5asa make me poop my pants

well you certainly don't want to be pooping your drawers all the time !

if the pred works, use it - as long as your eyes are wide open, stick with what does the job -

get the dose as low as possible, keep up with testing, and see where it goes -

oh, and I would ditch the asa's !

uceris has worked well for me and the side effects are not as bad as pred side effects. I would definitely take it again but I am in no rush to flare up and need anything, that's for sure. It didn't take too long for uceris to help me, just a few days. It wasn't as quick as pred but it definitely helped quickly in my case.

Maybe you have an intolerance to 5asas. I never noticed D from Lialda.

You can't live on pred without risking some very serious side effects -- cataracts, diabetes, and osteoporosis, to name a few. You can also permanently suppress your adrenal glands if you're on it for too long, and my guess is that even just 10 mg a day would do that.

I'm not saying you should stay on the 5ASA's either, as they seem to cause you problems.

It may be worth trying to switch to Uceris after being on pred -- maybe the pred can get things calmed down better than Uceris, and you'll be able to maintain on Uceris. I don't know if there's a limit to how long you can be on Uceris, though. It is safer to be on it long-term, from what I understand.

Therearemiracles, now you have me wondering if the reason I am not completely better on Remicade is because of the Asacol HD that I am taking. I am on the max dose of 6 pills a day, and have morning urgency really bad. The only reason I don't have urgency in the afternoon is because I am going so much in the morning. Other than that, I feel great. I may cut back the dose as a test. Hopefully things don't get worse when I do it. Oh, I am also on my third week of lexapro. Are you still responding well to it?

could someone please define "long term" for me ?

is it 5 months, 5 years, 50 years ........... ?

Well, my first GI said he wouldn't let me be on pred for longer than 4 months at a time, and that if I needed it more than twice a year, we'd explore other maintenance med options.

I did some googling to try to figure out what long-term means, and what daily dose is considered dangerous for long-term use, and found these statements:

"There is no particular dose at which these side effects are sure to develop, although doctors start to look for them if someone has needed ten mg of prednisone daily for a year or more."
http://www.everydayhealth.com/specialists/allergies-asthma/feldwig/qa/long_term_prednisone/index.aspx


Adverse effects have occurred less frequently when minimum dosages were employed. Dosages greater than 10 mg per day have been associated with an increased incidence of adverse events.

Adverse effects of prednisone may be subdivided into those associated with short-term therapy (to three weeks) and those of long-term therapy (> three weeks).
http://www.drugs.com/sfx/prednisone-side-effects.html

Most everything I read didn't attempt to define what long-term is, but I did find more than those to references saying that over 10 mg is enough to be bad long-term.

My guess is that it probably depends on the dose -- you can probably safely stay on 10 mg for longer than you can stay on 40 mg.

Bottom line, I wouldn't stay on 10 mg of pred for longer than a few months, because the side effects are so serious and NOT reversible.

yup, unfortunately I think that is the only way for you to know -

I wasn't allergic, it just lost it's effectiveness -

definitely try cutting back - it's not like pred where if you just stop, bad things might happen, but to be on the safe side for your body, don't just stop -

Defining long term is obviously pretty futile. But, you're body normally makes it's own cortisol at about 8 - 12 mgs per day so any dose of that much or higher stops your adrenal glands from manufacturing it's own cortisol. The longer you take this dose or higher the longer your body does not make it's own. If you take it at that dose for too long of a period (again a pretty futile definition of long term) then you run the risk of adrenal shock if you should eventually taper the dose to lower than that 8 - 12 mgs per day. Adrenal shock can be very bad, up to and including death. Getting past that aspect then you are talking about all of the other side effects from long term prednisone usage which can happen at any dosage, smaller or larger.

Well, what else should they say, soystud? We know that pred does an amazing job at calming inflammation of all kinds. It's used to treat a whole host of conditions. But, we also know that it comes with a pretty serious set of side effects when it's used for too long.

My guess is that they haven't done controlled studies to determine when the long-term side effects kick in. I mean, we KNOW that there are some pretty serious side effects that can pop up when you're on pred for a while, right? Can you see anyone signing up for that study?

"Oh, here...take 10 mg of pred every day and let's see how long it takes for you to develop osteoporosis, glaucoma, and diabetes."

And, of course, it'll depend highly on the person. A 60 year old woman with a slim build would probably develop osteoporosis a lot faster than a 25 year old guy with a strong build.

So what they have to go on are reported side effects, and it's impossible to get good data from that.

I guess I don't really care exactly what long-term means; I just won't rely on pred to keep symptoms at bay.

my problem fruity stems from people spending so much time quoting "facts" based on what someone reads -

yes, I want real world, pertinent information, not the regurgitated stuff we get all the time on this forum -

of course there are risks to pred - even a dumb-ass like me understands that - but I think those risks can be mitigated by many factors -

pred vs biologics vs bag vs loaded pants ? we all have a choice !

but hey, I've got a lawn to mow, so off I go