Twitching and jerking!

[sunflower7]

Please someone else tell me they have had this as a side effect? My muscles have been twitching and in bed my head jerked a couple of times and my shoulder. Feel my anxiety is as bad as it was before and I thought I was getting somewhere. After the seizure worry last night I'm worried with these new symptoms that I've got something neurological going on �� Just can't believe all the symptoms I'm having can all be side effects. Surely you can't have that many side effects??

[Carnation]

Yes, I am afraid you can.

What you have described is exactly what I have experienced.
It is very frightening and the mind goes in to overdrive thinking it is something more serious. Anxiety is a very powerful thing. Your body is over sensitised and no matter how scary and out of control you may be, it will in time pass.
Your nervous system is repairing, look at it that way.

Sunflower7, when I had my breakdown, I listed all of my symptoms and there must have been over 40. Some will stay longer, some new ones will come, but eventually they will start to fade, but this takes time. x

[MyNameIsTerry]

Many of these meds include hypnic jerks as a side effect. Cit does.

The side effect profile is as long as your arm. Those are the possible side effects, some may only get a few, some may get more.

Also, those jerks are also a known sleep phenomena in the Hypnagogia (falling asleep and within the first two hours of sleep) and Hypnopompia (waking) stages of sleep. Don't worry about the names, these are just sleep stages in natural sleep. There is a whole load of sleep phenomena that anyone can experience, it's not about anxiety although some can be made more frequent by anxiety. So, if they occur then, it will be these stages and maybe the med too.

What I found was that these types of issues were at their worst when I was at my worst. As my overall anxiety levels came down, these symptoms just went away. Sometimes I get them back in stressful periods but they are much reduced compared to how they were in the beginning.

If it's the Cit, that should calm down soon.

All of these are listed against Citalopram on Drugs.com:

- trembling, shaking, or twitching
- muscle twitching or jerking
- twitching, twisting, uncontrolled repetitive movements of the tongue, lips, face, arms, or legs

[sunflower7]

Thank you both. I was doing so well last week and now I feel back to square one. Panicky and desperately trying to find reasons for the symptoms I'm having which is raising my anxiety levels. It's a vicious circle.

[Shazamataz]

Yes, I've had that! I can't remember if it was while on citalopram or while coming off it (didn't agree with me) but I had lots of twitches and jerky movements. I don't seem to have them now and my anxiety is a lot better so it could be anxiety or the meds but NOT anything sinister.

[sunflower7]

Thank you, this forum is a great support.

---------- Post added at 14:16 ---------- Previous post was at 11:50 ----------

Just read on the Cit leaflet that twitching muscles and weak muscles can be a sign of low potassium so now I'm scared to keep taking the tablets 😞

[Victory2016]

Not sure if I suggested this to you before or not, but when you feel the urge to google your symptoms try googling the positive stories about Cit and go on some of the drug review sites and only read the positive stories. This may help you with your thought process and turn down your anxiety when you see how well people are doing on Cit. However don't get discouraged when you read that someone felt normal in 4 weeks as I am sure it can happen, but we are all different and you will see most people state it took a good 3/4 months to feel better and to stick with it.

Throw the leaflet in the trash!!!

[sunflower7]

Thank you for your help.

[Debs21uk]

Hi, I upped my dosage and this happened then I had to drop the dose and it happened again. It feels horrible but it does ease off. I'm now going up my dosage in very small amounts as I'm quite prone to side effects. It's taken me six weeks to start to feel a bit better on my tablets, I'm not quite where I want to be yet but I've stopped googling how I feel as it wasn't helping and I've started to go out. It does get better it just takes time x

[sunflower7]

Thank you x