{"id":6093,"date":"2014-06-16T06:21:34","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T10:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/?p=6093"},"modified":"2016-11-17T19:32:59","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T23:32:59","slug":"medication-for-pain-series-antipsychotics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/6093\/medication-for-pain-series-antipsychotics\/","title":{"rendered":"Medication for Pain Series:  <i>Antipsychotics<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>This article is\u00a0in a series on <strong>Medications for Pain.\u00a0<\/strong>What are your choices?\u00a0 How do various medications work? What are the pros and cons? How about side effects?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Antipsychotics <\/em><\/strong>are medications originally\u00a0used\u00a0for psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, where a person&#8217;s thinking becomes disorganized or delusional.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"bottles of zyprexa\" src=\"http:\/\/wayoffside.files.wordpress.com\/2007\/10\/zyprexa1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"283\" height=\"183\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Like many medication classes, antipsychotics aren&#8217;t FDA-approved for any pain disorders. There are only a\u00a0few\u00a0case reports of a single patient&#8217;s experience.\u00a0So antipsychotics are not primary medications for pain.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Effect of Antipsychotics:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe only antipsychotic for which I could find any report of its use in pain is Zyprexa. Antipsychotics\u00a0such as Zyprexa\u00a0effect\u00a0many neurotransmitter systems, including dopamine and serotonin, so it&#8217;s not clear where its pain-relieving effect comes from. As well, antipsychotics typically cause sedation, so some wonder if they help mainly through improving a patient&#8217;s sleep.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Side Effects:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>sedation (which can be helpful at night)<\/li>\n<li>dry mouth<\/li>\n<li>dizziness<\/li>\n<li>weight gain<\/li>\n<li>metabolic syndrome in some patients, which includes weight gain,\u00a0increased blood pressure, and elevated\u00a0cholesterol and triglycerides<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Specific Pain Disorders<\/strong><br \/>\nIn these case studies,\u00a0Zyprexa had\u00a0a positive effect when used for both neuropathic pain disorders and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an inflammatory pain disorder. This is quite interesting, as these are 2 different types of pain disorders. A medication more commonly works\u00a0in 1\u00a0type of pain only.\u00a0For example, anti-inflammatory medication works in RA, but not neuropathic pain disorders, such as\u00a0diabetic pain.<\/p>\n<p>While these medications may be worthwhile to study for their effect on pain, currently they should only be used when other more traditional medication has not worked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article is\u00a0in a series on Medications for Pain.\u00a0What are your choices?\u00a0 How do various medications work? What are the pros and cons? How about side effects? Antipsychotics are medications originally\u00a0used\u00a0for psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, where a person&#8217;s thinking becomes disorganized or delusional. Like many medication classes, antipsychotics aren&#8217;t FDA-approved for any [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6093"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7797,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6093\/revisions\/7797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}