Speaking of Gabapentin – I don’t know what’s going on with that drug. It’s brand name is Nuerontin and it’s actually an anti-seizure medication. It was discovered that it also works on certain kinds of nerve pain because of the way it alters how your brain works. It works the best on nerve pain cause by Shingles and seems to work fairly well on the somewhat vague “Fibromalygia” grouping of various chronic pain conditions.
It seems lately that doctors are throwing gabapentin at anything and everything. It used to be that you were prescribed 100mg 1x for two weeks, increasing by 100mg every two weeks until you found relief. Now it seems doctors are prescribing 300mg 3x a day immediately. Which, in my opinion, is overkill. First because it only works on certain kinds of pain anyway and second because it doesn’t work on all times of pain there’s no way to know what dose will work, if any. As an anti-seizure med it does alter the way the brain works so coming off it or changing doses can be an arduous process, you would think logic would dictate more caution in the use rather than throwing it at any and every type of pain.
Personally I take 100mg 2x day and I started taking it for lymph edema, the internal swelling was crushing nerves my my arm creating nerve pain. I wasn’t prescribed it for ATN, it just so happened to help with that along the way, which was a nice surprise. The silver lining in the rain cloud, so to speak.
I was taking 300mg, 100mg in the morning and 200mg at night. I when I tried 200mg 2x a day I was sleeping 18 hours a day so that was a no-go. I lowered the dose from 300mg a day to 200mg a day because I also take depakote for migraines, the gabapentin was making the depakote work better and I was getting involuntary finger twitching. I dropped the dose slightly and the twitching stopped but the pain control remained the same. It’s all about the levels of medication and constant minor adjustments!
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