Panicking about tapering down on the oral prednisone...

[mattflo]

Hey guess I need some advice on this please. I was on 100 mg a day for a week now I'm tapering down to 4 everyother day.iI'm going in to my second week of the 4 every other day. Couple days ago I was getting headaches now today 30 min after I was feeling shortness of breath than it went away is this caused by the medication. It happen twice today in the morning after I took first two pills and during lunch.it scared me badddd..

[kwarendorf]

Hi Matt-

100mg/day is not an overly large dose. Consider that IVSM (Intravenous Solumedrol), the infused version of prednisone, is typically given as 1000mg/day for 3-5 days. The oral equivalent would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1250mg/day.

If you believe your symptoms are being caused by the reduces steroid dose, then as Karry said, I would speak with the prescribing doc.

Kyle

[karryon55]

Hi Matt,

Are you an asthmatic or anything? I would definitely be speaking to your doc ASAP. The taper may be too rapid for you or it may have nothing to do with that. It is important you get checked out by a doc.

I have been on oral steroids a lot many years ago. I was on them for nearly 2 years straight because of my arthritis. I know that once I had been on high doses & then had to taper. I took exactly what I was told but my body didn't like the sudden drop & my asthma played up. It also caused a flare in my arthritis & I ended up back on steroids again.

Steroids are very good at reducing inflammation but the body can also become reliant on them. It is important that the taper is at an acceptable rate for your body. I can only emphasise you need to have a chat with your doc about this because I am only surmising here.

Let us know how you go & take care.

Karry.