The seven most common side effects experienced by users of Escitalopram compared to placebo.
The doctor is in hi guys it’s your pal dr sal again and in today’s episode of dr secrets i’d invite you to join me as we look at the incredible topic of ciprolex which is also chemically known as escitalopram and if you listen to the name it may remind you of another mood disorder medication called celexa or cetalopram and they’re actually related the citalopram
Is actually a combination of two mirror image molecules but apparently only one of those mirror images is useful and the other is basically a dud so ciprolex basically does away with the the isomer that is not useful concentrating only the useful uh isomer so that makes it quite a bit more potent so the dosage for ciprolex is a lot lower than it is for celexa in
Ciprox it starts at 10 milligrams and goes up to 20 milligrams maximum whereas celexa you actually start at 20 milligrams and then move your way up there to 40. all right so now let’s look at the potential uses of citalopram sorry not citalopram ciprolex we’re concentrating this time on ciprolex i think i’ve done a previous video on the other one on the celexa
So ciprolex or it’s a teleprem has three mood disorders that it’s used for one is major depression the other is anxiety so generalized anxiety disorder and the other is ocd obsessive-compulsive disorders so that’s the trifecta that the ciprolex is used for so now we know what it’s good for now let’s look at some of the potential pitfalls and side effects so
There was two studies offered by the manufacturer one arm study people with depression and the other study people with anxiety disorders what was interesting to me as i reviewed the literature is the side effect profiles didn’t exactly match which seems a little strange because one would think if you’re taking the same medication it’s just for a different
Indication you should get this similar or same side effect profile but it turns out they rhymed a bit but not quite not quite exact not quite a fit so in this arm here i put the depressive population and this one the anxiety population generalize anxiety disorder get and major mood disorder mdd and for this study it was conducted for eight weeks and it was
At a dose between 10 to 20 milligrams which is standard um and in the user side it was 715 individuals on the placebo sugar arm it was 592 for the depressive study so the first most common side effect in depression users at 15 was nausea as opposed to 8.1 in placebo diarrhea came in next at 8.4 as opposed to 5.2 of people on placebo so to me that’s not really
A very strong connection insomnia difficulty sleeping was came in at 8.2 and 3.6 people three point roughly four people out of every hundred on a sugar pill also complain of having insomnia so go figure dry mouth uh that was 6.6 as opposed to 4.6 so again the true incidence pretty small about 2 dizziness was the next most commonly considered side effect
That was 6.3 and in individuals on placebo it was 3.6 percent next up was feeling tired that one can be a little confusing because when you’re depressed you tend to feel tired anyway you don’t have any motivation to do anything so that was caught in about five out of every hundred hundred people as opposed to roughly three out of every hundred on uh placebo so
Overall you can see it is fairly well tolerated now when we move now to the generalized anxiety arm of the study the most common side effect was not nausea in fact it was headache and that was in 23.7 percent of users and that was out of 832 users as opposed to 566 on placebo those on placebo also complain of headache in about one in every five 18.6 percent and
That might make sense because when you consider anxiety is a hyper stimulated state you’re more sensitive to everything it’s more difficult to cope with stressors it makes sense that those suffering with anxiety also tend to suffer with a lot of headaches so the true incidence being caused by the tablet itself to me would suggest is pretty low like on the order
Of maybe i don’t know three three to four percent now the next common thing was nausea which was also seen in the depressive arm but in this arm it was more frequent at 19.4 percent and for placebo uh nine percent insomnia was 10.1 percent as opposed to sugar pill 3.7 and honestly i would have figured the insomnia would have been worse in the individuals with
Anxiety as opposed to depression in fact very often people are very depressed will spend a lot of time sleeping basically sleep the worries away but that didn’t actually turn out to to pan out fatigue was nice most common uh 9.9 as opposed to 2.7 then diarrhea was 9.6 percent of people as opposed to 5.8 next in was dizziness and that was coated in 7.9 percent
Of patients on ciprox for anxiety as opposed to 5.6 of individuals just taking a sugar pill dry mouth was the next most common and that was in 7.3 percent of people as opposed to 4.6 now while it was not very common i’m just also going to list um erectile dysfunction because for males already suffering with anxiety or depression that can be a real deal breaker
But it’s not very common with ciprox as opposed to some of the older ssris so um in for the depressive group the rate of erectile dysfunction was 2.7 as opposed to none taking the sugar pill so that to me is a direct correlation so that’s for erectile dysfunction so about three in every hundred people a hundred males sorry um then for the anxiety arm the
Erectile dysfunction was coated in 1.9 percent of users as opposed to 0.4 on sugar pill so again it’s pretty well tolerated and i’ve actually had someone come back to me and say that this drug saved their life no no lie um so that ladies and gentlemen is potential side effects on the ciprolix very often a lot of them will subside especially the nausea if
You continue taking it um and as per usual if you’re if you’re struggling with it you can start with half a tablet for example five milligrams then as you tolerate it then take the full 10 milligrams so ladies and gentlemen that is ciprolex in a nutshell and potential pitfalls that you might come across and a solution how to get around them thanks so much for
Watching and we’ll talk again soon thanks for watching get notified of new videos subscribe now if you found this video helpful support us by sharing it with all of your friends and throw us a like below you’re a star cheers and cheerio
Transcribed from video
7 Most Common Side Effects of Cipralex Escitalopram aka Lexapro By DoctorSecrets
