Citalopram half life??

[crazyhayz]

What does half life mean? and how does it affect sum1 physically?

im worried coz i stupidly keep missing my dose, only ever one days worth tho, never mre than that, but can thks honestly have a bad effect? i.e. withdrawal??

basically, my symptoms that i suffer with are pretty much all 'Neurological' seeming.... like weird sensations in skin and hot/cold, weird smells, dizziness with bad vision problems, strange urges to twist parts of my body, loss of feeling in arms, or hands, cramps, pricking feelings, bad twitches, like lotsa weird symptoms i never really hear of on anxiety boards....seeing a Neuro on Feb 1st... dreadin it...

But can these all be caused by missing the odd dose of citalopram?? (20mg)

thanks

[Vixxy]

the half life of a pill is the time it takes for HALF the dose to leave your body. So if you take 20mg and the half life is 12 hours, then after 12 hours you would have 10mg of the medicine active in your blood. Then it would be another 12 hours and you would half the 10mg, to 5mg. And so on.
Antidepressants have a fairly large half life. Missing one pill isn't advisable, and you may start to notice a few side effects, however you would still have a fairly high concentration of the pill in your system.
Hope that helps.

[Geoff2301]

From what I remember, half-life can vary vastly between different medications. The shorter the halflife, the more important it is to keep the dose regular. Also withdrawal symptoms are supposed to be significantly worse with a short half-life hence the probelms with Seroxat. Fluoxetine is supposed to have an incredibly long half-life...... weeks I believe...... and they reckon you could get by with just one pill a week........ well... thats what I read anyway!