Anybody tried to wean off of beta blockers?

[cfine]

I feel like I'm dying. I went from 100mg of toprol xl to 75 mg and my heart is racing and I feel like my chest is going to explode!

I am so mad about this drug. I wish I had researched it years ago instead of just letting them keep upping my dose.

Anybody have any suggestions?

[Leo41]

Talk to your doctor! Why you're taking it is important for knowing how to wean off it, and your doctor is the best one to advise you.

Here was my experience--

I had a series of mysterious headaches (a brain aneurysm was suspected because the headaches were sudden and severe--but MRI showed that wasn't it). The neurologist prescribed beta blockers because they've been known to prevent migraines. However, there was no assurance that I'd ever get another headache, and I didn't like the idea of taking something so powerful if I didn't need it.

As soon as I started, my BP went way down--and I normally have issues with low BP, so this wasn't good. My heart rate dropped below 55, also not good. I only took it for a week, and the doctor agreed that I should wean myself from it. You should never just stop them, as you know. He advised me how to do it.

I began taking my dose every other day for a week; then I skipped to every 2 days for another week; and then I think I just took it again once after 5 days and then stopped completely. However, I felt better as soon as I began skipping doses, so the weaning process wasn't too bad.

[VictoriaLynn]

*subscribing*
I take a beta blocker for my high bp, but it isn't working! I suspect on my appointment monday he may try to wean me off of it. I take Atenolol.

[cfine]

I have been taking it for years for blood pressure issues. My BP is now low because of my new WOE and the weightloss. I don't need such a huge dose anymore, but trying to wean off is horrible. I went from 100mg to 75 mg. I did this for two days and today I felt like I was dying. I finally took 12.5mg to quit my insides down. I am going to continue this dosage until I feel better and then try to take another 12.5mg down.

I didn't realize how horrible this medication is to get off of. I weaned myself off of SSRI's years ago and it was pretty horrible too but I did it!! I am determined to stop this medication in time. My research into this drug could be some of my medical problems!

[cfine]

I woke up this AM to what feels like my chest is going to explode, BUT I checked my BP and it's 117/76 and HR is 61. Just putting this out there in case anybody else ever has to get off of a beta blocker.

My BS is running at better numbers now too. Only after doing my research did I see that this med can cause type 2 diabetes! I'm sure that it's contributed to my insulin resistance/weight gain.

[cfine]

starting to feel a bit better. I still feel weird in my chest, but my BP numbers are actually low, around 105/56. I am going to try and cut out the 12.5mg that I have been taking in the AM. I still take 75mg at night.

[VictoriaLynn]

Good Luck! I hope you feel better soon!

[cfine]

Thanks VictoriaLynn.

I'm feeling better today. I have weaned off of the 12.5mg in the AM. I'm going to stick with this dosage for a few more days to give myself a break from feeling so bad. I need to focus on my weigtloss for a few days.

[cfine]

Update: I stayed with the 75mg dosage to try and stop my headache. I finally got to feeling better. Last night, I dropped my dosage down another 12.5mg. I am now at 62.5mg per day. My BP was normal this AM. I feel a little weird in my chest, but so far nothing as bad as I experienced last week. I am taking GABA and L-Theanine to help keep me calm.

[cfine]

I had anxiety all night which is to be expected since my heart is not used to the extra adreneline. My BP was normal this AM but I'm not feeling too good. The GABA and L-Theanine are helping to make me feel calm though. Still at 62.5mg.

[VictoriaLynn]

Hope it gets better soon. Last time I went to the doctor he wanted me to give it a extra week on my beta blocker to see if it would work. Soooo today its been that week and I go in tonight.

[cfine]

I hope it goes well for you VictoriaLynn. IF I ever get off of this stuff and I need another drug for my BP, it most definitely WON'T be a beta blocker. That's just my two cents. After reading all about it, it's not recommended as a first line drug for HBP.

[KeirasMom]

I've been taking Atenolol for years, prescribed for rapid heart beat. I was advised by my doctor a couple of years ago that I could try to wean myself off and see what happens, just in case whatever was causing my tachycardia had resolved. He told me how to do it and I tried over a period of about two months, but the tachycardia came right back and wouldn't reduce on its own.

A word of caution however; don't base your symptoms solely on BP. If your heart is racing, it can actually LOWER your BP because the blood isn't pumping through your body adequately. Improvement in BP does not necessarily mean you're doing okay with reducing your beta blocker.

[VictoriaLynn]

Thanks! He didn't take me off my Atenolol. My bottom number was better with BP, top number was not. He did try me on Lisniopril before this and I had a bad reaction to it, so thats why he did the Atenolol. I have to go back in a week and if that top number isn't better, he is going to add another med, but not take me off the atenolol.

[cfine]

A word of caution however; don't base your symptoms solely on BP. If your heart is racing, it can actually LOWER your BP because the blood isn't pumping through your body adequately. Improvement in BP does not necessarily mean you're doing okay with reducing your beta blocker.
__________________

Thanks for the heads up. My heart rate is really good.

[cobra2411]

I got prescribed a whole cocktail of meds for my high BP when it was first discovered. I'm only taking 25mg of Atenolol right now. That's in addition to a 20/12.5 lisinopril/HCTZ pill. That's about a 1/4 of what I started on.

I've been off both pills before just to see what would happen and I skipped a day, then two days, then 3, then off. My BP settled in at about 165/105 so back on I went. HR was about 85. I did have a couple of days where I was crawling out of my skin though. I'm going to see what happens after I loose some more weight and I'm going to try the couch to 5k again and see what happens there.

Good luck to you both. I hope someday we can all get off that stuff.

[VictoriaLynn]

Thanks cobra.

I went to the doctor yesterday and was not taken off the Atenolol as my BP dropped but not enough. (it was 142/92., but he was happy that my pulse was 76 whereas before it was 112) so he added another med to my meds.

So, now I take
HCTZ 25 MG
Atenolol 100 MG
and Losartin 25 MG (generic for Cozaar)

all this just for BP. Sad that I have to take all this. I hope I can get off this stuff one day

[cfine]

I truly believe that if you continue to eat LC and lose weight you will not have to take these drugs long term. I am down to 62.5mg down from 100mg of the Toprol XL. I am probably going to stick with this dosage until I lose another 10-15lbs and then wean down to 50mg.

[atcgirl42]

Wow, my husband takes a beta-blocker. I had no idea they were so hard to stop!

[cfine]

atcgirl42- It has been VERY hard. And to add insult to injury, beta blockers are known to cause type 2 diabetes which I now have. I was also on a SSRI in the past and they are known to cause diabetes also. It makes me sick to think that I could have been spared all of this.

[DebM]

I'm on 25 mg of atenolol. I tried to wean off 1-1/2 yrs ago and had such bad anxiety and racing heart that I went right back on them. BP is good at 120/70 now but it also could be that my thyroid is in better control too.

[atcgirl42]

Originally Posted by cfine

atcgirl42- It has been VERY hard. And to add insult to injury, beta blockers are known to cause type 2 diabetes which I now have. I was also on a SSRI in the past and they are known to cause diabetes also. It makes me sick to think that I could have been spared all of this.

OMGosh, I had no idea about the diabetes!

[cfine]

OMGosh, I had no idea about the diabetes!

I didn't know either, until my BP got too low and I needed to try and start weaning off. It has been a horrible experience. I started researching it and found out too late that I should have never been on a beta blocker.

[VictoriaLynn]

Yeah, that does make me paranoid....I'm trying to lose weight and am not diabetic yet, but I am very close....So, I'm weary on this beta blocker..

On the bright side of things, since they added Cozaar to the HCTZ and my beta blocker my bp was normal. 132/82. It was the high side of normal...but its the best its been in a long time. So, he said to come back in a month and if its normal then too we can start spacing out the appointments to every 3 months-thank goodness.

[cobra2411]

I'm due for my annual physical in September and I'm going to officially reduce my meds. I've been cutting them myself but had been reluctant to officially reduce it mainly because I like saving money... Pills last 2x as long when you cut them in half. I'm ready to start cutting more and don't like the idea of trying to get precise quarters.

@Victoria, and others it may help...

First, let me preface this with a disclaimer. I'm not a doctor, in the medical or nutritional fields, etc. I just was over weight, suffering from very high bp who didn't accept the doctors simple "that's the way it is" explanation and was driven to find an answer and to get off the damn pills.

High blood pressure is a symptom, not a cause. I believe it's a symptom of metabolic syndrome and that it's a result of inflammation. Inflammation is a symptom too.

I white knuckled it and lost 20-25lbs at one point early on yet it had no effect on my bp. My doctor at the time said he wasn't surprised and that my BP would always be high and there was nothing I could do about it except take pills. He also said that as time went on I'd have to steadily increase the amount of pills I took... Nice huh...

Now, when I went LC and lost weight my BP came down. This isn't a plug for LC as much as it's to show that what you eat can affect you. What I was eating was causing inflammation which was causing high BP. I suspect that I was becoming very insulin resistant and that it was the constant barrage of blood sugar and insulin spikes. I was never classified as diabetic or even pre-diabetic but my A1C levels did drop from borderline pre-diabetic to a more normal level. So I like to say that I was pre-pre-diabetic...

Anyway, the point behind all this is that there is some research out there that shows that lowering bp isn't as effective as you would believe. If the high bp is a symptom then you still could have the same issue even though your bp is 'normal'. This is the main problem that I have with doctors that just want to whip out the prescription pad and write a script and send you on your way. If you do not address the underlying cause of the high bp you could still be at risk.

I had issues with my former doctor because he kept wanting to ramp up the doses to get me below 120/80; side effects be damned... Getting below 140/90 at the time showed a marked increase in side effects. My current doctor was ok with me being just under 140/90 as long as I closely monitored it. If high bp is a symptom then the only reason to take meds IMO is to get yourself out of the immediate danger zone and buy you time to figure out what's wrong. In my opinion, it's optional to medicate anything under 160/100 as long as you are actively working on ways to reduce it.

Beware of the confusion between correlation and causation. Correlation means that two things simply tend to show up at the same time. Causation means that one thing causes the other. A lot of time correlation is presented to appear as causation. Eating fat makes you fat, eating cholesterol raises your cholesterol, eating salt retains water which raises bp... all these things are correlation presented falsely as causation.

Don't treat symptoms, don't accept correlations - look for the cause. Fix the cause and everything else will take care of itself.

You're on the right track. Keep losing the weight and start exercising. Yeah, it's not required IMO for weight loss but there are so many other benefits of exercise that proper exercise is something that everyone should add to their lives. Start out walking. Try and walk a little more tomorrow than you did today.

When you're ready to step it up I would talk to your doctor first, then I would recommend reading a book by Dr Al Sears called P.A.C.E. which explains how high intensity, short duration workouts are better than 'cardio' workouts. Bill Philips has a book called Body For Life that explains how to do a 'cardio' workout in 20 minutes that has more in common with Dr Sear's workout than traditional cardio. As for me, the couch to 5k program accomplishes the same thing. In a nut shell you push yourself to exhaustion and then recover. So for me, week one of C25k I'd run for 1 minute. By the end I'd be breathing hard, huffing and puffing. Then I'd walk for 90 seconds and recover. Week 2 I'm running for 90 seconds. Your exertion time keeps getting longer and longer but it should be no more than 12 minutes total of hard exertion. Recovery time can be however long it needs to be. I can run a 5k in 30 minutes however and be ok because I won't be at maximum exertion for the entire time. My workouts will still be interval based but my goal is to be able to run a 5k.

I don't know how much I would explain to your doctor. My first doctor was not receptive at all to the idea and thought it would kill me. Maybe use the Couch to 5k program instead. Doctors like running... Oh, and I did get a stress test and I would recommend it if you're really out of shape and have any kind of heart issues (high bp). It was nice knowing that I wasn't going to pop a fuse while working out... And I would highly suggest the treadmill test. The alternative is they inject you with something that makes your heart race... Doesn't sound like much fun...

[cfine]

and I totally agree. I wish I had educated myself long before now. There is no way I would agree to go on BP meds at this point.

I am still at 62.5mg dosage. I now have mono so I am not going to try and stress my body any more than it already is.

[watcher513]

Originally Posted by VictoriaLynn

Yeah, that does make me paranoid....I'm trying to lose weight and am not diabetic yet, but I am very close....So, I'm weary on this beta blocker..

On the bright side of things, since they added Cozaar to the HCTZ and my beta blocker my bp was normal. 132/82. It was the high side of normal...but its the best its been in a long time. So, he said to come back in a month and if its normal then too we can start spacing out the appointments to every 3 months-thank goodness.

My DH's doctor thinks Cozaar (now Losartan since going generic) is the best thing since sliced bread. It took a few iterations of med changes but DH has been taking it since the late 90's or early 2000's.

[cobra2411]

Now this is interesting... The last 3 days I've been experimenting a bit by taking only 1/4 tab of atenolol, which is approx 12.5mg and nothing else.

My resting BP yesterday morning was 126/91 hr77, last night it was 127/87 hr81. Today it's 120/79 - hr61.

How quickly does this stuff leave your body? Is this from residual effects of the previous meds?

I just started week 3 of the C25k program so I'm getting some good exercise, which along with starting induction again I believe is responsible for the reduction.

EDIT:
I found that atenolol has a half life of 6.1 hours, meaning that after 6.1hrs only half of the dosage is there. Then I found a half life calculator here: http://www.calculatoredge.com/chemic...ife%20calc.htm

25mg equals 1.6 or so mg after 24hrs and .1 after 48 hrs. 12.5mg + the 1.6 remaining will become < 1mg after 24hrs.

Because of the infinite nature of half life I decided to call 0.1mg effective zero. At my current dose that occurs in less than 2 days.

I think, based on what I'm reading is that I'll need to keep doing the pill cut routine. Drugs with longer half lives are self weaning because they just gradually taper away.

[cobra2411]

Oh... And just so everyone's in the know, and because I dealt with this perosnally with my former doctor

"Treating patients to lower than standard BP targets, </=140-160/90-100 mmHg, does not reduce mortality or morbidity." Treatment blood pressure targets ... [Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2009] - PubMed - NCBI

There is no benefit to going lower than 140-160 over 90-100 with meds, not to be confused with natural low bp. In fact, at too low a bp on meds you can affect the blood flow to the smaller vessels and cause a heart attack or stroke at worse, nerve and tissue damage as well as loss of memory and probably a few more things...

[cfine]

There is no benefit to going lower than 140-160 over 90-100 with meds, not to be confused with natural low bp. In fact, at too low a bp on meds you can affect the blood flow to the smaller vessels and cause a heart attack or stroke at worse, nerve and tissue damage as well as loss of memory and probably a few more things...

GRRR...My BP was never higher than this. Just proves to me that I need desperately to get off this medication for good!! It still makes me mad to think that I shouldn't have ever been on this drug.