#prednisone
Prednisone half-life what in the world is a half-life and why does it matter when you’re taking prednisone i’m dr. megan the prednisone pharmacist and i’m here to explain today what a prednisone half-life is and why you should care so first of all when you might be looking up the term prednisone half-life what are you really wanting to know what you really probably
Want to know is when am i going to feel better when is it going to be out of my system and that’s the question we will answer through by the end of this video so the short answer is the half-life of prednisone is 2 to 3 hours but what does that even mean so a half-life is how long it takes for half of something to be gone so if an atomic bomb goes off how long
Will it take for half of the radiation to disappear and they do calculations like that to figure out all sorts of really fancy scientific things but when it comes to a medicine if you do a half-life for example you took prednisone 40 milligrams you took two of these if you took that at 8 o’clock in the morning it’ll take 2 to 3 hours for half of it to be gone out
Of your system so let’s just round it up to 3 there are a lot of factors that could be changing how well your body breaks it down but we’ll just round it up just for easy rounding sake so if it’s 3 hours and you took 40 milligrams 3 hours after you take it personal from 8 until 11 you’ll be down to 20 milligrams 3 hours after that from 11 until 2 you’ll be down to
10 milligrams still active in your system from 2 until 5 you’ll be down to 5 milligrams and we’re getting smaller and smaller here right but how many half-lives matter well when you’re calculating it’s really only about five-and-a-half half-lives that you need to count until you can say it’s pretty much close to zero so you could say after about 18 hours somewhere
Give or take your body is free of the active prednisone so what difference does that make right like so i took it in the morning and 18 hours later it’s gone well it has a lot of things that it can affect first of all if you’re taking the prednisone at 8 a.m. versus 8 p.m. that changes how much is active in your system during different times of day for example if
You are taking it and it’s causing side effects like insomnia you would want to be taking it as early as you could like five or six in the morning even so that it could wear off completely by the time you need to fall asleep at night and that can help you get more restful sleep so that’s the first thing it can affect is the side effects but what about when else could
You take it so some doctors will prescribe prednisone to be taken every other day so you’d take five milligrams on monday skip take nothing on tuesday five milligrams on wednesday and that can be happening because of the half-life it’s a it’s giving your body a day off to hopefully help your adrenal glands recover they haven’t really shown that it necessarily makes
Much of a difference but it’s a strategy your doctor can use to help you cope and hopefully recover from taking prednisone other things that can that are worth understanding is prednisone is a medium length of time drug so it lasts the two or three hours whereas methylprednisolone lasts less time and then dexamethasone lasts way more time it lasts almost like a
Whole day is half-life so it takes a long time for the dexa method to get out of your system whereas hydrocortisone is often used when people are trying to get off of prednisone and it’s got a way shorter half-life so it needs to be taken multiple times a day you can usually reliably only have to take prednisone once a day but a hydrocortisone since it only lasts
A few hours it needs to be taken for example right before breakfast at lunch and at dinner maybe or it might be four times a day it really depends on when you need it and you work that out with your doctor so i promise the answer to the real question if you’re asking well what is prednisone is half-life the real question i think you’re asking me is when will it
Be out of my system and the real question behind that is when am i gonna feel better right there’s so many side effects so it’s gonna be out of your system in like a day right the drug itself but the side effects aren’t necessarily gone in a day for example let’s pretend like prednisone is a tornado our train adel might be a great way to get rid of a building if
Your disease is a building that you didn’t want anymore it would be a great way to do it it just goes in and immediately that building is gone right but what about all the collateral damage what about all the other buildings oh and your landscaping and all of the people and there are things that could have been affected those are the side effects you didn’t want to
Just take out one building i mean you probably only wanted to take out one building but it took out a whole city or a whole street or a lot more it had all of this damage when the prednisone is out of your system that’s like the tornado passed through town it’s gone the tornado is no longer there but its consequences are there’s still all of that damage that isn’t
Disappearing anytime soon somebody’s got to build those buildings back up somebody has to plant those trees again somebody has to find all of the things that blew away in storm and so prednisone side-effects do not instantly go away some of them might like for example the hunger it might suddenly just instantly be gone you might just suddenly have your normal
Appetite back when you stop taking it but side effects like psychiatric ones anxiety and mood changes might not go away very quickly and why is this because this is the actual drug itself in your system when it’s gone but it changes things in your body like the consequences to your brain to your adrenal glands to allover can be very long-term and for some people
It can take up to a year to really recover back to their formal adrenal sufficient self and so if you are feeling terrible after taking prednisone then you need to talk to your doctor you need to say hey i don’t feel so good like you took me off the prednisone but i still need some help can you help me and you should definitely talk to your doctor about it because
You shouldn’t feel awful after taking prednisone you should be able to have the dose taken down slowly enough that you can recover and so if you have any other real question burning questions behind prednisone half life let me know below i’d love to know what those are so i can answer them in either comments or in a future video and if you need help recovering from
Prednisone i have a prednisone checklist and i will link to that below that you can get and it has ways to cope with prednisone while you’re taking it and to help you recover after you’ve stopped taking it signing off as dr. megan the prednisone pharmacist
Transcribed from video
Prednisone Half-Life: When Will it be Out of My System? By Dr. Megan – Prednisone PharmacistliveBroadcastDetails{isLiveNowfalsestartTimestamp2020-02-27T141510+0000endTimestamp2020-02-27T142554+0000}
