I take 300mg of Resveratrol per day. Unfortunately my wife is on Lexapro (Escitalopram) for anxiety and depression. We are trying to get off Lexapro and perhaps even start her on Resveratrol. While she's still on Lexapro, is it advised for her to take Resveratrol? Does anyone know if there will be drug interactions? Also, would Resveratrol help her anxiety and depression?
Lexapro is metabolized by CYP3A4 and CYP2C19, both of which are weakly inhibited by resveratrol. In theory, resveratrol might be expected to slow the metabolism of Lexapro, but only slightly. I'd advise using a high purity resveratrol (98+ %) rather than a 50% extract in order to avoid the various side effects of the contaminants in the low purity products. I wouldn't expect resveratrol to control anxiety or depression sufficient to replace a real anti-depressant. Why do you want to stop the Lexapro? Side effects? Not effective? Too expensive? If side effects, have you tried a lower dose? If too expensive, try generic Celexa, the racemic analog of lexapro.
My wife becomes very weak and tired throughout the day along with being dehydrated constantly. Furthermore, it was prescribed to her years ago when things were very tough and she had difficult bouts with anxiety. It seems that now, with therapy she can get off of it. She started with daily 20mg. We then tried 20mg, 10mg alternating every other day. Then we moved down to 10mg every day, and now 5mg. Everything is fine. She seems less tired and has more energy now. So last week we tried 5mg every other day. She's getting horrible nightmares now. So we're thinking of skipping 2 doses per week first to see how it works.
Do you have any suggestions? Also, I've noticed that Resveratrol helps w/ my concentration. Do you know it's main benefits that have been scientifically shown aside from life extension?
20mg of Lexapro is a pretty large dose. Also, your wife has been using it for a long time. It might help to stay at 5mg/d for a while (a couple weeks, maybe) to become better acclimated to a lower dose. Basically you just want to taper slowly and monitor for a return of symptoms. I've heard that Lexapro can be difficult to quit, although it doesn't have a bad reputation for that like Effexor has. You could try googling for Lexapro withdrawal, or how to quit lexapro, or something like that. There are a lot of sites out there with information about psychiatric meds, but you have to take some of them with a grain of salt since some of these sites are rather agenda-driven. www.crazymeds.us is pretty good. He has kind of a goofy writing style, but the information is good.
There are a lot of anecdotal reports of positive psych results with resveratrol, and these have usually been due to the non-resveratrol components of 50% extracts. I've never noticed anything from a 99% extract. People report all kinds of things, but a lot of it is probably placebo effect.