#prednisone#prednisonesideeffects#prednisonewitthdrawal
What if i could predict the future wouldn’t that be magical well maybe today if you’ve been prescribed prednisone i can because i asked thousands of patients what they wished they’d known before taking prednisone and i’m going to share that with you today when they responded i grouped all their responses into the main types of categories they might have said a
Lot of different things and so one person’s response could be included multiple times the number one thing people wish they’d known was about weight gain they wish they’d known the moon-faced and surprisingly to me the thing that people mentioned the least as far as things they were surprised about was sleep because for me that was so hard so we will cover each
Of those in the order of from the bottom to the top today sleep insomnia all of the prednisone it makes your mind just oh buzz it’s so hard it’s so hard to fall back asleep if you wake up after taking prednisone and so you’ll see on the left what the category is maybe another word for it and then on the right on all of these slides you’ll see an actual quote of
What somebody really typed so this person said weight gain and moonface sleepless nights and frequent urination throughout the night ooh i had all of that all right cushing’s another word for that is cushing’s syndrome or adrenal insufficiency that it shuts off your adrenals and you become adrenal and sufficient and it would destroy my life oh that’s so terrible
The thing is your adrenal gland is what normally secretes cortisol and prednisone mimics cortisol turning off your adrenal gland while you’re taking the prednisone first most people once you slowly go down in doses your adrenal gland will slowly build up its ability to make cortisol again but in a tiny percentage of people they can never make their own quarters
All again and that is so sad that’s called adrenal insufficiency okay hair loss this was more common than i anticipated and grouped in with hair was skin so people talked about dry skin about thin skin about oh all sorts of miserable things with their skin that people said that i lose between and possibly more 1/4 to 1/2 of my hair while on the devil’s tick tack
Every wash clumps would fall out same here i had at least 1/3 of my hair fall out but it wasn’t until after i stopped taking the prednisone for me dietary changes no salt no sugar no caffeine no high fat pretty much just eat lettuce and you will be fine that’s what somebody said ha no kidding another person said the proper diet and nutrients to make me come off them
Healthy they wish they’d known this oh and then carbs are the enemy thankfully i have created a whole video series about this you can check it out on the prednisone warriors with dr. megan page there’s a weight gain video series you can start at the beginning to learn how prednisone causes the weight gain and what dietary changes to make so check that out and i also
Created a supplement specifically for people on prednisone called neutralized zone it gives back the 10 nutrients that prednisone is stealing and i wish i’d had this while i was on prednisone so that i could at least know if nothing else i’m fighting back by giving back what prednisone steals next is timing i personally thought i was going to be on prednisone for
Like five days that’s it i thought oh i’ll be fine i was put on it right before halloween thought i’d be off before christmas nope this person said that i would still be on it 24 years later another person said once you start you will never end and this person it that it would change my life and then i would be on it for so long ten years and counting that’s an
Extremely long time most people really aren’t on it that long it’s very rare to be on it more than a couple months tapering so tapering is when you go down in doses and the number one thing you need to know for sure everyone is snow this is you can’t just stop taking it if your doctor gave you a prescription that supposed to last six days a week a month whatever
It is you can’t just take one pill and then not take the rest you have to do everything that the doctor says no matter what you do do what your doctor says because you can go into adrenal crisis that can kill you this person said i had no idea that i couldn’t just stop taking it until i wound up in the er i didn’t understand that i may need it for the rest of my
Life wow withdrawal so withdrawal is when you basically are going too fast essentially it’s when your body’s not keeping up with that taper so you’re going down in dose but your adrenal glands aren’t building up the cortisol and you’re having serious pain and suffering so this it’s the withdrawal syndrome is characterized by joint pains aches and fever basically
It’s like you have the flu but it’s not the flu it’s just going out for drug i’m not going to quote that one below that because i don’t swear but people feel like swearing because of this drug i wish someone would have warned me about withdrawal i had no idea and most doctors say a person might say withdrawal can cause some my legs yeah nothing mild about it no
People talk about being stuck on the couch unable to move unable to do anything just like everything hurts no energy just flat completely like a bulldozer ran over them you often hear that phrase oh it’s terrible moods so prednisone often messes with people’s emotions and they call it roid rage like steroid cuz prednisone is a steroid a corticosteroid a glucocorticoid
And the common things that people experience include depression anxiety and brain fog and i’ve also done a whole video series about this about the details about each of those conditions and coping mechanisms so check that out on the prednisone warriors with dr. megan page this person said you are a completely different person while on the devil drug it’s horriffic it
Changed my personality along with all its wonderful side effects i felt like a meaner person for sure it was a lot harder to be a nice mommy long-term okay there’s a lot of things that go into the long-term category but people wish they’d known that there are consequences to taking this drug even if you stopped taking it these are long-term consequences potentially so
Cataracts in both eyes you might have to get your eye get like cataract surgery and replace your lenses that life will never be the same and steroid myopathy that it would cause my hip to disintegrate and i would be left in a wheelchair we’ll get more into why how that happened that it would destroy my body so terrible the long-term consequences all right so this
Is more about that wheelchair so prednisone is leaching calcium from your bones it’s just stealing calcium and vitamin d and so one of the main consequences is osteoporosis that is terrible because you can lead to little joint fractures and bone fractures like your spine shrinking which is all really bad but the very worst in my opinion side-effect is a vascular
Necrosis another word for that is osteonecrosis i think that’s really the most terrible side effect of prednisone because it like destroys joints completely destroys them so that a 30 year old might have to have their hip replaced that’s not something that 30 year olds are supposed to deal with that’s something that 80 year olds are more likely to deal with and then
Lots of people talk about their teeth falling out rotting tons of cavities i didn’t have any problems with my teeth but lots of people talk about that and then this person said that it would make my bones so thin that i would end up with a fractured vertebrae like oh that’s awful weight gain the number one thing the most terrible thing that people regret that
They talk about how it’s horrible aching how it’s absurd weight gain and that leads to the moonface so this person said i gained about 80 pounds i’d get diabetes i’d have blood pressure i’d be miserable until i came off the meds which also takes a lifetime to try and come off once you’re on it so again i’ve made a whole video series about weight gain check it out
I’ll put a link below basically what we need to understand is that this drug has been if and risks i’ve gone through a lot of the risks that people wish they’d known about but it also has some amazing benefits like for me keeping me alive not letting me bleed to death that is amazing other people being able to breathe other people having their kidneys work and not
Die of toxicity these are miracles that prednisone causes i don’t want you to be sad and lost and frustrated right now i want you to understand that these benefits are truly amazing but some of the risks are pretty bad too so you need to figure out for yourself whether the benefits outweigh the risks and have a good long conversation with your doctor when you’re
Prescribed prednisone to make sure that the benefits outweigh the risks if it’s something you can possibly live without then that’s you know the benefits don’t outweigh the risk if it’s allowing you to move to be an active person again it’s allowing me to breathe or to have kidneys that work or a million other wonderful reasons that it works then it’s worth it and
These are possible risks and it might the benefits you just have to really have a good conversation about this with your doctor i have an article about that that i’ll link to below as well all right this is my article so you can see my little scale with the benefits and the risks thank you for your attention today and i am dr. megan your prednisone pharmacist signing off until next week
Transcribed from video
What I Wish I'd Known Before Taking Prednisone By Dr. Megan – Prednisone Pharmacist
