Posted by SLS on March 25, 2002, at 6:22:24
In reply to Re: ltp in the hippocampus, posted by OldSchool on March 24, 2002, at 22:22:34
Hi OldSchool.
How much lithium were you taking? Do you recall what your blood levels were?
> I tried lithium augmentation of Effexor once. The lithium was a total disaster, it brought me down sooooo much. A total mood dampener it was for me. I stayed on it for about eight weeks. Everybody around me said I was terrible on it. After I went off of it though, I found that the Effexor seemed to work better in subtle ways. Not as bad poop out as before. The lithium definitely did something, I dont know what.
I don't like the way I feel when I take lithium at dosages of 600mg/day and higher. It definitely flattens-out my affect, leaves me apathetic and unmotivated, and without creativity. Overall, I felt more depressed on it. I think my blood-level at 600mg was 0.45 ng/ml. For bipolar disorder, the therapeutic range is accepted to be somewhere between 0.8 and 1.2.Dr. Manji and others have investigated the neuroprotective and neurotrophic effects of lithium at low, subtherapeutic dosages. Even at these low dosages, lithium exerted marked positive effects. I am hoping that a dosage of 300mg - 450mg will help with these things.
When lithium is employed as an augmentor of antidepressants, dosages of between 300mg - 600mg are often optimal. I don't know what range of blood-levels this represents. I would guess something like 0.4 - 0.6.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:98310
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020322/msgs/100000.html