Prednisone and blood

I'm not an expert by any means....but pred will suppress your entire immune system, which stops inflammation and then (usually) bleeding will stop. Your body naturally produces its own corticosteroids in small amounts, but this will be suppressed if you take prednisone for longer than 7 days (that is why you should never just STOP taking prednisone without tapering, tapering will give your adrenal glands time to recover and start producing natural corticosteroids again).

Journey2health:

Yes Pred is anti-inflammatory, etc...  But the mechanism is that it makes the ability of cells to adhere and stick to tissues more difficult.  So circulating inflammatory cells in the blood are not hurting the tissues as much.  That's why when you get a CBC while on pred your wbc count can be much higher than normal.  Bottom line sometimes as in UC or other auto immune diseases you want to limit the amount of damage cells can do and allow the tissues to heal.

 

Prednisone is an oral, synthetic (man-made) corticosteroid. The body naturally produces cortisol, which is also a corticosteroid. Corticosteroids suppresses the immune system.

When one is taking prednisone, one's body will say, "Hey I'm getting extra corticosteroid." And it will reduce its own production of cortisol. The reduced production of corticosteroid by the body is the reason for having to wean off prednisone. The body needs time to readjust and up its production of cortisol if it doesn't one could go into shock. The lower cortisol production also results in a return of symptoms when weaning off prednisone.