Posted by bleauberry on April 22, 2012, at 9:30:19
In reply to Need help with sleep -- thinking Remeron..., posted by stewie on April 19, 2012, at 12:46:19
I don't know if remeron will cause weight gain at a low dose. I think it depends on what you mean by a low dose. Most people think a low dose is the lowest available dose....15mg. I am fairly certain 15mg will impact weight.
Most people do not realize that remeron is even more sedative at lower doses. It gets stronger the lower it goes. It's kind of backwards from our usual thinking so it's hard to grasp. I was on remeron for over a year and I got to know that med really well because I experimented with it a lot. What I found was....
1. Sedation in the 1mg to 7.5mg range was much more pronounced than 15mg.
2. The norepinephrine side of remeron begins to kick in at about 7mg....below that is primarily sedative stuff.
If you try it....whatever dose....and it works for you....an option to help manage it going forward would be to avoid daily usage of it. Maybe look forward to a really good night of sleep every third night but not every night. Obviously that falls short of our ultimate desire, but hey it's a step forward and helps buy some time to experiment with other avenues, still get some sleep while doing it, and avoid the weight risks. In other words, at the very least, it could be a helpful tool in the journey but maybe not the ultimate tool and maybe not final one.
The fairly predictable outcome with remeron, no matter what you do with it, is that with chronic daily usage at any dose the sedation is going to fade away. That supports the every-other-day or every-third-day usage of it, to try to avoid losing the part of it we want.
Not sure of your stance on plant medicines but there are a handful of herbs any of which could be helpful. They include lemon balm, passionflower, skullcap, valerian, but usually a mix of 2 to 4 of them in a combo. None of these have the knockout sedative power of meds, but they do have a wide spectrum ability to simply relax everything and promote a good landscape for deep sleep to happen. And actually I shouldn't downplay their sedative power because if a healthy person were to take these, they would be zonking out in their recliner and never even making it to bed. Maybe a tiny crumb of remeron to knock you out and a few herbs to extend it through the night? Just one of many options but one that sounds favorable to me.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1015962
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120411/msgs/1016172.html