Amitriptyline HCL (Elavil)

I have taken Effexor and anti- depressant for years and it hasn't affected my IBS.  elavil is a very very old ant-depressant but might be effective.  I don't know

There is some connection between IBS and Restless legs syndrome.     A large proportion of people with IBS also have RLS

Amitriptyline is known to cause symptoms of RLS so it might be best to ask your doctor if he can choose a different drug for you so you don't risk starting up RLS.   It might not be easy to be rid of.

Good Luck

Graham

I was on amytriptyline about 35 years ago and will tell you that if you exercise hard in a warm climate while taking it ,it can be very dangerous.

I would ask for something else.

Amyltripaline is very good for nerve pain, therefore can be very useful for IBS and other nerve pain conditions. I found it very good for pain. It made me sleepy for the first week or so of taking it but then it wore off.

Hi Albert,  I was very apprehensive about taking this. I suffered for a long time with IBS, and eventually my doctor prescribed this to help me sleep and said it would help the IBS. I have been taking it for 4 months now, I can honestly say it does help with sleeping and as you will know if you sleep well you always feel better the next day. However, I would suggest you start slowly, I started with 10mg at night time, it made me feel so groggy and hard to wake up next morning, so now I take 5mg every night, about 2 hours before bed works best.  No side effects, as this is a low dosage. With regards to the IBS I think that it is a lot of trial and error, each person has to figure out what works for them food wise, also stress is bad news for your gut. You could try peppermint tea, it is calming for your bowels. 

Hope this helps.

Hi Albert, I’ve been stuck on Amitriptyline for years, and would say, please find an alternative. I don’t take it for IBS though, I take it for nerve pain, and when I’ve tried to get back off it, I had horrible symptoms, so much so that I had to revert to a dosage of 30mg per night (in the past I had taken 40mg) and will have to plan very carefully to come off it again slowly, some time in the future.  I do have IBS as well and would say it has had absolutely no effect on it, so if that’s the only reason you would take it, I would say ‘NO’!

When I spoke to a doctor about the horrible shakiness I was having trying to come off the drug and not to mention how it effected me emotionally, she actually said “It’s a horrible drug, but it does have it’s uses with nerve pain” - I take it for bad sciatica. She is a young doctor, and I think the younger ones prefer to chose other treatments for their patients (it was another doctor that put me on them).

In my humble opinion I would suggest other treatments including natural ones first (like trying the low FODMAP diet or keeping a food diary to try to identify problematic foods).  I once looked up side effects up, on trying to get off amitriptyline and one site brought up about 68 pages of people also struggling to get off the drug, so I know it’s not just me.  Tread carefully.