Replies

Elavil is terrific for chronic pain and transforms restless, shallow sleep that never goes into the REM stage into deeper, restful sleep that does. Most of the body's healing and long-term memory are done during REM sleep. People with multiple myalgias often do not get that good sleep, and so their perception of pain is markedly worse than normal.

Once you have adjusted to Elavil, it is a great pain management tool. It also helps to even out mood. Chronic pain makes a person irritable or depressed, or both. It is very rare to meet a truly cheerful person who suffers chronic pain. They're out there, but for the most part any cheerfulness is a front or a sign of deep religious faith.

That said, I won't take Elavil anymore. I'm convinced by my chemical research that this drug damaged my retinas and caused my heart rhythm abnormality. We are complex bags of biochemistry. The law of unintended consequences definitely applies to medications. I think we should all medicate as if we are pregnant--take only what we absolutely cannot live without, because we are at risk of damaging ourselves in the long or short term from the interactions of everything we ingest.

I don't want to make the drug companies responsible for the damage the drugs caused me in combination for other drugs. I think we do need to be much better informed, as consumers, before we ingest. So the drug companies do have an obligation to make the information about their studies available to laypersons, AND they need to do more testing. To do more testing, the very stringent rules about how studies need to be done should be relaxed. RIght now the FDA makes it far too expensive to do studies on safety and effectiveness, especially on combinations of popular drugs.

If you're a man taking Viagra and Elavil, two very popular drugs, for instance, you should be able to find out what the combination might be doing to your body. Right now the studies on interactions just haven't been done because they are so expensive to do, not even for the permutations of the very biggest selling drugs.

The interactions of chemistry in our bodies are too complex to study in necessary detail, of course. That's as true for sucrose and trans-fatty acids as it is for oxycontin, of course--there's a risk to everything we do, and the risks multiply in combination! The trick is to minimize the risk and maximize the benefits. Most of us are not prepared to assess these factors ourselves, and rely on doctors and pharmacists who don't remember a bit of their college chemistry!

Elavil is a tri-cyclic antidepressant like Triavil etc is it not?

That would not entail analgesic properties on it's on. You are saying it has synergistic effects when combined with narcotics much like many docs prescribe promethiazine(phenergan) as an anti-emetic and kicker when prescribing percocet or lortab etc. Mepergan which is primarily Demerol also has promethiazine added from the getgo and is a fav of oral surgeons.

I have known folks to take Elavil as strictly psychological treatment a lot....usually if something like Wellbutrin is ineffective. I guess the serotonin reuptake inhibitors have hurt the tri-cyclic market a bit.

The tri-cyclics are associated with arrythmias.

What do you have?

I was born with right bundle branch block (a common anomaly) and have occasional bouts of extra atrial and even rarely some flutter. I have beta blockers around but loathe taking anything but the mildest of doses. It's been a bit more active than usual lately and I'm off to see my cardiologist Monday. I hope one day ablation therapy can really be fine tuned for folks like me.

I had an EPS about 15 years ago and they told me to just chill out and live with it unless it was bad enough to make me dizzy or faint...which it isn't thankfully....(knocking on wood and making the sign of the cross)

Oh yeah...aspirin is a must for arrythmias since they are a leading cause of increased TIAs or srokes due to the Venturi swirling action it causes in the carotid. I take one every day.