Tapering off PRED

I tapered from 40mg of pred with 5mg increments and I went all the way down from 5, to 2.5, to taking 2.5 every other day for a week before I stopped taking it all together.

Tapering off of pred is not an easy task. For me, my symptoms slowly started coming back and I am still trying to get over the depression factor. But sadly I am back to 40mg as of yesterday because of a flare up. I am also taking Mesalamine (Ascol) pills, but they started not working as well, but definitely helped when I was tapering.

For me, drinking Camomile tea really does help my stomach. Taking time to relax and ease stress. Warm showers and lots of sleep.

Having your body be dependent on a drug is not fun and with tapering, just go slow. Don't rush. My doctor told me to up increase my pred when tapering if my symptoms were happening. I'm not a doctor, but that is what worked for me. I started on 40mg and it took me about 6 months to get off of that stuff.

I'm sorry if I'm not that much help. But I hope that you can be free of your symptoms very soon!

How long have you been taking Imuran? There's two points to a prednisone taper. Point one just has to do with the med (Prednisone) only and has nothing to do with UC. Point two has to do with UC symtoms only. Prednisone is only used to weaken your immune system to give your colon time to heal and then taper off. Obviously your colon is not healed so no matter how you taper it will not help your UC. You need to up your pred dose to heal your colon until the Imuran starts working and then taper off or formulate a different plan altogether.