Pred question

Quick question about predisone. i've been on it for about 10 days. i've noticed a lot more blood and mucas in my stool. i was just wondering if this was normal. I'm on 30 mg of pred a day as well as 12 pills of asacol (daily)

thanks for your help.

I started with 40mg and the improvement was almost immediate within a day or so. Not to say all symptoms went away, there was just drastic improvement. I am in the middle of tapering down (see sig) now and I only see blood on the rare occassion and I think even then it is due to my diet since I am "experimenting" with what I can and can't eat right now.

Starting too low won't have near the effects compared to starting at least at 40mg (typically for 2 weeks straight before tappering) and with pred, typically as you taper off, symptoms start to generally reapper because pred is really nothing more than a "booster med" so actual maintenance meds can kick in or pred is used for a short term break from symptoms when things have been really rough for a really long time.

:)

I agree with you Vibrant, the only time I had to take Prednisone (during my second flare), I had trouble getting off of it. That was until I took matters into my own hands, did fecal transplantation, and went immediately into remission.

Not only are diet, probiotics, and vitamins responsible for putting my third and last flare in remission, but they cut down the duration of my flare in half. They also reduced the severity of the flare. I'm hoping, now that I know what foods work and what foods don't work for me, to be able to stay in remission.

We have extensive discussions about diet, probiotics, and vitamins and how they relate to Colitis. Please read the boards and participate in the discussions. I'm sure everyone would be interested in knowing what worked for you.

Hi Weezay,

Fecal transplantation is "a medical treatment for patients with pseudomembranous colitis (caused by Clostridium difficile), ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel syndrome which involves restoration of colon homeostasis by reintroducing normal bacterial flora from stool obtained from a healthy donor." [As stated on Wikipedia.]

It's a kind of a super Probiotics. But like anything, it's no guarantee.

It put me in remission until I had to be on and off antibiotics again for a urinary tract infection.

I used to be a chocoholic and HFCS-oholic too. I'm now fructose intolerant. So my Colitis is probably due to all these factors.

I talked about fecal transplantation about 2 pages back on the "Stoping Bleeding during a flare, without medication.." post. It's kind of long, and I don't want to take up space repeating it all. So please read about it there if you're interested in more detail.

     I know I cannot drink coffee with caffeine while flaring.  I makes the diarrhea worse.  I also would cut back on the sugar too.  Try a low residue diet.