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Experiencing Muscle Tension, Rapid Eye Movement, Palpitation And Shortness Of Breath After Having Lexapro For Anxiety. Reducing Dose Will Help?
Hi There, I am a 34 year old female who has been on Lexapro 20mg for the past 6 months for depression/anxiety. I had taken Lexapro a few years ago but the side effects dissappeared a month after treatment was commenced. I now 6 months later continue to have very bad episodes of excitability, extreme muscle tension especialy in my hands and arms that I have to keep moving them daily. I also have increased rapid eye movements and at times I feel I am going mad. I also can have episodes of confusion, palpitations and shortness of breath. Please can you tell me why theses side effects continue? Would it help to reduce the dose under Gp supervision? I have tried so many different types of antidepressants over the past two years but have had terrible side effects to them all as I have got older.
Tue, 7 Jan 2014
Greetings !
Well the symptoms that you are struggling with such as rapid eye movement, increased muscle tension/tremors, palpitation and shortness of breath are typical features of anxiety disorder and they are unlikely to be side effects of Lexapro. So this is suggestive of the fact that Lexapro is not being able to control your anxiety symptoms as it used to do earlier possibly due to your body's development of increased tolerance / resistance against this drug after prolonged use of the same.
So I suggest that you ask your doctor replace Lexapro with another anti depressant which you have not tried so far, some good alternatives that you can choose from are remeron ( mirtazapine) , Cymbalta ( duloxetine), Effexor xr ( venlafaxine), anafranil ( clomipramine).
I hope this helps.
Regards
Well the symptoms that you are struggling with such as rapid eye movement, increased muscle tension/tremors, palpitation and shortness of breath are typical features of anxiety disorder and they are unlikely to be side effects of Lexapro. So this is suggestive of the fact that Lexapro is not being able to control your anxiety symptoms as it used to do earlier possibly due to your body's development of increased tolerance / resistance against this drug after prolonged use of the same.
So I suggest that you ask your doctor replace Lexapro with another anti depressant which you have not tried so far, some good alternatives that you can choose from are remeron ( mirtazapine) , Cymbalta ( duloxetine), Effexor xr ( venlafaxine), anafranil ( clomipramine).
I hope this helps.
Regards
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