Provigil

How to Use Provigil and Avoid Complications

What is Provigil? Nowadays, this medication is often taken to reduce extreme sleepiness caused by narcolepsy or other sleep disorders. It works by helping patients stay awake during their work shifts if their schedules interfere with normal sleeping routines.

It’s still unclear how this medication works to increase people’s wakefulness, but there are suggestions that it works by affecting specific chemical in their brain, and they’re responsible for controlling the sleep and wake cycle.

However, people shouldn’t take Provigil to treat tiredness and hold off their sleep if they aren’t diagnosed with any sleep disorder. Children are also not allowed to take it in any case.

Basic Guidelines on Its Correct Use

It’s necessary to take Provigil orally, either with or without food, and most patients take it only once a day in the morning. If they choose this therapy to treat short work sleep disorder, they need to take this medicine one hour before their next working shift.

When Provigil is used to treat sleep apnea, patients need to continue their current treatment, and their correct dosage is based on their individual response and other important criteria.

In very rare cases this medication may result in developing an addiction, so it’s not advisable to change, stop or increase regular doses without consulting doctors.

Unwanted Symptoms That May Develop

Provigil is associated with both mild and serious side effects, just like other meds. Some of the most common ones include:

• Anxiety and nausea;
• Dizziness and headaches;
• Difficulty sleeping;
• Unusual nervousness.

Most patients don’t feel any discomfort when undergoing this treatment, so the following serious side effects are very rare:

• Mood and mental changes;
• New signs of infection;
• Chest pain;
• Irregular heartbeats;
• Allergies.

It’s necessary to contact your doctor when you notice any of these negative reactions.

Drug Interactions and Precautions

Before you start taking Provigil, your physician also needs to know whether you have any allergic reactions, specific heart problems, hypertension, kidney and liver complications, mood and mental issues, drug or alcohol abuse and others.

Although this medication keeps patients awake, they are still not able to do some things that require their complete alertness, and Provigil may also make them dizzy. That’s why users are not allowed to drive or do other risky things. Another important precaution is that all alcoholic beverages should be avoided when taking Provigil.
There are certain drug interactions associated with its intake, so this medicine shouldn’t be combined with such pharmaceutic products as pills for hypertension, beta blockers, blood thinners, street drugs, azole antifungals, anti-seizure meds, some antidepressants and others.

Finally, people should avoid drinking a lot of caffeine while taking Provigil because this combination increases the risk of having side effects.