Adrenal Pentas to jumpstart adrenal glands while tapering ?

My sister flew into town so we went to dinner. She was hearing me gripe about how I am not liking tapering down this time with prednisone and wished they would just give me Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) which would awaken the adrenal glands from their hibernation pretty quickly.

She takes Nature-Throid by prescription for the thyroid. She also said she takes something for her adrenal glands from a integrative M.D. trained in eastern medicine. I said all those products touting 'adrenal support' with herbs are a ripoff. Sure licorice will allow prednisone/prednisolone to circulate longer in your system before being removed by the liver but none of those products strengthen or awaken the adrenals - pure bunk.

So she tells me what the product is and I look it up on my phone and I had to chuckle because she considers herself totally vegetarian. The ingredient in the pills she swears has 'changed her life' and her daughters energy levels is 'Glandula Suprarenalis' or ground up adrenal glands. Now I am pretty sure that is sourced from an animal not a plant so I respected her wished not to tell her what is in the pills.

I do not see even how this would work unless some ACTH is in the adrenal glands and part of what gets ground up - that could actually work !

Has anyone taken Adrenal Pentas or its new name Adrenal 6x ?

Very strong endorsement from her, she swears by it and been using it for a long time now.

Post Edited (aguywithuc) : 3/27/2013 8:59:51 AM (GMT-6)

C_G_K said...
According to the research I have done, there is no known way to speed up adrenal recovery after taking pred. No matter what you do, it will take the same amount of time to wake up. That's why the quicker you get off the better, because if you are on pred for an extended time, it can take up to a year for your adrenals to fully recover.

I agree and thats an excellent point about getting off asap, got down to 15 for the cath lab surgery but had to go up, if I could lounge around, not lift not work I could go down fast. Lifting is out as that doubled my need the next day, mild cardio is probably a good idea.

However I think the one exception is ACTH. The adrenals obey that and what we are really waiting on is the body to increase that signal.

Now here is a new fact. I was aware that even after taper to zero you could need a dose on rough days for up to a year. I did not know though that this reflects the normal 'elastic' behaviour of our adrenals.

"The normal adrenal gland responds to serious illness by making up to 10 times more cortisol than it usually makes. It automatically makes as much as the body needs. If you are taking a cortisol replacement drug because your body cannot make these hormones, you must increase the cortisol replacement drugs during times of illness, injury, or surgery."

I had to increase due to surgery and stress. Wanted to just crash after commute home yesterday but sister flies in for dinner and kid attacks mine on bus so I had to go to their house pound on their door and open can of whoopass on the parents. No way I could that without more prednisone when I felt like lying on the floor but I just took 5mg to snap me out of it.

Here is the answer to my question :

Adrenal activity is regulated by the pituitary gland. When the adrenals become fatigued, the pituitary senses this fatigue in the form of lowered levels of hydrocortisone and releases ACTH. ACTH commands the adrenals to perk up and produce more hormones. That works for a while, but the adrenals may become overworked and unable to respond; in which case ACTH stimulation simply stresses them more and leads more quickly to fatigue. However, the pituitary is unmerciful and continues to pour forth ACTH like a man whipping a tired horse to do work it is incapable of doing. If the adrenal gland can get just a bit of rest from the ACTH whip, it is allowed to regenerate, with the help of the measure listed above. During this respite, the adrenals can recover some lost function.

However I am NOT suffering from adrenal fatigue, quite the opposite my adrenals just got a 2 month vacation courtesy of prednisone doing their job !

Therefore ACTH should Q my adrenals to perk up.

I forgot why this is so hard now when I had a smooth landing last fall.

PROCARDIA double strength vasodilator. This stuff killed the buzz from prednisone at 40mg - just killed it. Now dropping pred and staying on that is murder. If I take normal stimulants the effective ones are vasoconstrictive and then I am defeating the purpose of taking PROCARDIA in the first place. So I am just not taking it today have to get stuff done. The PROCARDIA is for my hand because of the UC related clotted ulner artery, the radial needs to expand and carry the load.

So I too read the only way to fix a failed taper off prednisone is to backup and go higher and come down slower.

Now over on the chineese medicine angle we have 'Adrenal Glandular' recommendations. I am the biggest skeptic of this kind of thing. However a drowning man will grab even a hot poker and what the heck my sister is a real datapoint strongly endosring the use of Adrenal Glandular products.

So here is what I turned up today :

"While many nutritionally-oriented health professionals have begun to use megavitamin therapy to combat stress, another group of doctors has considered the value of "glandular therapy."
What is glandular therapy? Simply, it is the use of glandular and organ substances to bolster the function of a patient's organs or glands.

While this, at first glance, smacks of sympathetic magic, some modern physicians have taken the observations of anthropologists and placed them in a clinical and therapeutic situation. And they have done so with surprising results.

The key concept in glandular therapy is that Like cells help like cells. Many believe that raw glandular tissues contain intrinsic factors that are distinct from vitamins, minerals, hormones, or enzymes. The fact that these active agents have not yet been identified seems of little consequence. It follows that vitamins were believed to exist at a certain time but were not identified until Casimir Funk appeared on the scene.
These cellular factors, interestingly, are not species specific but rather are organ-specific. This means that the raw cellular material of a bovine liver, for instance, will be picked up from the bloodstream by a living human being's liver when eaten. Skeptical? It was documented by Dr. A. Kment in German medical publications in 195 8 and 1972. Kment demonstrated, through radioactive isotope tracing, that factors from glandular tissues were taken by the bloodstream and absorbed by corresponding glands in the recipient.

While this research was conducted with injectible glandulars, the clinical results of doctors using oral dehydrated glandular concentrates (in tablet or capsule form) strongly suggest that active factors are indivisible and are relatively undisturbed by digestion.

Historically, glandulars are not completely unfamiliar to us. When eating meat, most "primitive" peoples (as well as carnivores) ate the total animal including organs, glands, and muscle tissues. Nutritionally, eating all parts of an animal makes sense. Glands and organs vary in their levels of known nutrients. Zinc, for instance,- is extremely high in the prostate; but it is low in other organs. Eating a total animal would seem to offer one type of balanced nutrition."

"Glandular, or as it is sometimes called, cellular, therapy has roots that date from the turn of this century. The first therapeutic use of glandulars came in 1912 with the administration of thyroid cells to children. What is considered a landmark day in glandular therapy occurred in 1931 when a surgeon, Professor de Quervain, consulted Dr. Paul Niehans to assist him in the treatment of a patient who developed muscular spasms after the removal of the thyroid and accidental damage to the parathyroid glands in surgery. Dr. Niehans, now considered to be the father of glandular therapy, chopped parathyroid glands from a young calf and administered it to the patient in injectible form. A positive response in the patient was noted within minutes, and she lived for more than 35 years without a relapse."

I had a cat that lived 18 years, he was fed junk cans of 9-lives but he was an outdoor cat and would consume WHOLE squirrels, he ate everything but one small organ he would skip but all the other organs he consumed, the hair, even the bones. He would do this in the garage after offering it to me so I could see him consume it all day as I mowed the lawn. Healthiest tuxedo cat you ever saw very well muscled and calm and everybody commented how buff and relaxed he was. His sister was indoors and afraid of the wind and completely WIRED. Meanwhile g/f had two cats she kept indoors and fed expensive Iams food and they were sick all the time.

www.rethinkingcancer.org/resources/magazine-articles/9_9-10/whats-behind-glandular-therapy.php

"The use of glandular and organ concentrates follows this logic: that the glandular supplement improves the activity of the particular gland(s) by delivering cell-specific and gland-specific factors. Translated into practical terms, this means that raw adrenal gland or concentrate would support adrenal function in the recipient. By doing this, it would thereby offer nutritional and other subtle biochemical support to the anti-stress and anti-fatigue qualities that the adrenal is known to possess. Similarly, raw liver concentrate would assist liver "

Post Edited (aguywithuc) : 3/27/2013 6:26:46 PM (GMT-6)

deltaforce said...
I got majority of the stuff you mentioned here. What I am not getting is your goal. Do you want to kickstart Adrenals? If yes, why? Why you don't want your adrenals to 'wake up' naturally, unless you have diagnosed Adrenal insufficiency.

Usually when your Pred course tapering reaches to 10mg, adrenals start waking up and that is the crucial time, not to hurry up with tapering.

If you ask me, PTA (Pituitary, Thyroid and Adrenal) axis is the last thing I will mess around with.

I used to say the exact same thing about 10mg. Now I have *new* information.

I was just reading although our adrenals make 8mg per day they also can flex to 10 x that amount or 80mg per day depending on the demand that day. Once tapered completely off prednisone it says you may still require oral consumption of prednisone over the next 12 months due to very stressful days or surgery or trauma etc.

Makes sense that although the adrenals are not fully suppressed and are producing they do not yet have that fully elastic effect to go to 10x and require supplementation from time to time.

So back to my case. Why am I impatient ? I tapered down last fall and it went smooth. However this time I am on double strength procardia because I lost my ulner artery in an auto accident when the other drive hit me head on crossing over the line. I could not do the angiogram then due to 40mg prednisone and tried to taper down in a hurry and return to the hospital. It was hard getting down to 15mg but the angiogram was completed safely however it failed to help me. They actually messed up my good arm.

So the procardia has had a devastating effect, it takes away the stimulating effect you normally get from your prednisone dose, it is so bad that I fall asleep driving and had a real hard time driving to angiogram surgery because I could not eat or drink anything so not even a cup of coffee. Now procardia is a VASODILATOR which I need right now because 50% of the blood supply to left hand is gone, this all began with 'BLUE' fingertips after the auto accident.

Obviously I am in my lane here and this was not my fault. My truck is the little black one.

i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a593/bengelhaphoto/DemolishedByMonsterTruck_zps46821f35.jpg

But if I am not careful the next accident will be my fault. I try to work from home but have had to pull off the highway while driving downtown. Now what would be a normal remedy for me while tapering on pred ?

1-Stimulants...problem is they are mostly VASOCONSTRICTIVE cancelling out the good from procardia
2-Weightlifting....problem is after surgery I hit the weights and it caused me to need double the prednisone the next day, it was essentially adrenal shock everything ached like hell.

So right now I cannot 'be myself' I cannot work rapidly on the computer solving performance bottlenecks writing software learning new things because I feel artificially like just lying down.

Yesterday I skipped the procardia in order to just get sh!t done.

I cannot lift weights, I have a huge gym downstairs, plywood over concrete overlaid with rubber flooring 100 lbs weights hip/leg sled, squat cage. Its just sitting there with morning sunbeams.

I need to be my normal active self, single parent 7 days a week raising a 12 year old which is also demanding because when she gets home its drive her to gymnastics or play Mr. Mom and help her find the right ceramic curling iron and experiment with that and help her with math homework.

I need my energy back and since procardia entered the mix I lost all energy even at prednisone 40mg it wiped it out and its only going to get worse as I lower from here at 20mg. Anything to help the adrenals along would be welcome. This is not a 'normal' taper experience I have tapered many times before.

Procardia XL sustained-release tablets may cause dizziness or light-headedness or fainting. These effects may be worse if you take it with alcohol or certain medicines. Use Procardia XL sustained-release tablets with caution. Do not drive or perform other possibly unsafe tasks until you know how you react to it. Sit up or stand slowly.

Patients who take Procardia XL often feel tired or run down for a few weeks after starting treatment. Be sure to take your medicine even though you may not feel "normal."

It has been over a month now and still not 'normal' and feeling run down which is worsening as the prednisone drops, can't reach for more prednisone - need adrenals to perform.

Post Edited (aguywithuc) : 3/28/2013 9:14:39 AM (GMT-6)

deltaforce said...
I am sorry to hear that you were that seriously hurt. I do remember when you posted this picture first time.

Pardon my ignorance but are you pointing towards Nifedipine for your inability to do exercise and 'down' feeling? or its the Ulnar artery that makes your arm shaky (and so you can not do the exercise, heavy lifeting and stuff)?

Procardia is mentioned a lot in the literature as being a remedy. 1) procardia 2) thrombolysis drip ( DENIED after angiogram ) 3) Rip-n-Replace artery or 'resection' ( DENIED after angiogram )

Thanks for the recommendation I will look into the alternative.

I was doing the best brainiest work of my life on 40mg prednisone until the Nifedipine. It cancelled out that good part of being on prednisone and it continues as I attempt to taper. I am learning that massive hydration helps. Makes sense since you need to backfill the blood volume after expanding the arteries. However not taking it yesterday returned me to normal and my work pace and thinking picked up and was brisk again. I finally took it before bed.

There is no inability to lift heavy. However there is a cost. So the day of lifting I feel energized but the next day there is so much muscle inflammation from being on a blood thinner ( coumadin/warfarin ) while lifting heavy that the normal dose of prednisone cannot cover it. Functioning adrenal glands would be elastic and crank out more cortisol because they can ramp up 10x their normal output on demand but all we have is me and my pills so either I take more prednisone or I feel like I am having adrenal shock because the prednisone is all used up. I am trying to get off prednisone so I have to cancel the weightlifting to keep the demand for prednisone low.

deltaforce said...
What does the angiogram say about the status of the artery?

Clotted from palm to elbow where it splits from working Radial artery. Little ones broke off ( emboli ) and entered 3 fingers. Procardia is trying 'open' everything up, the fingers were purple tipped and shrivling with poor 'capillary refill'. I have had the doc double the procardia and its now time released once per day dose and he approved my taking over the counter Nattokinase. One or both did improve things, I am able to type with finger pads where I had to glue on fake nails before to avoid hammering them without sufficient blood supply to keep up with the wear and tear. Actually feels a bit painful today and I have to wonder if the arteries build up a resistance to procardia, another surgeon who did the angiogram said she would have me put nitroglicerin on them topically but never wrote the script. I looked it up and after 2 weeks they no longer have an effect as the body gets used to it.
So after getting pred down to 15mg I manned up and took the angiogram guided cable/wire through going femoral artery up torso down arm for pictures but she quickly abandoned setting me up for 24 hour drip saying the clot had reinforced too much. Probably would have been the same answer when I first went to hospital because it was a full week after the auto accident. TPA clot buster drip works best hours after the vascular event not days or weeks. Worse news was she then said I was not a candidate for medivial rip and replace resection either. Said it was clotted end to end and you must connect the donor artery/vein good-to-good and I have no good. My friend did the ulnar test and both of his left and right are done apparently from 30 years of biking. However mine was cutoff abruptly and the Radial needs time to expand and supply more blood. This she said was my only pathway remaining. Interesting to note is that the Allen test to check the Ulnar is used for coronary bypass where they rob the Radial from the arm, so they must know in advance the ulnar artery is working and ready to do the job solo. Reverse of my situation I have a solo working Radial. Looking at Nattokinase plus Serrapeptase together to see if they help clear it out.

deltaforce said...


I am on Verapamil 320mg/day (for migraine) and both of the guys do the same job, nifedipine may be little quicker though. I don't know the efficacy of both of these agents to get the job done, may be nifedipine is more potent than Verapamil. So could this 'down' feeling be a result of excess vasodilation in other parts of the body? I suspect, but I could be wrong. Talk about this to the Rxing doctor.

From my point, playing with a feedback loop without any adrenal insufficiency is not a good idea. You might as well feel better if you just take couple of tricyclic antidepressants (more serotonin but regular cortisol).

Thanks for the feedback I will look into all of that tonight. Made it downtown into office, drinking lots and lots of water and not eating is keeping me alert. Day two of holding the line at 20mg prednisone, 10 upon rising, 10 mid day. Tried the ground up adrenals, cant see that hurting but holding off the thyroid stuff because no bloodwork has ever said I had an issue there. Going to directlabs.com to get a CBC etc and see about checking T1-T4 and of course anemia indicators like serum iron and platelets which should be fine.

I am a complicated patient, dropping pred while on blood thinner is crazy, hard to believe the GI doc wont give me Uceris to help make it a smooth landing, need to visit a new GI and see if that doc will give it to me and what they say about a future request for iron infusion as he denied that too. Getting up close and familiar with the limits of medical world, previously they were miracle workers but not this time around.