I took a large lithium and valium (not my own medication) overdose about 30 years ago, I suffer from various mental and physical conditions and wondered if any of them could be attributed to that? Any insight greatly appreciated.
View 2 RepliesI recently noticed that some mild OCD I developed before entering high school has gotten worse. While it used to be compulsive list-making about memories it has turned into touching things/thinking things/blinking/breathing/walking either two or four times. If I touch something on one side, I have to touch it on the other. Many rituals have to do with time, and sometimes if I'm reading a page it's more about completing a symmetry task than actually reading. Memories are "things" which can be visualized like I'm currently living in them. This gets worse during times of high stress.
My question is, why did this develop when I was fourteen? I was always a bit sensitive to certain sounds and dirty surfaces, but those mild obsessions are NOTHING like what I experience now. I assume that every ritual is a stress-relief technique and that since my mind's always racing, my brain feels a need to organize things. But I'm not an organized person, and when I'm feeling low, I almost never complete my work. I can obsess over certain past actions for hours and analyze situations to the point where I'm practically making up other people's reactions or pretending I'm inside their head.
These are very real physical changes and conditions. Some symptoms alarm a woman that she may be suffering from a serious disease. Perhaps you know the more common ones related to menopausal symptoms in this list. But many of these may surprise you, as they have not been typically associated with this normal physiological transformation.
1. Change in Menstrual Cycle, Cycles may get closer together or farther apart, lighter and shorter in duration or much heavier, lasting longer than one has been accustomed to. Menses may seem to take forever to begin with dark spotting for days until you actually flow, or you might feel like you have your menses every two weeks.
2. Menstrual Flooding can come on with sudden onset and feel like you may hemorrhage to death. Or it can be a gradual build up just when you think your menses will end and you start gushing for days. Flooding commonly accompanies the woman with uterine fibroids as she transits into menopause.
3. Headaches, Migraines, especially before, during or at the end of your menses debilitate and radically interferes with normal functioning.
4. Decreased Motor Coordination, Clumsiness, almost begins to make the woman who experiences this feel like she is a bit spastic, certainly less than graceful during perhaps an already awkward period in her life.
5. Lethargy, a persistent feeling sluggishness physically and mentally, that seems to negate ones ability to do much.
6. Physical Exhaustion , and Crushing Crashing Fatigue that can come on so suddenly and grip you into feeling like you will collapse unless you stop this instant.
7. Exacerbation of any Chronic Illness or Existing Condition transpires as hormones decline or deviate from their normal balance.
8. Insomnia, this includes a new or unusual pattern of either difficulty falling asleep, or dropping off to sleep for a few hours and then awakening with the inability to return to sleep.
9. Sleep Disturbances sometimes are from nightmares, night sweats, or just a vague sense of restlessness keeping you up or disrupting your precious revitalizing retreat from this realm of responsibilities.
10. Night Sweats often begin between a woman?s breasts, initially a night or two before her menses, waking her from sleep, later more profoundly disturbing with up to total body saturation, followed by damp or sweat drenched chills.
11. Interference With Dream Recall interrupts the sense of normal sleep, if you are someone accustomed to vivid or at least some detailed memory of your dreamtime.
12. Muscle Cramps can occur anywhere in the body from legs to back to neck, and sometimes reflects the need for more calcium, or simply that your progesterone levels are too low.
13. Low Backache often worsens before or during menses, but if your hormones remain at low levels, you can experience it on a regular basis.
14. Gall Bladder Symptoms of pain, spasms and discomfort felt in the right upper abdominal quadrant under the ribs, which may be accompanied by belching, bloating, and intolerance to certain foods reflect the increased liver load with declining hormones.
15. Frequent Urination, or sensations that mimic urinary infections is a disturbing symptom often unrelieved by actual urination. It is often experienced as the sensation of needing to urinate all the time, even immediately afterwards.
16. Urinary Incontinence, the uncontrollable and spontaneous loss of urine, or the Urge for Incontinence, can occur suddenly or feel continuous, and not only in response to coughing, sneezing, jumping or running.
17. Hypoglycemic Reactions happen when suddenly your blood sugar crashes and you must have food now.
18. Food Cravings, often for sweets or salty foods, but can include sour or pungent foods.
19. Increased Appetite, especially at night and after dinner contributes to that unusual and unwanted weight gain.
20. Dark Circles Under Eyes can also be caused by adrenal exhaustion and thyroid dysfunctions, but no amount of sleep seems to eliminate it.
21. Joint and Muscle Pain, Achy, Sore Joints, Muscles and Tendons, which sometimes develop into actual carpal tunnel syndrome, or give rise to the questioning of other disease possibilities.
22. Increased Tension in Muscles demonstrates itself in those hunched up shoulders as you work or talk about anything uncomfortable, along with promoting lower back pain and a stiff neck.
23. Increased Hair Loss or Thinning anywhere on body, including your head, armpits, pubic area.
24. Increase in Facial Hair especially under your chin, or along your jaw line. It may be defined by generalized hair growth, or a specific and coarse single strand of hair that pokes out, even curls.
25. Unusually Hair Growth, around Nipples, between Breasts, down your back, places where your hair was finer, less coarse.
26. Acne, quite disturbing to any woman who dealt with this in adolescence and never thought it would recur.
27. Infertility causes grief in the woman who postponed pregnancy in her earlier years and now wishes to conceive, carry to term a healthy baby, and discovers she is unable to do so.
28. Loss of Breast Tissue begins with the decrease of progesterone production. Women often feel as though their breast have become empty sacs devoid of their normal fullness, with or without sagging.
29. Breast Soreness/Tenderness/Pain/ Engorgement and swelling, occurs particularly a few days to one week before bleeding actually begins, which usually potentiates complete relief of any pain or swelling.
30. Painful, or tender nipples have been described as this exquisite localized pain only in the nipples and suggests estrogen excess.
31. Cold Extremities feels quite strange especially in the presence of a hot flash, the combination of which is not impossible.
32. Being Accident Prone, bumping into things, not even realizing it until the bruise reveals itself later and then lacking the ability to recall the causative incident feels perplexing and a little scary at the prospect of something more damaging.
33. Hot flashes initially may be described as mild to severe flushes of heat waves, and for some women these evolve into intense outbreaks of sudden heat with sweating and turning bright red all over.
34. Loss of Sexual Energy, our Libido, can be marked by a gradual or sudden disinterest in sex, to the development of an actual aversion.
35. Painful Sex often described as if one?s vagina would tear open at the point of penetration along with feelings of abrasion during intercourse.
36. Vaginal Dryness, Irritation, sometimes accompanied by a consistent unusual discharge - typically odor free, negates a woman?s ability to be sexually active, or able to enjoy or be comfortable in her body.
37. Dizziness, feeling lightheaded and the loss of physical balance, and even a bit wobbling at times, requires pause in movement to prevent falling over or deepening into vertigo or feeling faint.
38. Ringing in the Ears, Tinnitus, can be experienced as a pulsing sensation, a whooshing sound, an almost musical or buzzing sound with a fuzzy sensation.
39. Abdominal Bloating comes on suddenly often after eating, or seems to be all the time, and can be visibly evident making you feel that you look like you are pregnant.
40. Weight Gain disturbs most women, particularly when it seems to happen over a couple of days, settles in the waist, buttocks and thighs, promoting a visceral thickening from the waist down, the classic middle-aged figure.
41. Fluid Retention, Edema, commonly with swelling in the legs and ankles, though not limited to this area and it is unrelieved by urination.
42. Palpitations or Heart Racing usually comes on suddenly, without warning or provocation, and dissipates spontaneously. The experience can be so wild and intense that a woman may become alarmed and wonder if she is having a heart attack.
43. Irregularities in your Heart Rate may feel more like your heart has just done a flip-flop or skipped a beat.
44. Constipation/Diarrhea, intermittent or alternating, results from declining hormone levels, which increase the demands on liver function and alters intestinal motility.
45. Tendency towards Candidiasis can increase, even if you have no prior known history ? and if you do, it may worsen.
46. Gastrointestinal Distress, Increased Flatulence, Unrelieved Gas pains, Indigestion, Nausea all can reflect intestinal changes due to hormonal imbalances.
47. Slow Digestion often goes along with the bloat ? what previously took four to five hours to digest, now seems to take all night. It seems worse in the evenings.
48. Lack of Appetite may be experienced as more of a lack of interest in food, going to the frig and standing there with the door open and staring blankly. Feeling completely uninspired, you busy yourself with something else and forget that you need to eat.
49. Changes in Body Odor especially disturbing when it seems to focus in the groin area, but can be anywhere on the body.
I have been severely depressed for just over 8 months (first time in my life). My current drug regime is 300 mg Venlafaxine, 30mg Mirtazapine and 100 mg Quetiapine. I have had a very limited response to these drugs and am due back to see my psychiatrist week after next.
At my last appointment the psychiatrist said that our next option would be Lithium. I am not bipolar. I feel rather frightened by this but at the same time, am so desperate to feel better, I'm almost willing to try anything.
I have now lived with what I think is an STD for the past 4 years and it has completely ruined my life. I have many physical symptoms, but what affects me the most is how it affects me mentally. Extreme depression and anxiety, thoughts of suicide, significant memory loss, complete loss of sex drive, inability to think clearly are some examples. You may be thinking this is depression, but i've been treated for depression over the entire 4 years. All the medications I've taken, all the therapy I've done, none of it has improved anything. Both physical and mental symptoms get better and worse together as if the disease goes dormant, and I feel a lot more like my old self.
View 1 RepliesI admit I have had multiple Anxiety attacks, I am a cashier at Walmart, I usually get them if I had rude customer like after I had a nasty customer who came down from self-check to customer service towards me, I was in tears before that, then my manager told me to hide behind the Customer Service desk. My worst anxiety attack I had a lady who's coupons would not work, I took the coupon price off the items she could not understand that and told me to take the items off period and demanded I give the coupons back to her, I already did. My brain got foggy so I asked her if she wanted me to take the items off, she said yes so I kept doing it, suddenly I wasn't feeling to well, I went to go see my manager to ask for help when I started hyperventilating, my manager had me sit down right there at the empty register. Another cashier was able to take over and finish it for me. My manager helped me over to the bench at customer service, where I suddenly lost feeling in my hands, they ended up curling up from the pinky in. I tried prying them apart using the metal bench but that didn't even work. That scared me, the same manager asked if I was okay I told her that I couldn't feel my hands, staring down at my fists. They finally unfroze after 10 minutes. The lady was so upset with me she left all of her items.
Anyway I will get dizzy, like it ranges from feeling as though I am spinning, I have to clutch on to something to keep from falling over, to the world tipping around me with every step, to not being able to see, not sure if that's exactly dizziness, but it started with dizziness. I'll get flushed randomly. I'll have PAC's. There have been a few times I have almost fainted, one time it was from not breathing, like I noticed that I wasn't breathing, my body was just like woah what's the matter you aren't breathing, I had to have a manager finish while I sat down. I was up and doing my job before I was supposed to so I did not feel well the rest of the day. My arms will also get exhausted suddenly if I have to lift them to head level, like I can barely do a pony tail without them being exhausted, the kinda feeling you get after a hard work out.
I've had the flushing and dizziness when I was talking to my mom and hanging out with my friends. My friends all know and are really accepting if they need to stop doing whatever so I can sit down.
My doctor originally thought it was POTS if anyone knows what that is, I'm getting a tilt table test in 2 weeks, now he seems to think it's anxiety. I'm sitting down while working just in case, it does seem to help slightly. It's just annoying, this has been going on for 3 months and I'm sitting down because of the time I have almost fainted also. Anyway people will say you're lucky you get to sit down, I don't consider everything and almost fainting lucky.
I'm not sure if it is anxiety since it is just physical symptoms, I've had no mental or emotional ones. Just feels like mental ones from fear of my physical ones.
I've done a stress echo and a holter monitor and blood work done.
I've been struggling with depression for a long time, which was triggered by a death of a family member. My doctor put me on zoloft about a week ago. A couple days ago I split with my partner of 2 years, and being extremely sad and almost suicidal I took 17x50 mg zoloft tablets + 5x25 mg xanax tablets and about 2 bottles of wine. I didn't pass out or anything, I couldn't fall asleep for a long long time, and now I'm having terrible headaches. Should I see my doctor?
View 8 RepliesViagra and medications like it (Levitra, Cialis) have been used safely and effectively for erectile dysfunction (ED) for nearly 20 years. In addition to their more recent use as recreational (non-prescribed) drugs, doctors and patients have tried them for other conditions, like premature ejaculation.
This post is not intended in any way to recommend recreational use of Viagra or any of the other related medications, or their use for conditions other than those for which they are approved by the FDA or other national regulatory agencies, but addresses questions to those men who have used, or are contemplating using, whether recommended by their doctor or otherwise, these medications for reasons other than erectile dysfunction.
1. For what conditions, other than ED, have you or are you using these medication?
2. What change(s), if any, did you notice in your sexual functioning?
3. Did you encounter any problems?
I've been dealing with severe sciatica pain that radiates from my lower back down to my calf. It sometimes gets so bad I cannot move. I've been seeing a chiropractor for the past two weeks and we've discovered I have a tilted pelvis and curvature of the spine; aside from my dx, the adjustments don't seem to be helping.
My question is, should I still be exercising with this pain or is it worsening the pressure and inflammation of the nerve?
**I am a gymnast and athlete so I spend a lot of time at the gym do hardcore lifting and HIIT. My chiro said to focus on stretching but it hurts so bad I can barely manage it.
I am 36 years male with very little facial hair. Will Bio Identical Hormone Therapy help in facial hair growth.
View 1 RepliesI am a 19 year old teenager. I have problems with my skin on my face. it is very rough and rugged and not smooth. This problem has started after i have started shaving.I get reactions on my face when i shave. I get marks and these small dots appear on my face, which i don't know what they are. I don't smoke or drink or have bad habits. This problem has been a problem for sometime but i thought it would go away but is hasn't. I usually shave 1 a week due to this problem and there is no difference the problem still remains the same. I don't like my appearance of my skin as it rugged and looks very rough like sandpaper. What is the problem and do you know how i can cure/decrease it. Attached below in the link is some pictures of the condition of my face.
View 1 Repliesmy husband has a hernia and last night his groin and left testicle went numb. are these things related what could cause the numbness?
View 1 RepliesI have been off work for 6 months because of physical health problems then my antidepressants stopped working. I have been referred to CBT so am waiting for an appointment.
Can you have CBT while you are working?
I am also waiting on OH for work. Would it be better to have OH first before CBT or at the same time/similar time?
i have come across a person who told me that mental stress can be the reason of hair fall. and if i become happy i won't be having unnatural hair loss...
View 1 RepliesJust out of interest, I get the following, although somewhat reduced by my current medication (quetiapine)
1. Flashes, peripheral disturbances;
2. Illusions -- shadows morphing into animals / people;
3. Seeing what I call 'black rats / cats';
4. Spiders on your desk...;
5. 'Throbbing' objects such as keyboards;
6. Seeing people on the street who just vanish into thin air;
7. Seeing people morph into skeletons
8. People faces screaming at your window...
9. People walking into your lounge you know but are dead / or miles away
10. Talking to people who aren't there.
Fortunately my medication stops at about number 6.
I have a small hard lump behind my ear and I'm terrified it's something awful like a brain tumor... Does anyone else have this or know what it could be?
View 4 RepliesWhy is it slowly killing me in so much pain. Yet I still want to drink it?
View 3 RepliesI love playing computer games and want to know that can games make you psychotic or something? Anyone know anything about it?
View 1 RepliesI've been on venlafaxine for about 2 years, taking a dose of 150 mg per day. I used to take the generic pills which are cheaper. To be honest I didn't even know there was an 'original' one, named Effexor, until last friday.
When I changed town I continued the treatment with another doctor, and he suggested i came off the drug. I thought I'd try, and for the first month I reduced from 150mg to 75mg. Nothing wrong there. Then I took another step and reduced from 75 to 37,5mg and in the fourth day I collapsed.
I had this breakdown, feeling all kind of weird symptoms: dizziness, dry mouth, excess sleepiness, confusion, mental oblivions (memory lapses), total apathy, total loss of libido.
I got really scared and tried to go back on my own since I was off town and couldn't talk to the doctor.
I took for 3 days the 150 mg pills but that didn't help. I consulted another doctor and he suggested to take a 107,5 mg dose (75+37,5) for 20 days and then restore the original 150 mg dose afterwards.
It's been 6 days since I started taking this dose and I still feel awful! I feel like I'm not the same anymore!!! It's the strangest thing ever. I had to ask for a job-absent license cause I can't work in these conditions.
One other thing is that a moved from the generic pills to the Effexor (from Pfizer - Wyeth) - the doc suggested that - and I don't know if that is making things worse...
I feel really awkward, useless, like my brain is in slow motion. I've been thinking about going' cold turkey since taking back venlafaxine did not help.
Has anyone ever had problems with lithium and restless leg syndrome? I can't keep them still. I have been back on lithium about 2 months
View 1 RepliesI have complex PTSD and Bipolar Disorder 1. I was diagnosed in September 2013 during a manic attack and started medication regime: Lithium (225+450) and 300 mg Seroquel. Now, 2 years + later, my Thyroid is underactive due to Lithium and my Psychiatrist wants to change Lithium to something else.
My challenge: I start a new job next week (after being unemployed for 7 months and really need this job!) and a few weeks ago I went low on my Lithium (skipped a few morning doses and ended up in mixed episodes and had a spider-related psychosis!)
I am really anxious about one day changing my Lithium. I was wondering how long can I be on it before it will damage my kidneys like it is affecting my thyroid now?