Half-life is the time required for half the quantity of a drug or other substance deposited in a living organism to be metabolized or eliminated by normal biological processes. Also called biological half-life.


_________________


Acronyms and Often Used Forum Phrases
Respironics? M-Series Auto w/ HH & C-Flex; Flexfit? Hybrid? Mask, Encore Pro 1.8i

Oh, my goodness!

Though Science and Biology were my best subjects in school, I am so lost!!

So, is it better to take meds that have a short half-life or a long half-life? What are the consequences of both?

My head is spinning!  ;-)


_________________
SnickersPie

If your meds have a longer half-life, they will affect you longer... so you don't have to take them as often.


_________________


Acronyms and Often Used Forum Phrases
Respironics? M-Series Auto w/ HH & C-Flex; Flexfit? Hybrid? Mask, Encore Pro 1.8i

Vicki wrote:

Clarifications

1.  If you mean stimulant, as in the amphetamine class of drugs, Provigil is not an amphetamine.  My daughter has ADHD along with some other disorders which contraindicates the use of the usual amphetamine class of ADHD drugs.  So she takes Provigil.  You can pull up the mechanisms of action at the Provigil website, but all I cared about in regards to my daughter was that it isn't an amphetamine.  I don’t know how it would affect someone with anxiety disorders (like me).

I had read in news articles that Provigil is not a stimulant, but my doc insisted it does indeed have stimulant properties. So (as you might guess), I did some reading. While it is not an amphetamine, Provigil is classified as a psychostimulant drug (Ritalin is another example of a non-amphetamine CNS stimulant drug). Its mechanism of action is not fully understood. It should not be used in patients with cardiac disease since it can cause cardiac side effects. Its safety has not been ascertained in children under 16 years old. Doses greater than 800 mg have been reported to cause racing heart.

Just 200 mg made my heart race, prompted increased sweating in my armpits, and made my hands shaky. I am not typically ultra-sensitive to medications or chemicals, but perhaps I am in this case.

Drugs certainly affect people differently.


_________________


Acronyms and Often Used Forum Phrases
Respironics? M-Series Auto w/ HH & C-Flex; Flexfit? Hybrid? Mask, Encore Pro 1.8i

Thanks sunshine and hhopper. I appreciate your input.


_________________
SnickersPie

Half-life = What most people with sleep disorders have.
Drug half-life, as previously noted = elimination time for 1/2 of detectable metabolites. My choice of phrasing is meant to signal a whole bag of worms waiting to be opened on the subjects finer points.
These drug discussions on this (and other forums) are consistent signs that the practice of psychopharmacology is indistinguishable from late night fix whatever ails you nostrums (so called supplements or naturopathic medicine.
Proceed with caution, eh.
short half life with fun drugs, yes - the kind that make you feel good (that's why you take them, right), generally means they're going to be more addictive.
longer 1/2 life (like modafinal/provigil and caffeine and LSD) means it's going to be with you for quite a while so
once you pop that pill, baby, you're in it for the long haul.
but my doc insisted it does indeed have stimulant properties.
A large part of the motivation for the development of provigil was/is to replace the amphetamines regularly taken by B-52 (and other) pilots. The flyboys sometimes get a bit judgmentally challenged whilst munching the speedos and this is considered not a good thing what with the nuclear bombs and other entertaining weapons. Unfortunately, provigil is not a fun drug and so doesn't seem to work all that well. Provigil was always intended as a stim. It is NOT a dopamine agonist which is why it has less "abuse potential", i.e. doesn't act as a euphoric (ALL the popular drugs of entertainment, recreation and abuse are dopaminergic powerhouses). Provigil instead acts (supposedly) upon the lower reaches of the brain stem and the fundamental neurochemical bases of attention and vigilance. This can be a very useful characteristic and if anyone is interested I'd be happy to suggest some interesting combos for enhanced intellectual performance. Sorry - not exactly a high.
However, if there are any women out there with an interest in scoring high on college or post-grad MATH exams or projects there's a neat trick with provigil and testosterone that's pretty potent. Guys can get the same effect with a bit more provigil and about 1/2 hour of serious weight lifting or intense use of the resistance machines in the gym. (remember this is mathematics we're talking about here). There are other combos for English majors. Alas, there is absolutely NOTHING that can help accountants. This is a true fact.
Here I repeat my base level sleep disorders rant - read it and weep.
1. If you're not living right it's all a waste of time or, alternatively, your own particular form of weird self-abusive entertainment. No problem there - that's what most everybody does anyway.
2. If you are living right - as in proper diet, no smoking, no drinking (really, NONE, ok almost NONE), no caffeine (that really is NONE), no sodas - especially no diet sodas, and plenty of vigorous exercise -
 if you are doing all of that (be honest what are the odds of this?) then you start with mechanical (cpap), surgical, and chemical treatments .. and if you continue to LIVE RIGHT you may have a shot (slim) at an improved quality of life.
3. If you are living right and still have a sleep disorder, your problems have at least two components - and since this IS a cpap forum one of them is that bit about continued breathing. (sleep apnea runs in my family - and at least five of us have died dramatically in the night as a result). So:
a) CPAP keeps the old O2 coming in and out
b) surgery UVPPPPP (or whatever) might fix things - I have written a short horror story about the smell of burning flesh and the intricacies of deciding just how much anesthetic it takes to face down a CO2 laser.
   just be advised that it works sometimes (did for me) and then the body reconstructs itself and maybe it doesn't work anymore (did for me).
c) problem 2 is that for most of us, with or without the cpap, the roots of the sleep disorder usually mean that the sleep architecture is, how to say this tactfully, the sleep architecture is FUDIDO (that's the portuguese version of our F word - past participle, of course).  That means that the various hormonal pulsatile rhythm are all screwed up.
This is always bad. HGH pulses are disrupted, thyroids go awry, testosterone goes down (or completely away), insulin gets funny ideas of its own --- basically the endocrine orchestra goes out to lunch. This is really bad and right now very few people understand a) that there is a problem or b) how to deal with such incredible complexity of hormonal interactions.  Accordingly most Disordered Sleepers have endocrine systems that are simply effed no matter what language you use. Not good.
Tossing chemicals (especially the doctors favorite psychotropics) into this mix is simply a psychopharmacological dice roll (the text-nazis x-ed it out when I wrote cra(p) shoot ) (or Russian roulette, if you prefer, but the odds are much much worse --- sort of like playing RR with an automatic instead of a revolver, eh).
What to do, what to do.
Well - you have to Live Right. Sorry, it just works that way. The diet may help with weight loss but more importanly (especially if you seriously restrict calories) the proper diet (you won't like it) stimulates Human Growth Hormone (hgh). This is good. Surprise, surprise - so does vigorous exercise. Vigorous means you go to the gym, weigh yourself and then try to do all the exercise machines using your body weight as the target. Chinning yourself means you can pull (and probably press) your own body weight. Leg machines, especially the leg press machine, can REALLY stimulate HGH production big time because they work those huge muscles - gluteus maximus, quads, etc. This really gets the hormones pumping IF you use lots of weight - that means several times your body weight.
(Note: anybody who can jump off the ground has just proven they can do 2x their body weight). It's really much easier than you think.
If you live right, do all of this unpleasant stuff, and have a great deal of luck, your body will respond with a nice sleep rhythm and you'll get plenty of Slow Wave (delta, stage III & IV, nRem, or DEEP SLEEP). You NEED lots of this. (FYI - I get absolutely ZERO deep sleep even with CPAP- which explains a lot or at least I got ZERO before learning the next set of wonderful tricks).
Get a copy of your sleep report and learn to read the sleep architecture. The report does include the absolute and relative amounts or rem and nrem sleep you get. Check the stage III and IV values. Don't let anybody tell you that low numbers (zero is a LOW number) are normal. NOT.
Several years ago I discovered the wonders of GHB (look it up). I bought a gallon of butyrolactone, some interesting hydroxides and set to work cooking up the wonder drug in my kitchen. It is SO easy. XyRem is sodium oxybate or sodium hydroxybutyrate if you prefer. It's cool but there's a whole body of, get this, research literature in Russian which indicates that Lithium Hydroybutyrate is way, way better. Having done both I can assure you that the LiGHB really is way, way better. And safer. And better.
The big deal with GHB, no matter what flavor, is that it is the absolute best stimulator of HGH. Nothing else even comes close. GHB will send you into Stage III and IV sleep so fast and so deep your body will just love you for it. How do I know this? Well, there's plenty of research literature on it - just pop over to pubmed.com and start searching. More directly I know this because just before one scheduled sleep study I prepared a dose and during the second half of the study I took it. Of the 8 polysomnographs I've had that one was the only one that showed any slow wave sleep (SWS) - and a lot of it. So I know. and GHB or XyRem are far and away the best drugs for sleepy heads.
[Those of you lucky enough to have a health plan or trust fund good enough to pay for your XyRem ($561/month  - and I used to make it for $25/year) can easily convert the sodium oxybate (NaGHB) into the lithium variant by simply adding some LiCL (lithium chloride) to the solution. -- use very little LiCL -- I'll post the actual amts if anyone is interested. LiCL can be obtained from almost any scientific chemical supplier - it is not a proscribed chem).
Now where were we ...
Oh yeah --- you're living right, doing mechanical things correctly (CPAP), you've either declined the surgery or it doesn't work (anymore), and you're doing or taking things to promote deep sleep and HGH stimulation. So, now you're just fine, right?
Most likely you're just fooling yourself and no way have you done all of this and most likely you're NOT LIVING RIGHT.
It's so sad but so simple really -- and don't think I don't beat myself up about this - I go off and binge on chocolate chip cookies and blam LIVING RIGHT is straight out the window. I am just soooo stupid at times. And if I keep on being soooo stuuuupid, all the other stuff cannot, will not work -- so I keep coming back to this puritanical, no - natural, way of being and when I do I always start feeling better right away. I mention this because today was just sooooo baaaaad.
Anyway - back on track again.  
-- you didn't think all of this rambling was by accident did you? yes you did. but think about it. we're talking chemicals now --- what chems make people run off at the mouth (or fingers in this case), eh?
yeah, you've got it.
But I'm going to save that prescription for another time. There are still some easy things and alternative left to write about.
Quickly now - get this -
1. NAPS work. Twenty minutes works. Especially if you stay seated upright and know how to do some transcendental meditation tricks to get into an alpha state. Don't know what that is? This is why God made the internet, check it out. Naps really work.
2. Can't get XyRem? Don't feel like risking a federal felony offense for cooking it up in your kitchen? Can't believe that anybody would be dumb enough to make their own medications? (get a grip) -- OK, there are alternatives, here goes --- all these puppies are recommended for 1 reason and 1 reason alone - they increase SWS
a) gabapentin (neurontin) - 600-1200mgs before bed
b) trazodone - whatever it takes 50-400mg
--  ummm, there may be a few more but for now these two are the power players - I just found a few new chems in the esoteric research lit so I'll post something on them soon enough - but not a problem -- gabapentin and traz are both generic (cheap), safe, and they do the job very very well.
c) did I mention that high exertion exercise does this stunt? and living right?  yeah, they work.
and if you really and truly do ALL of this stuff. if you really are Living Right and you've done All The Right Things and you still feel like a hangover that just goes on and on and you haven't even had the fun of getting drunk - if all of that is true, and, oh yeah, you have to eat spinach, and you're really a decent person with a job, people you love, and a tendency to make the world a better place, if all that's true then it's time to cut yourself some slack -
se necessita una poca de gracia
and go for the euphorics. Forget the anti-depressants, the xanax, the paxil, and all that other suppressive anti-depressant garbage (yeah, I mean it) - ju]st read the side-effects list and believe that you're reading the short version of the hazards. This is why living right is so important. If you've got the commitment and discipline to do all that Living Right stuff and keep doing it in the face of setbacks and failure - in other words, if you've proven to yourself that you, and you alone, are in charge of your body, your actions, your life - then you can be trusted with anything: sex, drugs, rock & roll, large caliber guns and ammo --- but mostly, right now, drugs.
Authoritarians like to make laws and tell other people what to do because they don't respect them - the other people. (I've met many authoritarians but I've never met one who didn't abuse something, who didn't violate a serious trust somewhere in his/her life)  But, living right, you deserve respect, you have respect, you are powerful - and you trust yourself. So if you want to feel better go get yourself some respectable, reliable, powerful, EUPHORICS. Deal with the safety issues the same way you deal with Living Right. Play the dopamine card. And, oh yeah, do not ever relent on the Living Right stuff, eh.
If you don't receive my meaning by this point - go back an re-read until you do. The easiest way to find out what really works is to find out what's either banned or highly taxed. Got it yet?  More on this only after you can prove you're Living Right. Ask and you shall receive. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. Bye. Luvya. Luke.

_________________


Acronyms and Often Used Forum Phrases
Respironics? M-Series Auto w/ HH & C-Flex; Flexfit? Hybrid? Mask, Encore Pro 1.8i

Ditto'ing hhopper, WOW!

You're like an encyclopedia!!  It'll take me a few reads to absorb this information. ;-)


_________________
SnickersPie

Okay, don't get mad at me because this has nothing to do with the topic but I have to ask...

hhopper... where do you get all those really cool emoticons!?  You have the BEST ones!!!

Oggie


_________________
I always tell my kids....
Just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Oggie,

Just right-click on them and select properties and you can see the URL of their location.  I found most of them on PhotoBucket.


_________________


Acronyms and Often Used Forum Phrases
Respironics? M-Series Auto w/ HH & C-Flex; Flexfit? Hybrid? Mask, Encore Pro 1.8i