Myofascial Pain Syndrome Support Group
Myofascial Pain Syndrome (or MPS) is a term used to describe one of the conditions characterized by chronic pain. It is associated with and caused by "trigger points" (TrPs), sensitive and painful areas between the muscle and fascia. The symptoms can range from referred pain through myofascial trigger points to specific pains in other areas of the body. It may be related...
I am going to research Tolperisone. It sounds like a good choice.
its sedating .. that's good for sleep.
I read it can cause dependence , coming off cyclobenzaprine we should be cautious.
But a wonderful drug
Tolperisone is equally potent acts on the RAS is the brainstem
its totally non sedating , so no issues on work which need alertness.
As potent as Cyclobenz
About the cyclobenzaprine: I forgot to take mine last night and I slept just as well as ever, so their does not seem to be a withdrawal issue for me. I did feel a little more pain, though, so will try not to forget tonight.
The tolperisone sounds like it is good for muscles spasms, and I don't have as much of a problem with that.
Estranged78 - your med regime is interesting as you seem to be taking more muscle relaxant than pain medications, but as long as it works it doesn't really matter, does it?
I take Baclofen 100mg as a muscle relaxant with
Nortryptaline 100mg and
Dihydrocodeine 240mg for pain.
I split the doses to 4 times a day (they're all at max dose, sigh) and
also take Diazepam 2-4mg a day (2mg daily for pain and anxiety; and extra for breakthrough pain and anxiety attacks, it can go up to 14mg if I'm having one of my 'headaches from hell' when I'd happily put my head in the fire if it would ease the pain) plus
Loratidine 10-20mg an antihistamine so I can breath from hay fever / mold fever / many other fevers!
I'm right up to the max of everything at this 'moderate' level and there's many a time I feel slightly under medicated unless I take extra diazepam (and zone out somewhere into outer space) but my consultant pain management chap said I'd be better off staying put with this regime rather than spetting into the next bracket of 'severe' where I would be taking less overall but of a more toxic pill with more problems long term! It's going to be pretty grim stopping what I'm taking already without adding something even worse.
Lastly I also take digestive enzymes and acidophilus to help keep my stomach calm as well as some mind pills in the evening.
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There's a couple of things I want to bring out after read everyone's posts:
Breakthrough pain - we all have our 'regular' medication that we take for the pain on 'standard' days. Pain fluctuates hugely and at a certain peak when it's really not nice I reach for something, anything, to help with this 'breaking through the normal level' of pain. I'll also do other things, like lots and lots of heat. Does anyone else have extra pills / coping techniques for these times?
Antihistamines - Somewhere in the 'Healing through trigger points' book by Starlanyl and Sharkey there is the recommendation to take a regular antihistamine because so much histamine is generated in the chemistry of the trigger point (i.e. I can't remember the exact sequence of events, just that lots of histamine is released with trigger points). I have no idea how much of an impact the antihistamines have, and I'm not especially willing to stop them to find out, but I did think 'that's interesting' as I was reading it.