It was blod tests today for me, and now after taking my morning dose of lithium, I’m back to a lethargic couch potato. So I thought I’d write a bit about lithium’s side effects and give a face to what they are actually like, rather than scribbled down on a sheet of paper.
On the mild/minor side effect list are tremor , blurred vision, dry mouth, fatigue, cardiac arrhythmias, polyuria and muscle weakness are additional common lithium side effects. In terms of hunger and the like, lithium side effects include anorexia, diarrhea, vomiting, and nausea.
I have the tremor, dry mouth, fatigue, muscle weakness, diarrhea (sorry, TMI), and am slowly developing anorexia.
What is meant by a tremor is simply that with no load on your muscles, your hands shake. With a great deal of relaxation and concentration, the tremor can subside. But if there is a load on the muscles, then they begin shaking rapidly. It’s a lot like having too much coffee. Your hands are just not as responsive or accurate as they shake all the time.
Dry mouth, doesn’t sound horrible, but it’s actually fairly grating on the nerves. It’s like having cotton balls in your cheeks all the time. No matter how much you drink, it still feels like a desert in your mouth.
But, by far the worst that I’ve noticed are fatigue and muscle weakness. Walking 60 minutes today (which is not that bad usually) I found my legs trembling as I got home. Stairs are also difficult. I have to stabilize myself in order to get down them properly, otherwise my legs will shake too much. The fatigue is also a killer. About 1.5 hours after taking my pills and I need to close my eyes. And no amount of coffee helps with this. It’s also a different fatigue than other pills. When abilify first started off, it knocked me out cold. It was just bare sleeping and unable to move. But lithium is not like the antipsychotic type of fatigue, it’s closer to klonopin. I start feeling really warm and calm and just want to get comfortable so I can doze off for a few minutes. But it’s also different from klonopin in that I don’t feel drugged, I just feel sleepy.
Lithium is also making me more hazy. I just feel slowed down. But I might also be ADD and this is impacting it in some way. It’s also a definite side effect of fatigue. If you’re tired then no matter what you’ll feel cognitively slower and not want to do cognitively heavy loads.
One thing that lithium does not do is cause memory loss, it is a myth. A quick pubmed search revealed an older study, but a good one. It is a 6 year longitudinal study that followed 18 people, all on lithium for quite some time. The result was that only 1 out of 10 tests showed any decrease. It was a statistically significant drop, but one corrected for by age. After all, over time BP grinds one’s mind down. Additionally, subjects who complained of cognitive impairment, often exhibited mild depression. So in short, lithium doesn’t cause memory loss like it usually is thought to. It is a myth.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3379146
It was blod tests today for me, and now after taking my morning dose of lithium, I’m back to a lethargic couch potato. So I thought I’d write a bit about lithium’s side effects and give a face to what they are actually like, rather than scribbled down on a sheet of paper.
On the mild/minor side effect list are tremor , blurred vision, dry mouth, fatigue, cardiac arrhythmias, polyuria and muscle weakness are additional common lithium side effects. In terms of hunger and the like, lithium side effects include anorexia, diarrhea, vomiting, and nausea.
I have the tremor, dry mouth, fatigue, muscle weakness, diarrhea (sorry, TMI), and am slowly developing anorexia.
What is meant by a tremor is simply that with no load on your muscles, your hands shake. With a great deal of relaxation and concentration, the tremor can subside. But if there is a load on the muscles, then they begin shaking rapidly. It’s a lot like having too much coffee. Your hands are just not as responsive or accurate as they shake all the time.
Dry mouth, doesn’t sound horrible, but it’s actually fairly grating on the nerves. It’s like having cotton balls in your cheeks all the time. No matter how much you drink, it still feels like a desert in your mouth.
But, by far the worst that I’ve noticed are fatigue and muscle weakness. Walking 60 minutes today (which is not that bad usually) I found my legs trembling as I got home. Stairs are also difficult. I have to stabilize myself in order to get down them properly, otherwise my legs will shake too much. The fatigue is also a killer. About 1.5 hours after taking my pills and I need to close my eyes. And no amount of coffee helps with this. It’s also a different fatigue than other pills. When abilify first started off, it knocked me out cold. It was just bare sleeping and unable to move. But lithium is not like the antipsychotic type of fatigue, it’s closer to klonopin. I start feeling really warm and calm and just want to get comfortable so I can doze off for a few minutes. But it’s also different from klonopin in that I don’t feel drugged, I just feel sleepy.
Lithium is also making me more hazy. I just feel slowed down. But I might also be ADD and this is impacting it in some way. It’s also a definite side effect of fatigue. If you’re tired then no matter what you’ll feel cognitively slower and not want to do cognitively heavy loads.
One thing that lithium does not do is cause memory loss, it is a myth. A quick pubmed search revealed an older study, but a good one. It is a 6 year longitudinal study that followed 18 people, all on lithium for quite some time. The result was that only 1 out of 10 tests showed any decrease. It was a statistically significant drop, but one corrected for by age. After all, over time BP grinds one’s mind down. Additionally, subjects who complained of cognitive impairment, often exhibited mild depression. So in short, lithium doesn’t cause memory loss like it usually is thought to. It is a myth.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3379146