Hi,
I have been taking nortriptyline since 2 1/2 weeks. I started with 10 mg and now on 30 Mg. I find pain has gone down about 25-30%. How much mg i can go upto. My doctor says to go upto only 50 mg , if that doesn’t help then she will change medication. But i read hear people are taking even 100 mg. Please let me know if you are aware what is safe mg i can go upto.
i feel like if i go upto 60-70 then i can be pain free. Thanks in advance
Hi, Swayam
That’s really a question for your doctor or your pharmacist. We don’t give that kind of medical information here.
Seenie
Your dose is up to your doctor, my advice after being an ATN patent for 2 years is this, if you feel your doctor wont listen to you, and/or doesn’t have a good understanding of the disease, find a new doctor.
I was taken up to 100mg a day on Nortrip. but I was “foggy” it was hard to think and focus, I didn’t feel safe driving, I would forcefully fall asleep anytime I sat still for 2 minutes, and I forgot things all the time. So I dropped back down to 50mg. At 100, I was just about pain free, but it didn’t feel like living, I didn’t feel like me. At 50 I have mild pain constantly again, but my brain works better again and I can stay awake all day. it is a balancing act between bad, and really bad choices. Again, this is not medical advice, just my personal experience.
Hi swayam,
Like Seenie said you need to talk to your DR about increasing your dosage and what would be safe for you.
I was on Nortriptyline for over a year. I was up and down on it a few times anywhere between 25mgs to 75mgs. It was an easy med for me at lower doses, as far as side effects were concerned. Unfortunately it wasn’t very effective for my pain. I did find that once I was up to 60 or 70mgs it made me very jumpy, anxious and irritated.
I am back on Amitriptyline. Just a low dose as I can’t handle it at higher doses. It helps me a lot with sleep and I do feel that it helps with pain. Some people have a harder time with the side effects of it though.
If your current dosage is offering some relief then I would definitely talk to your DR about titrating it up and hopefully it will help more.
One word of advise is I always increase or decrease very, very slowly. These are old anti-depressants. They really take about two to three weeks to fully kick in and longer for your body to adjust.
Jane
Hi Swayam, I have what the neurologist calls trigeminal neuropathy. I think it is ATN because I get burning pain in my lower right tooth and I Have had it for 4 1/2 years. I have had it so bad that I would have gone to the emergency room but I knew there was nothing they could do for me. I was told by a facial pain doctor that I had TMJ. I told him that maybe I had TMJ but I thought I also had Trigeminal Nueralgia. He, along with several neurologists, said I didn’t have TN because I didn’t get the lightening strikes. I told them from what I read you could have just burning andthat would be ATN. Pretty frustrating when you know more than the doctors just by being on the TN website.
I have been on 3000mg per day of gabapentin, 30 mg per day of baclofen, .10 mg per day of clonazepam and still had pain. When the doctor added Nortiptyline starting at 10mg per day and working up to 100 mg per day is when I had almost no pain. The side effects of all these meds were a feeling of not thinking as clearly as I used to, having some trouble speaking some words that I knew I wanted to say but just couldn’t seem to speak and my family telling me I Was not acting like I usually did. I didn’t care about the side effects because so much of the pain was gone and that’s all I cared about. After a while I decided to try cutting back on the gabapentin and was able to reduce the dose to 900mg a day with the no increase in pain. I then weaned off the Nortripryline with a little increase in pain and was doing well for a while until I cut back very slightly on the baclofen. I started to have more pain and even though I increased to my regular dose of baclofen I still had the pain. I didn’t want to go back on the Nortriptyline because it had made me gain a lot of weight when I hit the 50mg dose. I decided to try to go on a small dose and am taking 20 mg a day. I have some days when there is almost no pain and some days there is more. If my pain goes back to the way it was before the Nortriptyline I will increase my dose as needed.
Everybody reacts differently to medication. Some people said they couldn’t tolerate even 300mg a day of gabapentin while I was on 3000mg per day. I just increased by 100mg at a time even though the doctors wanted me to increase faster. I knew my tolerance for medication and did it the way I knew would work for me. There is no answer to what med or dose you should take. You need to go by how you feel on the medication and always make sure you are fully aware of the side effects. I took a low dose of Trileptal and my sodium went too low, while other people took higher doses with no issues. I wish you luck with your mess and hope they ease your pain. If my reply comes out messed up it is because this is the first time I am writing on this site. Happy holidays to you and anyone reading this and wishing everyone a happy, pain free New Year.
Gizmo
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It should have said mess not mess LOL