Posted by bleauberry on September 3, 2011, at 7:14:07
In reply to Is this a high dose. I mean really??, posted by rjlockhart04-08 on September 3, 2011, at 0:47:28
60mg isn't really a high dose. My GP used to consider that to be the upper dose at which time he would refer patients to a pdoc for higher doses. Doses can go as high as 80mg to 120mg.
How well it worked when it did work should be the question that determines whether to keep working with or not. If it worked very good and you need to recapture that, then a higher dose is the obvious first choice. Second choices would include substances that synergize with prozac. Those would include Zyprexa, Nortriptyline, Ritalin. The combination with zyprexa, for example, dramatically increases dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Prozac alone is mostly just serotonin with some modest boost of dopamine and norepinephrine.
Basics need to be attended to. That means diet should be ultra clean and balanced. As in low sugar, low carbs, high veggies, moderate proteins, organic always or as often as possible. Neurotoxins from a variety of causes....genetic weakness in detox, pathogenic organisms, environmental exposure, etc....can disrupt all of the neurotransmitters and receptor functions....making most psych meds fairly useless until the detox issues are addressed. So there is more to look at here than just prozac or whatever med.
Ok let's assume you've been up to 80 mg and still nothing. 100mg and nothing. Fine. That tells you some important stuff...you need to look at other stuff because serotonin is NOT the issue. With this approach, even failures become successes because they give clues and information to help solve the riddle, clues you didn't have previously. I take note that most doctors will go from one med to another basically blindly or based on what they have seen in their own practice....and totally ignore the clues that have been set before them. I just don't agree with that.
Here is something else to consider. Generic and brand are not equivalent. Long story, could write a book on it. They are basically the same, but have differences that can be significant from person to person. We have seen that at this website so many times with a variety of meds. One of my doctors refuses to even prescribe generics due to the amount of failures and complications he has had with them compared to brand. Except for one of the pain killers where he found one of the generic versions worked better than brand. So before a final ditch of prozac, it would definitely be worth the money to switch to brand for a couple weeks before giving up on the whole thing. I personally did fine on brand and then deteriorated on generic and then did fine again when I went back to brand....at the time I didn't know these switches had been made....but I sure felt it. SLS could tell you similar stories with some of his meds for example Lamictal. Xanax is another common one that often shows a marked difference between brand and generic.
So if someone tells me their prozac isn't working, and their prozac is generic, then I say they don't know if it works or not because they haven't tried brand prozac.
Just some stuff to think about.
poster:bleauberry
thread:995695
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110902/msgs/995704.html