An explanation of a drug half life and steady state for those interested.

[AJ]

A half life is the amount of time it takes for the concentration of drug in the blood stream to be reduced by half. It takes 4 to 5 half lives to eliminate a drug from your system.

When you first start a medication you have peaks, where the drug is at it's highest concentration in the blood, and troughs, where the drug is at it's lowest concentration in the blood. The difference between the peaks and the troughs are significant when you first start a medication. After awhile, and that varies from drug to drug, you reach what they refer to as steady state. The peaks and the troughs, while they still occur, are much less pronounced. The longer the half life of a drug, the longer it takes to reach steady state.

Once steady state has been reached, there tends to be less side effects because the peaks are lower, and a better response to the drug because the troughs aren't as low.

I'm not sure if any of this helps, but I thought I'd stick it in here for those interested

[Thtufus]

Yes, I think this is helpful. I'm assuming that that is the reason why it takes a drug, in this case, Cipralex, 4 to 6 weeks to reach maximum efficiency. I'm concerned about how drug is might react with other drugs in my system.

Thtufus

[AJ]

I would recommend talking to your pharmacist. You can take a current list of medication, and health conditions with you. You can ask them to go over the drugs and potential side effects and how best to manage them. They can also check for drug-drug interactions, and drug disease interactions. This is done during the filling of prescriptions, but you can ask them to do it with your current list. In fact the government in Alberta will pay pharmacists for a complete review.