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Prednisolone taper help!

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Crohn's Disease
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Posted 12/21/2016 6:10 PM (GMT 0)
I've been on prednisolone since I was diagnosed with Crohn's in September. I started at 40mg, getting to 20mg before I was put back on 40mg. Since then, I've tapered to 5mg and am on 125mg of azathioprine but have recently been getting awful headaches and am wondering if that's due to reducing my steroid dose, so I'm nervous to go from 5mg to 0 next week. Would it be wise to reduce by 2.5mg instead of 5mg? The headaches are awful! I'm only assuming they're due to the taper, I suppose it could be something else.... Thanks for your help!
Posted 12/21/2016 7:42 PM (GMT 0)
Yes, migraines have been a classic sign of withdrawals for me. Same with body aches, joint pain, weakness, exhaustion, messed up sleeping, nausea. Ugh it's so hard. You might need to go up a bit and then come down slower. If you are having trouble at 5 I don't recommend going down from that to zero! It will just get worse. I usually go down to 2.5 first for a few weeks. Heck, there have been times I've gone even slower and had 1 mg tablets.

I'm struggling right now to get my body readjusted without steroids, I've been off 6 weeks and I'm still having headaches, body pains etc.. But I've been on them more then off of them over the past 5-7 years. So I expect to have some issues.
Posted 12/21/2016 7:57 PM (GMT 0)
My son complained of headaches in the morning towards the end of his taper. He was on only prednisone for 8 weeks total (3 weeks plus a fivery week taper) and the headaches only started at very end of the taper. We went down 5mgs every 5 days, never did 2.5mgs but he wasnt on the pred very long. I have heard a lot of people going down 2.5mgs at the end so you might try tbat.
Posted 12/22/2016 11:34 AM (GMT 0)
2.5 might be a good idea. You can look up the side effects of Cortisol suppression, which is the result of being on Prednisone. It can take months even up to 6 months for your Cortisol to return to normal.
Posted 12/22/2016 1:52 PM (GMT 0)
Definitely reduce by 2.5mg instead of 5mg. If even that doesn't work, ask for 1mg pills and taper down by 1mg at a time. The most common mistake with steroids is to taper off them too quickly. Reducing quickly doesn't matter at high doses, but once you get to 15, 10 or 5mg (it varies), reducing by too large an amount can bring on withdrawal or disease symptoms.
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