Hi,

I have a white lab report (a small one) that is perhaps significant or not. I'm hoping some of our biochemical experts here might shed some light on this.

The other night was awful for me. The one thing I find worse than being "off" is being suspended in limbo or in that stage where meds are so close to working but are not quite getting there; this was the case for me this past Tuesday. I have been under an enormous amount of stress lately and find this happening with my last dose. In most cases, I can take a bit of DXM maybe a teaspoonful and my anxiety melts away and meds kick in. I can then relax, knit, read, whatever, before bed.

Since meds seemed a no go for the night, I opted to turn in but was too anxious to get to sleep. I remembered that half a 25 mg of benadryl seemed to do the trick for relaxation and a nudge to sleepy land. I took just that and felt the anxiety slip away but better, my meds kicked on! I knit for a spell and decided not to tempt fate and nodded off. I tried this again the next night with the same result! So, I wonder if there is something to this?

In Wikipedia (hardly the most authoritative source, but I needed easy to digest info) and other more reliable sites, I found that diphenhydramine is...

-an inhibitor of CYP2D6, the enzyme which controls how fast or slow we metabolize DXM, so does this mean it acts as a reuptake inhibitor with our NMDA receptors or what exactly?

- considered an anticholinergic, that it may play a role in controlling excitotoxicity and is like DXM, an NMDA antagonist.

- acts as a Sodium Channel blocker thus helping control excess Glutamate which is a factor in our particular type of neurotoxic cascade.

This is not much to go on and I'm not sure there is anything of substance that they might work in concert together to protect against any further excitotoxicity, but they do definitely seem to complement one another in treating my symptoms.

Any thoughts or further research we can add?

Thanks,

Laura