tendon pain and prednisone

Yeah, prednisone can and will eventually decimate all the 'connective tissue' around your body.  Unfortunately, it's one of the many side effects of this drug.

Despite it's ability to stop a flare in it's tracks, if it were to come on the market today as a 'new' drug, it wouldn't get past first base.

They would have to go back to the drawing board.

I have had tendon pain as well. It can be aggravated by wearing hard soled flat shoes and walking up and down stairs. Try wearing a shoe with a small heel to give the tendon area a break.

We don't know what dose you are actually on but in any event, speeding up the taper is not only a bad idea but it could actually make things worse - a lot worse. If I remember correctly the body makes the equivelant of about 10-12 mgs of cortisone per day so any amount of pred dosage higher than that shuts down your adrenal glands from producing it's own cortisone. Once your pred dosage hits that magic number of around 10-12 mgs you really need to taper slowly so that your body can adjust to making it's own cortisone again, little by little. Most people don't realize that the most important part of the taper is when you get down to that magic number. You can taper down from 40 to 35 to 30 to 25 to 20 to 15 to 10 but it's a bad idea to go down to 5 and then zero unless you are at 5 for quite a long time and even then it's a bad idea, not only adrenal gland wise but remission wise.

Post Edited (garylouisville) : 8/30/2012 11:26:07 AM (GMT-6)

Different doctors will say different things. Depending on your total condition, yes, you can taper faster than what you are tapering if that winds up being the decision. I didn't know what dose you were on so my main point was when you get down to that magic number of about 10mgs then it really wouldn't be a good idea to go down to 5 and then 0 (or even faster), not only for adrenal gland reasons but for remission reasons as well. I haven't taken pred in a long time but I used to take it for another autoimmune disease at a dose that would curl the hairs on your head, and I'm a normal size guy. I have had a lot of experience with prednisone, both personally and in talking with a lot of others who have taken it. I think many doctors would say that the absolute maximum taper should be 50% at the very most. That means you could possibly go from 40 to 20 to 10 to 5 to 2.5 but most doctors would not want to go that fast.

Post Edited (garylouisville) : 8/30/2012 12:56:34 PM (GMT-6)

So I was told if it was at all tolerable to stay the course on tapering. They said the only way to tell if the Pred was causing the tendon pain in my foot was to be totally off the pred which of course I can't do. Now I have not hurt my foot and never had foot pain in my life so I am 99% sure Pred is causing the pain.

:(

I been drinking a lot of gatorade and such to stay hydrated. My flare getting better at the moment (6- 8 trips to the bathroom a day). If it was my muscles I would understand more than the bottom of my feet. never had foot problems before. I Am on my feet for 8 to 9 hours on a 12 hour shift but that has always been the case for the last 23 years.

I seem to be having similar issues -- started a few days ago. Did yours get better scum?

I suspect it was the cipro I took two months ago but I'm also on a low dose of prednisone.

Mackster said...
Despite it's ability to stop a flare in it's tracks, if it were to come on the market today as a 'new' drug, it wouldn't get past first base.
They would have to go back to the drawing board.

I honestly doubt that. Cortisone is one of the best life savers for a number of conditions and is pretty revolutionary. It rocks

On Topic:

One thing to prevent/minimize this is to strength train.

UC can cause joint pain, I had horrible foot/ankle pain before I got DX'd and put on pred

you need to taper slowly, better to do it once slowly than multiple times by trying to get it over too quickly. I was on 20mg for 3 months while I built up my Azathioprine dosage and now I'm tapering by 2.5mg every 2 weeks. Will take me months to get off, but that's the safe way to do it if you've been on the drug for a substantial amount of time.