Went on prednisone now homeless

aguywithuc said...

hwarrior said...
The only issue with GH, at least for me, is that it requires an adrenal reserve that I don't have.

How so ?

GH pushes adrenals and mine are disfunctional due to Addison's. Thus excess of GH may cause excessive blood glucose levels due to too much Cortisol -- that is if you have good adrenals. By the same token, if you feel weak after taking GH, see if your glucose is low and if it is, chance are your adrenals are down.

aguywithuc said...

Have you ever tried PABA in regards to your adrenals ?

Yes, as a part of B complex. But general adrenal "tonics" don't work for me as I most likely have secondary adrenal insufficiency (this is when your pituitary doesn't produce enough ACTH which is supposed to tell adrenals to produce Cortisol and DHEA among many). Basically, my pituitary is half asleep . It's also lazy when it comes to TSH and hence hypothyroidism. It's a strange disease and requires complete replacements of many hormones. I doubt too many people would be interested in this so back to UC... After spending quite some time on the pubmed it looks like the following hormones favor mucosal healing:

GH, DHEA, Estrogen, Progesterone

A very simple and cheap solution is to take DHEA which will raise GH a little and Estradiol for sure. For as long as your Estradiol is within the range, you're fine. I had a good luck with Progesterone for low abdomen and back cramps because it's a great muscle relaxant. If you're spasmic while in a flare, it helps. Also, if you're doing Testosterone, your Progesterone will naturally be lower because of LH/FSH suppression that results in your gonads producing less Progesterone (in males, most of the Testo and Progesterone are produced by gonads). Another reason to take Progesterone is that it counters the higher Estradiol levels produced by DHEA therapy or when they're age-related. Progesterone helps with insomnia and some forms of depression. It's probably the safest hormone of all because when you take in excess it often spills into extra... Cortisol. That's right, so you end up getting more anti-inflammatory action for free in the worst case. So borrow your wife's progesterone cream or grab it all for yourself on Amazon .

Looks like Testosterone may be the least helpful when it comes to colitis. It does well with derma-level repairs but not the mucosal ones and many sources suggests it may be pro-inflammatory.

DHEA is a great stamina booster and those over 40 are typically already low on it even if they're healthy. Those who been taking ACTH-suppressive doses or corticosteroids (e.g. > 10 mg Prednisone for ladies or > 15 mg if you're a really big guy) for more than two weeks show severely depressed levels of DHEA. DHEA supplementation must accompany any corticosteroid use as it counteracts its catabolic affects. The reason the GI docs don't tell this to their patients is because they don't know much about hormones. The most common side-effect of DHEA is acne which is ok, in fact a few zits here and there is the way to tell it's working. If you're flushing after taking DHEA, it's probably because of Estradiol spikes. In that case either spread DHEA throughout the day (e.g. morning, noon, and evening) or add Progesterone or do both. In general, DHEA is highest on waking and then its levels get halved throughout the day. So if you were to take, say, 60 mg of DHEA per day, you could do 30 mg on waking, 15 mg lunch, 15 mg dinner.

From Dr. Lidner's website:

http://www.hormonerestoration.com/Cortisol.html

"Oral glucocorticoid therapy, whether hydrocortisone (HC) or an artificial steroid, suppresses ACTH and therefore DHEA production, thus creating a severe deficiency of a major anabolic hormone. DHEA is the body's natural cortisol antagonist and prevents many of the negative effects of cortisol. DHEA has anabolic effects through conversion to estradiol and testosterone within tissues throughout the body. DHEA is practically unknown to conventional medicine, even though it is the most abundant steroid hormone in the human body (20 times more abundant than cortisol, 8000 times more than estradiol or testosterone!)."

It's hard to say what hormonal balance is. I think the closer you're to how you felt when you were younger the better. In my 20's my facial skin was always oily and I had zits, yet I had so much more energy and stamina! So, no zits or energy? Oily skin or flabby muscles? You choose . 7-Keto is great at brightening up the mood but it's just one metabolite of DHEA's. After playing with 7-Keto for many years I've discarded it in favor of micronized DHEA. I used to combine 7-Keto with DHEA and GH and sometimes ended up with unpredictable results that I couldn't troubleshoot. There weren't much research available on 7-Keto back then. Perhaps there's more now.