How Long Before You Started Noticing A Difference With Salt Loading And/or Mestinon?

[trice125]

How long before you started noticing a difference with salt loading and/or Mestinon? I started salt loading with drinking 1 liter of Gatorade a day along with adding more salt into my diet 2 weeks ago. I also started taking 60mg of Mestinon twice a day Monday and will increase it each week until I get to 60mg three times a day. This is all new to me though so I'm interested in others experiences with these treatments and how long it normally takes to see a difference with them.

[boymommy3]

Here's my story about Gatorade.

I had the flu in December and have had a bad flare up of POTS symptoms ever since. Doc told me to drink Gatorade. I didn't know why she said that because I didn't know about salt loading at the time. My husband and I just thought that she thought I was dehydrated. He got me a 32 oz. Gatorade that day and I got about 1/2 way through it and thought, man, I feel a little better. Told my husband, and so we both just thought maybe I WAS dehydrated. Didn't drink one the next day and had a really bad day. Then the second day after that I was still really really symptomatic. About half way through that day hubby said, "I'm going to get you a Gatorade!" Another 32 oz. bottle, and again about 1/2 way through I was telling him I really could tell a difference in how it made me feel. Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't back to daily activities or anything, but there was marked improvement in how I felt. I have had a 20 oz. bottle almost every single day since.

Now I am reading all this stuff about how bad Gatorade is for you and it's freaking me out. I am going to try some of the other suggestions others have on this forum because I am not wanting to quit that type of drink all together. My body seems to really respond to it. Oh, btw, It was just a couple of days after my Gatorade experience that I read about salt loading and the light bulb went off as to why it made me feel better.

I really hope it helps with some of your symptoms. It's so nice when something so simple is helpful because more often than not it's difficult to find things that help.

[Batik]

I'm finding it hard to tell whether it helps yet, but I can report that after a day or so of drinking salty water, I've gone up a thimble size. Normally I never retain water, and I wasn'ta larger thimble size even when I was overweight. Incidentally, something odd happened when I was losing weight. Everyone else on the weight loss forum said that they retained water if they ate salty food, or were premenstrual. That never happened to me.

[ramakentesh]

I dont find salt loading helpful until I started medication to help me retain it.

[jangle]

I dont find salt loading helpful until I started medication to help me retain it.

Same experience as Rama, even then it took >5 weeks and I'm still feeling improvements now 3 months into it.

For reference I'm on .1 mg fludrocortisone

[jenniferlynne76]

I also didn't find the salt loading helpful. But about one week into taking 60mg Mestinon 3x daily (it took me three weeks to get there, imcreasing by one pill per week) I noticed pronounced improvement in a number of my symptoms. I hope you have a similar experience!

-Jen

[Batik]

The finger swelling didn't last, I was back to a size 16 thimble the next day. So I still have no idea whether I'm actually retaining any of this salt water, but considering how much I'm drinking, and I have a nifty app I'm using to keep an eye on that, I'm surprised that I'm not running to the loo more often.