Quinine

[cedarblue]

any medics on here?

my father-in-law has been having night sweats for ages now, he's been to his g.p. and got checked out generally, apparently theres nothing wrong with him. i'm not sure if he's telling the g.p. about the sweats.

he drinks a couple of litres of tonic water a day, which has quinine in, which is a stimulant. any ideas if this could be contributing to the sweating? i'm wondering if it is as he drinks it every day.

thanks, advice would be appreciated.

[herbwormwood]

according to this site

http://www.drugs.com/MTM/quinine.html

sweating can be a side effect of quinine, but I don't know if the tonic water would contain enough to cause it.
Wikipedia thinks not...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_water
I think that if your father-in-law is really worried he will have to be more open with his GP and go back to see him with a full symptom list.
He could also phone NHS Direct and ask for advice.
http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/

[classicalgeek]

I think that the quantity of quinine he receives from tonic water is pretty insignificant, I take quinine for night cramps (calves of leg), and don't get any major side effects.

[harpy]

There seem to be a few things that cause night sweats, most of them not very serious, but it would certainly be good if he could be persuaded to ask the doc about it, cedarblue.

[cedarblue]

thanks all - he has seen the g.p. but i'm unsure exactly what information is deemed important to be spoken about, so you can never really tell if the g.p. is given all the information. if they don't help themselves sometimes its difficult to help them as they get so stroppy...



my 'dr' in-laws both recently self-diagnosed themselves with 'diseases' off the internet - apparently my f-i-l has a stooping disease and my m-i-l just stopped taking her steroids because they apparently were making her limb muscles ache....(sigh) oldies, what can you do with them??? they both moan about things but don't want to do anything about them - m-i-l is really quite deaf but she wont admit it and get a little hearing aid...it would admit she's getting old you see...

anyway, i digress...thanks again