and the treatments for it. I know that his success with treating SAD patients with Effexor is why he chose not to consider the usual route of substitution with one after another SSRIs. A number of years ago he tried me on Zoloft (he only prescribes brand-name psych drugs), and that worked for my OCD thinking and spiralling depression at the time. I came off them okay and never reported mental illness again to him until presenting with symptoms again, a couple of winters back. This all led him to the tests for SAD, which he has run so many times up here I'm sure that they seemed to go along very quickly. Still and all, I have concluded that meds are not the be all and end all, not the Zoloft, and not the Effexor (although much better), at least not for me. I still get rooted to the couch a good deal. I have to kick my own arse if I am going to accomplish anything in a day. But at least I have a leg up now, which includes a choice in these things.
I am so sorry Terry that SNRIs weren't the right class for you, and may have done more harm than good. Was it the duloxetine? I don't know about it being harsher to the mind and body than regular SSRIs. No one is monitoring my liver enzymes and I think if he was worried about the possibility of liver damage, my doc would do so. It couldn't hurt though, I imagine. Now, just a lay observation of us both points up the fact that your OCD appears to be rooted in physical behaviours, whereas mine is moreso mentally based (negative thoughts about myself will surface with coincidences in everyday life, in other words, these will trigger painful memories for me). It is difficult to break this cycle. This is when I end up in tears, which, in turn, seems to bring out the worst in people as they can't see my pain and will dismiss it as not being real! I know that's the experience of many of us here. It doesn't have to be "health anxiety", and I want to apologize now for times I succumb to frustration when people exhibit those symptoms. I guess I don't know what it's like, so I should shut up sometimes. At the end of the day, I found there is nothing like this site out there during my search for depression forums. I am grateful to have found it, and to have been either understood, or else at least tolerated amongst the membership, lol!
Having said that, sometimes I will obsess over things until I am anxious, which annoys people in my life, and in turn, they speak to me in ways that make me feel worse. I know I'm not alone there, either, as I was just in a discussion about that between another member and a couple of others, as we try to help someone similarly attacked ... for being ill! Until the medical establishment comes out and publicly validates the existence of our conditions and need for support, such problems are unlikely to change in our lives.
Terry, you have hit the nail on the head. What's really needed is a coherent plan of treatment for anxiety and depression disorders. When patient presents with x and y, try this; when it is y and z, consider this and look for other indicators as well. It shouldn't be that unclear how to proceed! I find your thoughts on SSRIs as opposed to SSRIs interesting. It absolutely makes sense now that your type of OCD will have been egged on by the norepinephrine increase with the SSRIs. Wrong med entirely! Do you take anything at all now, were you able to find help with sertraline again? I did find that to be the first thing ever to help with my OCD. It worked like a charm on that, it was only that I felt blunted after awhile ("better" by some measures) and so I came off. And as effective as Effexor is for my depression generally, ("mood lifting" from the pit), I find that I often have to work hard to push out the OCD negative reminders I still get almost daily. I have often thought that if my illness were to become overarching again to the point of not being able to function, then I would ask for Zoloft again without hesitation. ... Obviously I hit a crisis again years later, so I for one do not see the need for meds as temporary. Not for those of us who rely on them to function. Thank you for your kind words, Terry. I hope you leave no stone unturned towards getting what you need, too.
And why the big push to get us to come off us all the time? Is it needed in the case of a physician proving his efficacy? Pressure from the establishment? Your guidelines don't seem to reflect that. Success should not be measured by being off of medication, not with chronic conditions like ours. It should be monitored by functioning and quality of life!
Anyway, I blame all this focus on the ephemeral notions of mood and behaviour as being character-based is where we ourselves become the focus for abuse. Maybe that's the way to treat character deficiencies? I wouldn't have thought so, but maybe they do ... Anyway, at least WE know anxiety is a real condition, albeit with symptoms that abate and increase. Same with depression. That's not the same thing as concluding that they are temporary conditions. Or that we ourselves are responsible for succumbing to them. Where has the science gone, in medical science?
Catherine S
01-01-16, 00:44
Hi Half Jack,
A previous poster mentioned that they had their med dose reduced from what was given in the beginning, so that now it's considered to be a kind of maintenance dose and I agree with that. I had been taking a beta blocker since 2007 (propranolol) and came down from 80 mg to 40 by earlier this year. Then in May a new doctor suggested I might no longer need to take it, but I protested because a bonus of taking it was that it stopped the missed beats and heart flutters that had plagued me for years, so he agreed to keep me on them...only changing them over to a more modern beta blocker called Bisoprolol at 10mg daily and this works fine. So I would consider this to be a maintenance dose for me, which as far as I can tell, can be taken more or less indefinately. He seemed happy that there was a reason for me to go on taking them, as without them my wellbeing could be compromised.
Take care
ISB x
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