I was recently prescribed Amitriptyline for chronic migraines. It is amazing in that my migraine pain is completely gone. My brain feels amazing. That said, I have been noticing some effects on my body and workouts that I am concerned about. First, my resting heart rate is up by quite a bit- I am typically in the high 40’s and now it is in the low 70’s. The other thing I have noticed is that even on very hard workouts my heart rate takes a very long time to come up, and I am unable to get my heart rate above 145 or so, even on a very hard/long climb (my max is 182). My heart is just very slow to respond. It takes a long time to come up, but then during rest periods, it remains elevated. I can’t really tell if it is affecting my performance, despite the effect on my heart rate. Has anyone else been on this medication and how has it affected your heart rate and performance?
I used this medication in a high doses 150mg. The hart rate was also high 20 bpm extra.
It works great against headaches but I used it for depression
When I stopped after a month my hart rate lowered back to normal.
I was prescribed it for migraines from a concussion. It made me super drowsy. I did a little bit of training on it. Can’t really remember how it affected training. I came off it because of how drowsy it made me feel. I guess the drowsiness would have affected performance.
on it for a couple months - resting HR went from high 40s to high 60s, and couldn’t get HR up above 140, normally 160s on hard swim intervals.
Weight gain is also quite common.
Never attempted a race during that time as the headache was incapacitating, so it’s hard to say whether the drug or the pain caused the performance issues.
My migraines turned out to be hemicrania continua, went off the amitriptyline onto indomethacin which has its own set of problems.
Once off the HRs went back to normal.
My wife suffers from chronic migraines, she was was on the Botox injections around the head for a number of years which seemed to help with the amount and severity of the migraines, but then she had to switch due to our insurance, she has now been using the once a month Aimovig injections and has found them very helpful, not quite as good as the botox but it does definitely help, she hasn’t had any side effects using either one. Just a thought if you have not tried these two different medications. Best of luck as I know they are certainly not nice to deal with. Cheers LA Rob
I have not tried Botox- but I did look at the clinical trial data, and it looked like it was barely better than placebo- BUT- I would imagine it would for sure have fewer performance effects.
It’s hard because the amitriptline really does work so well for me for the migraines. At the same time, the heart rate issues are concerning o me. Triathlon is a big part of my like and I just don’t know what to make of the heart rate issues. If I am running at a very high RPE, but my heart rate is only 140- is that bad in some way? It is obviously throwing off a lot of my training load metrics on training peaks, Garmin etc. because it looks like I am barely working out when I am going completely full gas.
I think I kind of want to do a 5k or so to see if it is affecting my performance- but my training has been suboptimal this season, so I won’t really know if it is the drug or me.
It is interesting because I hear that some people complain of extreme fatigue on this medication and I definitely haven’t experienced that at all. If anything, I have more energy.
- talk to your doctor (the below is not medical advice).
- what dose did you start at, and how quickly (if at all) did you titrate up? Amitriptyline has pretty good data for chronic migraine and tension type headaches, but can also have lots of side effects. A lower maintenance dose may be better tolerated and still adequate.
New products for this are available… www.nurtec.com
It helped me with my migraines and helped me get to sleep, but I was drowsy in the morning. Nortriptyline was better for the drowsiness, but affected my mood and motivation significantly.
I didn’t monitor HR through either meds, so I can’t help there.
Yes. This is 100% my experience. I guess I just don’t know if that is dangerous in some way. If I go for a run at a pace where my heart rate would normally be 160, and it is only 140- is that a problem that I need to be concerned about? Right now my biggest bummer is that I am getting sad faces on my performance metrics because it looks like I am not training hard enough because so much of that (like intensity factor) is based on heart rate.
I just ran 5k to get an idea- it seems like my performance hasn’t been affected as far as I can tell.
That is a very old medication. The new stuff is great. I manage a neurology practice, my triathlete son suffers from migraines.
you need CRPG BLOCKING AGENTS-UBERLVY or NURTEC- wonder meds!