Need Help!

I've had UC for over 4 years now but I've been symptom free for the last 3 years, until 2 months ago when I started flaring again. Right now I'm taking salvo flak oral pills, salofalk suppositories, and cortifoam. I've noticed improvement with the flare since I started taking these meds but I'm still not doing great and my doctor wants to put me on prednisone as the next step but he's said it's my decision when I want to give up on the other meds since I've been seeing some success with them so far.

SO my question is, does anyone have any positive stories to share about prednisone? Reading the forum it seems like most people have just had terrible experiences and side effects, but I figure their must be a reason so many people are taking it.

I'm a very active person in my early 20s and the last thing I want right now is to blow up like a balloon and have awful mood swings....I read a post where someone mentioned using a trampoline helped the swelling go down from the pred. Does anyone have any stories about exercise helping this way?

Any stories would be greatly appreciated, I'm having a lot of trouble deciding if I should go on this medicine from hell...

I did really well on prednisone. I started with just mesalamine oral meds and enemas and was close to remission, when I caught a tummy bug and the flare really kicked up again. I had a job interview coming up that I had to be well for and my doc and I both thought it was time to just get me well. I started at 40 mg of pred and was only on that for 5 days before I started tapering. By the second day I was on pred, I was down to just 2 BMs a day.

I was able to easily taper off and have been in remission ever since (so 4 years and counting). I had basically zero side effects, too.

I hope you realize that pred is not a cure. You have to do some kind of maintenance therapy on top of the pred in order to retain a remission. All prednisone does is weaken your immune system, giving your colon time to heal. Once you taper down or off your body will resume causing inflammation in your colon unless you have a successful maintenance therapy in place. I would presume that that would be the other things you have been doing but I would worry that since they have been less effective then they may not be enough to continue any remission that might be brought on by the pred, once you taper down or off. A fairly short course of pred could possibly bring on remission without having too many side effects but prednisone is often an evil drug that just plays with you, drawing you into longer and longer term doses where the side effects get more brutal. I wouldn't count on jumping your way around side effects.

sprozz,

Welcome to the forum.

Prednisone did not help me.

What did work for me was: a combination of diet modification (as in gluten and dairy free), slippery elm powder, l-glutamine, and LDN, low dose naltrexone.

If you are interested,  there are things IMO that you can control, which will have a direct impact on your disease, the symptoms you experience and their severity.

I was able to control my UC into remission through various supplements, probiotics, diet modification, and LDN , low dose naltrexone.

For more info on the protocol which has put me into remission, please go to this link: https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=38&m=1666318 , and look at the 11th post.

I hope you feel better and let us know how we can help you.

I was on prednisone for two months. I didn't suffer from any side effects, except that I didn't get my period, which wasn't really a bad thing. I also had slight insomia, but nothing too bad. I didn't gain weight or suffer from any pains, so while I was on it it felt like a miracle drug. The only problem was after I got off my maintenance drugs weren't really working.