Quick taper??

So I was doing great - had my uc under control after a year and a half of steroids and was off of steroids for two months!

All of a sudden I was constipated however so my mom gave me laxatives. That night I was awake with cramping and major D and threw days later a flare started.


My question is if it is possible to get on steroids like 60mg and taper down quickly- 20mg every few days. My naturopath advised this since it is so early in my flare and the symptoms were not bad enough to stay on a high dose for more than a few days.


Due to her advice I am on 60 mg prednisone day 2 and things have gotten much better- solid with little streaks of blood. I'm thinking one more day of 60 then down to 40
For two days then down to 20mg.


Does anyone have experience with quick tapering when flare symptoms have not reached their climax???



It seems like this method is used for other diseases - just not sure how Uc responds


Thank you

Are you on any maintenance medications/ If you are going to do a fast taper, I would suggest at least using a rectal medicine to assist healing and also not dropping if you are still seeing blood.

A quick taper is ok. Whether it will be part of a long term solution is debatable.

i have never done a quick taper but i know it's safe. my cousin does it for his asthma a few times a year but he starts at 100 mg and is off in 10 days. not sure how he does it so fast but asthma is completely different than UC.

i'd probably get off of it in less than 2 weeks so your adrenal glands don't stop producing their own cortisol.

i take simponi shots and so far, so good.

Maddy I had almost identical issue a month ago. Now i take metamucil which I should have done in the first place but the ibd nurse put me on a laxative called lactulose. I was on the laxatives for a week and blood came back. I did a quick taper but started at 25 mg and blood went in 3-4 days. So as i was always told not to change anything till blood has gone for 3 days.

I did 25 1 week then 15 1 week then 10 1 week then I am now doing 10 day 1, 5 day, 2 10 day 3 for a week (so 7.5), next week 5mg. then I will start 1mg pills starting at 4mg a week and so on till 1. my last week i will do 0.5 by having 1 then nothing etc.

My advice to you as I have also been on pred on and off for 1,5 years and was also 2 months off when this happened is;

1. dont move down too quickly if blood is still there wait till its gone, then move down quick to 30
2. from 25 follow what i did cos i have seen no blood
2. DO NOT IGNORE CONSTIPATION WHILE YOU DO THIS. By that i mean introduce the right fibre in to your diet slowly. I have introduced 1 x capsule of metamucil with each meal and now i am going to move up to 2 capsule in the evening meal. I also drink half a cup of prune juice in the evening to soften things if I get pains. This has meant i am regular 1 or 2 bms a day formed and no problems tapering otherwise constipation will cause issues again. I think the pred it self has something to do with this because the bowel does not heal properly on it and forgets to work in a normal way especially as we have both been on pred too long.

Good luck i hope this helps

Post Edited (Imran123) : 12/31/2013 9:57:08 AM (GMT-7)

I would consider the strong possibility that your constipation was due to rectal inflammation -- it's often the first symptom. It's possible that your symptoms weren't *caused* by the laxatives but are the natural continuation of the flare that was beginning when you became constipated.

Thank you everyone for your advice. It is so nice to have support for this as this disease is both mental and physical drain.

One last question- I have never really given lialda much of a chance and got off of it a year and a half ago when I started losing hair. Are those taking 5 Asa drugs finding that they do a good job at keeping you in remission, or do you need something stronger like a biological?

I know it really depends on the severity of your ulcerative colitis and everyone is different, but it would still be good to hear some opinions on these ASA drugs because I just received a script for them and thought id give it another try




Best wishes and happy holidays!

I wouldn't take the same exact one that gave you hairloss before. Are you absolutely sure it was the 5ASA as prednisone can also do this?

Lialda has worked well for me but not well enough to give me remission. It sounds to me like it was the pred that was responsible for your hair loss, not the Lialda. While that can happen with 5ASA's it is somewhat rare. Blaming hair loss on blood loss doesn't seem right to me. I don't know if I can answer your severity question. All that terminology is confusing to me. I think they called mine moderate but it sure didn't seem moderate to me but, then again, when I read what others are going through I guess it was moderate.

I am starting lialda tomorrow so hopefully all goes well. Has anyone every gotten over this disease entirely or know of someone who has? Fecal transplants are supposed to work