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Detoxing off one med and preparing for another


We have to try some fairly startling chemistry in order to find the right support for our weird and wacky systems. It’s not a joke — but it can be a circus.

Trapeze_artists_1890

Years of nursing — in home care, acute care, HIV care, emergency care, all sorts of things — and, of course, the independent study I wound up doing along the way — most of the time, having no health insurance of my own, because being full-time at one facility was intolerable so I spliced together several part-time jobs in order to keep my mind working — where was I?

Oh right — getting safely off of problematic medications, which I’ll call “detox” for short. We usually think of hard drugs or alcohol when we say that, but the underlying mechanisms and the affected structures are the same. Logically, it works.

I could bore you to tears about the metabolic work of detoxing, but I won’t. I’ll drop in a brain-dump I just did for someone who has had to come off of Lyrica, the most fashionable med for CRPS right now (look here for the background on its fame), and — like many! — has not been able to recover former thinking, memory, and personality. Hopefully, it will return in time. In the meantime, helping the body clear out the last of the med, thus reducing the background strain, could help.

One thought before proceeding … it’s old news now (at least from 2009, Çagla Eroglu et al.) that Lyrica kills new synapses. In other words, if you get that blank, stupid feeling when taking Lyrica or Neurontin, it’s not imaginary.

This class of meds actually works by slowing down the rate of “excitement”, or activity, across the synapse. It does so in a way that prevents further synapse formation. Normally, new synapses keep forming throughout life. Making use of that fact is the best way to battle age-related brain diseases as well as chronic pain.

 

There is a ton of dense “science-speak” surrounding the fact that the very thing that makes it work short-term or for occasional use, is the very thing that makes it problematic for chronic and long-term use. That’s a complex issue. The precise nature of this activity has only become apparent over time, and medical science hasn’t really figured out what to do about it yet. Meanwhile, buyer beware.

 

This is going to take a few more years to shake out. In the meantime, keep a diary of what works and what doesn’t, and how goofy you seem to be. Note where your meds change. Look for relationships. Talk to your pharmacist and your doctor. Keep them in the loop, even if you — or they — don’t always agree.

 

We and our care teams need to work together, and as the patients, the burden of managing that falls on us.

Don’t overthink that — if it’s working for you and you don’t notice the deficit, then think carefully before switching. It’s not that those who do well on it should change, it’s simply that such a med does not belong on the first line of treatment, but in the second or even third. Less synapse death is better, usually!

Sketch of brain, with bits falling off and popping out, and a bandaid over the worst

The point of putting gabapentin/pregabalin in the second or third line of treatment is that, if the other stuff doesn’t work, then those who need Lyrica will still get to it, after trying the meds that’re less likely to be problematic.

Anyway, here’s the brain-dump on detoxing from almost any med, with some special notes about this tricky class.

BTW, this works for narcotics too. In that case, be especially diligent about easing slowly onto the liver-cleansing stuff, because you don’t want to clear your opioid receptors too fast for your body to cope with. “Easy does it.”

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If you’re interested in suggestions, I sure do have some. I had to get off Neurontin, Effexor, and a few other heavy-duty nuisances, and I used to be a nurse and helped an awful lot of other people deal with this…

If you’re not interested, I understand, I don’t mind, and please just ignore the rest of this 🙂
[I left that in because it’s important to realize that not everyone on a support group wants advice — some just want to vent.]

Normally, going off of one major med is part of a larger task of re-adjusting the whole medication picture. There are 3 important elements to this process:

  1. Hydration
  2. Clearing out the old med
  3. Trying something different

Firstly, of course, lots of hydration (yes, the bathroom trips are work, but your blood, lymph, and skin do need the fluid to clear things out, and your brain and spine need more water to rest upon when they’re suffering.)

So, as you reach for your water, here is the rest of my riff on detoxing from meds.

Clearing out the old med:

The point is to clear the old stuff out of your system. This means supporting your body’s “housekeeping department” — liver, kidneys, blood, lymphatic system, skin.

circulation-allbody-Anna_Fischer-Dückelmann_1856–1917

SInce gabapentin dissolves itself readily in fat, it hangs out in your system. (Every cell wall and every bit of white matter in your body uses fat. It’s not optional.)

Organs matter

Your kidneys take the burden; your liver doesn’t seem to do much to it, as most of the drug is excreted unchnged. That doesn’t mean your liver doesn’t have to deal with it as it passes through, though. (Fat-soluble drug in a high-fat organ.)

These are both blood-rich organs, so that’s why the artichoke and dandelion (root in tea, or leaf in salad) can be useful — they support the liver’s detox work. Also, milk thistle seed (silymarin) is in the same category as artichoke. I’ve always used whole seed and ground it fresh, as thats cheap (except for being hard on the coffee-grinder) and works gerat with no side effects, but extracts and preparations are available too.

Any one of these (artichoke, dandelion root, dandelion leaf, milk thistle seed, silymarin) is fine. Whatever works for you.

Check with your pharmacist!

Check with your pharmacist before adding this stuff to your day. There are meds which these cleaner-uppers can interact with by cleaning up the liver. For instance, if you’re on chemo, save this for after you’ve finished the chemo and are rebuilding yourself.

A good pharmacist knows this, and can check scientifically-developed references for more info.

geometric shape of mortar and pestle with intertwined r x

Mopping up

The other aspect of clearing the med out of your system is supporting the “mopping-up” part of the housekeeping team — your blood and lymphatic systems. Green tea, echinacea (mix it with lemon & honey to make it tolerable), melon (fruit or juice), and citrus are all good for this. If you can find citric acid from fruit rather than corn, that can do a good job too. (There’s something odd about the corn-based citric acid — it tends to trigger indigestion and gastritis in the vulnerable much more than the fruit-based citric acid does.)

Any of these (green tea, echinacea, lemon, lime, melon, citric acid) are good, not only for helping get more water into you, but for helping your lymph and blood to “scrub between the cracks” and pull the rubbish out from your cells and clear it away.

photo of white tile floor, half clean and half dirty. Labeled "before" on the dirty part, "after" on the clean part
A dehydrated and grubby set of tiles, pretending to be cells, on the left; hydrated and happy cells on the right!

Lymphatic support: start gently

Start slowly and work up, because you don’t want too much backlog clearing out at once. If you start at a high dose of green tea or echniacea, you can wind up with swollen lymph nodes, because your body can detox faster than your lymph and blood can wash it away. Give it a chance and work up gradually to a therapeutic dose.

Start at one cup of green tea or echinacea a day, and work up to 3 times that. See how you do and let your body adjust for a few days or a week. Then go up to 4 times that original dose. Give this a month or six weeks (your call) and taper off again if you want to.

Drink up 🙂

For lemon or lime water, melon and melon juice, and of course seltzer, you can drink as much as you like, as long as the citrus is well-diluted and doesn’t give you any trouble.

glass of citrus juice with mouth of bent straw pointing right at viewer

Citric acid and lemon or lime are best used with plenty of water. Using an intense concentration can irritate the stomach. (These also help prevent kidney stones, btw.)

Just like the artichoke/dandelion/milk thistle seed — check echinacea and citric acid with your pharmacist before using them.

If it’s okay to use echinacea with your other meds, then remember to either go off it after 6-8 weeks total, or, if you find you need to stay on it to keep the channels flowing, then remember to take a week off every month. Your body needs a break in order to keep responding to it. Echincacea is not for ongoing use unless you’re being followed by a good herbalist who’s comfortable with your complexity. (If getting the Lyrica out of your system is the only thing you need it for, then one round like this should do.)

Or you could just…

As I look back over this incredible screed, the simplest thing might be to find a nice herbal “detox tea” and start with one a day, go up to 4 a day, and leave all these details to the nerds!

a grid view of detox teas available from vitacost dot com

I hope you can get clear of the Lyrica and find the right pharmaceutical/dietary/physical/mental support for you.

Shifting to a different med for neuro pain:

The mixed-SNRI class of new meds has had the best statistical results of anything so far tried, according to the first few years of studies. Mine saved my life (Savella) — it helped that I had a fibromyalgia diagnosis, and Savella was developed and tested on fibro, so insurance would cover it. It cuts my fibro pain by 90% but it also cuts the CRPS pain by almost as much.

All of the so-called “anti-depressant” classes have been found to be statistically useful in treating neuro pain. Why? Because what they really do is stabilize the messenger molecules.

The most profitable market for this is depression, but our central pain means that stabilizing the messenger molecules of neurogenic pain (regardless of emotional pain) means that we hurt less and function better.

Tricyclics (also good for sleep) and some SSRIs have had results that, statistically, are about as good as Lyrica. The real breakout med for long-term neuro stabilization for pain and dysautonomia is the new mixed-SNRI category, though.

There are also meds in other categories, such as bisphosphonates (again, take care of your liver and kidneys) and a class of heart meds called statins. Low-dose naltrexone and ketamine infusions are other options from the anesthesiology side. They usually require qualified specialty care to try, especially the ketamine.

If pain is localized (say, to a foot or a shoulder), then topical treatments can be terrific. Voltaren and Lidocaine patches are a great help to many. Compounding pharmacies can make up special concoctions tailored to your specific needs, containing any of the meds mentioned in the last few paragraphs.

I’ve used the word “statistically” a lot here. That’s because scientific method only tells us what the general trend for a group of people is. Statistics mean nothing in the case of the individual. What matters in the clinical setting — that is, what matters in the lives of individual patients — IS the individual. Therefore, the medical science is only a guideline, telling doctors what to start with and where to go from there.

We are all guinea pigs, because the subtle and comprehensive nature of the nervous system, and the way longstanding CRPS and other central pain diseases disrupt it, means that the only way we’ll know what works for us is to try things and see.

Your doc should take a deep breath, take a good look at your whole picture, and work with you to figure out what works for you.

Please be clear that THERE IS A WAY FORWARD. I’m certain of that. It’s just a question of finding the right way for you.

Best wishes and I hope you get a good solution soon!

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