Greetings, I ran across your experience somewhat randomly, so I signed up to post some suggestions. I wasn't able to read all the posts here so sorry if I duplicate some other suggestions. It's good to see you're improving!
Be aware that in addition to helping with nerve pain, Gabapentin can of course have psychotropic effects which could be positive or negative. Note that while less potent, non-prescription GABA could in theory potentially help as well, although absent any compelling reason, you would be ill-advised to switch off something that's working. Note also that taking a supplementary GABA analog or Gabapentinoid drug could in theory cause the body to make less of its own GABA, so the efficacy of the drug could fluctuate accordingly over the course of a few weeks, as could psychotropic side effects. Increasing dosage might offset diminished efficacy, skipping a dose now or then might help encourage the body to make more of it's own GABA. The Half life of Gabapentin is about 6 hours. It is therefore flushed out of your system relatively quickly. I don't know about Gabapentin specifically, but I expect that it might also take effect very quickly. If it takes a week to notice improvement in pain, I would expect that maybe it took that long for the Gabapentin to help the muscle system to finally relax or to help a feedback loop within the system to resolve. If you went several weeks before noticing improvement, I would take that as an indication that the dosage is too low to be effective or that you simply are not responding to the Gabapentin. Given the short half life of Gabapentin, you can be completely off it within a day or two; completely stopping it would be something you could try to test to see if it is doing anything. Note that discontinuation of a GABA analog or Gabapentinoid drug can result in new psychotropic symptoms or exacerbation of existing symptoms such as anxiety, seizures, pain, etc., therefore consideration should be given to incremental discontinuation under the supervision of a physician. If you do go cold turkey, have some on hand in case you feel the need to go back on it. I am not a physician and these various suggestions apply to GABA analog and Gabapentinoid drugs in general; please refer to sources more experienced and qualified than myself for advice vis-a-vis Gabapentin and your specific case.
As for spending long hours in front of the computer, I recommend:
* A very high quality screen, with sufficient ambient room lighting. This will reduce muscle issues in the neck, as neck muscles are used in coordination with eye movement. A lower quality screen makes for more work for the eyes, and a bright screen in a dark room can be fatiguing as well.
* an adjustable height sit/stand desk
* A Swopper chair. A Swopper chair will be uncomfortable for at least a few weeks while your muscles adapt to it, but once you develop the appropriate muscle balance, you won't want to sit on anything else because sitting on it hurts less than sitting on a regular chair, for some people it doesn't hurt at all.
* Ensure that the relative strength of muscle groups is balanced; reference: The Happy Body Book.
The above recommendations are expensive to implement, but can potentially help obviate the need for much more expensive-to-treat medical problems which often result from sitting.
I hope this helps!
paul wheaton wrote:
Janet Branson wrote:
paul wheaton wrote: .
