Posted by djmmm on June 3, 2003, at 22:51:51
In reply to Topamax and word loss, posted by Flicka on June 3, 2003, at 20:57:56
> Hi, I hope someone might have some ideas or have been through this and have some advice,I am about ready to give up. I have been on Topamax for a little over a year and as far as my eating disorder(binge eating) goes I have never been better. My problem is that I still have trouble thinking of words and some memory loss. I have decreased my dosage from 100mg daily to 75mg and now to 50mg. I really don't want to stop taking this medicine as I feel it is the only thing that has ever worked. I also take 300mg of EffexorXr, 200mg Wellbutrin daily. If you have any ideas - I would appreciate it.
Your problems are not that uncommon, in the extreme, this is called dysnomic aphasia. I think that if you were to poll everyone here, most if not all would have some form of dysnomia. I had some problems with topamax, also, but I was on a much higher dose (200-400mg).
Unfortunately I haven't heard of any concrete explaination for this, typically severe dysnomias are the result of brain injury (epilepsy, toxic reaction to anti-seizure meds), and various neurological diseases/conditions (dementia, etc)
I think the minor word finding problems that many of us experience are just one of many various side-effects of the medications.
Typically, after the medication is stopped, word finding skills return to normal, which suggests that dysnomia is just part of the general dulling, or cognitive (memory) problems often associated with antidepressants and mood stabilizers.
If your med combo is working, don't give up... try researching ways (therapies, etc) people with dysnomia (or learning disabilities) cope with it. Im sure there is a lot of info out there, I found this site dealing with word loss (in connection with learning disabilities and children):
http://www.wordfinding.com/definition.html
also: http://www.word-finding.com/aboutbook.htm
poster:djmmm
thread:231196
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030530/msgs/231246.html