Strattera question

[meganbmoore]

Has anyone here ever been on strattera?  I know a few of you mentioned it to me, but I can't remember if you actually used it.

Today is my first day using it, and I've been feeling vaguely lightheaded since about half an hour after using it.  Not dizzy or anything, and it hasn't affected my balance or motor skills, just a vague fuzziness that's been coming and going.  It actually isn't unusual for me to be a bit lightheaded at times (and the doctor's office called earlier and said that the bloodwork showed that I'm slightly anemic, but that they needed to do more tests to see if I needed an iron supplement, so that could be the cause) so there's a high probability that it has nothing to do with the medication.  I was just wondering if anyone had ever heard of strattera causing lightheadedness before.

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Me! *waves*

I actually don't recall what I felt like the first few days, but I wouldn't be surprised, because now that it's in my bloodstream, forgetting to take it makes me vaguely dizzy and lightheaded - enough that I have a nagging feeling Something is Wrong. It took me a while to figure out that it was missing the Strattera that did it. :) That was at 120mg, though. I'm back down at 60 now.

At 120mg: sleep problems. I'd wake up a lot during the night and not be able to get back to sleep. The effect of the sleep deprivation was such that the Strattera was less effective. When I went back down to 60 - I decided to split the dose and take half at night and half in the morning, then consistently forgot in the morning - my sleep instantly got so much better I decided not to go back.

If I take it before I eat food, I get sick to my stomach. So I take it before going to bed. It also makes me very slightly sleepy right when I take it, so that's a good time for me. I also very occasionally, as in it's happened once or twice a year since I started the Strattera, wake bolt upright in the middle of the night and rush to throw up. I feel perfectly normal before that and after that. It's just weird. Never happened before the Strattera, and if it were happening once a week, I'd be concerned enough to do something about it, but once every six months is rare enough not to bother.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

They're starting me at 40 mg, 1 pill a day for 3 days, and then 2 a day after that. If I get lightheaded every day for a week half an hour after taking it, then I probably want to call and see if it's a problem then. I just wasn't sure if it was a common reaction.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You might want to see if it diminishes over time, too. And what I get as sleepiness you might get as lightheadedness. Hm.

(Off to a meetign!)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I was another one who mentioned the strattera, but it was in the context of a former cow orker taking it successfully, so I've got no helpful feedback on side effects, alas!

Slight anemia, OTOH, is something I do have a lot of recurring experience with. While you're waiting for them to do the tests, it certainly can't hurt to try to tweak your diet a little bit to include more iron-rich foods (http://www.mcgill.ca/studenthealth/information/nutritionalhealth/ironrich/), and if you're mostly consuming the non-heme vegetable iron sources rather than meat, you might also want to try to avoid eating large amounts of known iron-absorbtion inhibitors (http://www.healthcastle.com/iron.shtml) like the calcium/phosphorus in dairy, the tannins in coffee and tea, or high-fiber whole grain products, with the same meal. (This isn't an issue with the more readily-absorbed heme iron found in animal foods, although you can enhance absorption there by eating them alongside foods high in Vitamin C.) Taking a multivitamin with iron, or even simply cooking more of your meals in cast-iron pans, can also help keep your iron levels on a more even keel.

[annwyd.livejournal.com]

I took Strattera briefly when I was younger, but it didn't really have much effect on me, so I stopped...although I might start again sometime now that I'm older and more in the target age range.

I don't recall what the side effects were, but I often find when starting a new medication that there'll be minor but noticeable effects in the first week or so--tremors, drowsiness, that sort of thing.

Checking Rxlist (http://www.rxlist.com/strattera-drug.htm), I see that dizziness is not common as a Strattera side effect, but it is the sort of thing that can manifest as a symptom of a new medication in general. So. Most likely it's either related to the anemia, or it's your body getting adjusted to the new medication.

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I have not taken Strattera, but my experience with other psych drugs has been feeling various sorts of odd for the first week or so when my drug regimen has changed. And, going from nothing to something is definitely a change.

If the side-effects persist for a long time, though, you should definitely talk to the doctor about it!

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

I've been on that one and lots of other things, and yeah, pretty much any psychoactive drug can cause lightheadedness, especially if you aren't currently used to taking psychoactive drugs.