I too will weigh in on my nortriptyline trial, and am happy to report that it seems to be having a big positive effect!
I’m almost 3 months into it, taking 50 mg, having started at 10 and worked up to 50 within 2-3 weeks, I think. That was probably too fast, as I felt some significant fatigue, but that side effect seems to have passed. Otherwise only maybe some dry mouth.
I think I’ll have to give it six months before I claim victory, because who knows whether some other, unrecognized factors have been in play since the beginning of November. But I have had 15 years of experience with my dizziness (or 32, depending on how you count), and I really think it’s the nori.
It wasn’t some dramatic effect like the Strattera (which in 2004 lifted me suddenly out of the worst of the fog, though not the underlying dizziness). But already in December I noticed that I WASN’T getting all dizzy, woozy, and lightheaded at work when moving around a lot, as I always did before.
And I haven’t gotten any more of those episodes (again usually at work, seemingly triggered by a lot of motion) where I’d feel REALLY lightheaded and spacy and somewhat nauseated, which I think were migraine episodes, lasting a couple of hours. I may have gotten a couple in the early weeks, but for sure this whole month of January I have been feeling very well.
It’s a little strange because it’s not like I NOTICED feeling better as I went about my work–it’s just that when I think about it, I realize that I have NOT been getting dizzy and woozy like I always used to. There just hasn’t been anything to notice–no straightening up after shelving on the lower shelves and feeling that oh so familiar yucky wooziness (and wishing I didn’t have this all the time).
The underlying motion sensitivity isn’t gone by any means–but it’s much less now. Maybe the nori has just reduced my brainstem’s sensitivity to motion. Whatever it’s done, I am very happy with it!
Thanks to everyone for all the advice and understanding and information I have gotten here. Even though my symptoms were never the train-wreck kind that so many of you have, I am so happy to feel I have finally done something to fundamentally improve my dizziness at its root.
Nancy