Acute lightheadedness...

Hi lynda62707

I had the same thing. The pred can raise your blood pressure it certainly did with me. My doctor put me on ramipiril to lower my blood pressure. Having said that i still got dizzy spells from time to time when i got stressed and anxious .....I used to put my feet in some warm to hot water and have a cuppa which helped me to relax.....kind thoughts lynda.. hope this dizzy phase passes soon the pred journey is one phase after another...

I frequently feel lightheaded and woozy—not to the extent you describe but very often. A search of posts on this forum showed that it has been mentioned many times which gave me some consolation.   I blame mine on the pred.  My heart rate and bp are fine.

Hang on—it’s a bumpy ride! But it will get better!

Reading quickly through this thread, your heart sensations sound like what I had.  In fact I first noticed them years ago and was sent for some sort of test, on a treadmill, can't really remember.  Got much worse when I was on pred.  Doctor "not worried" and no investigation.  Then when on holiday this spring I happened to mention to a fellow traveller that I'd been waking up with headaches every morning.  She suggested I needed more salt.  As we were at dinner she made me grind a little salt onto my plate and take a taste with my fingertip.  She said if it tasted good it would mean I was salt deficient.  I did this.  it was delicious!  She told me to keep on tasting it until it didn't taste good any more.  It kept on tasting good so eventually I stopped.  But the next morning I didn't have a headache.  I eventually realized that this had been going on for so long I expected to wake up with a headache, although sometimes it would go away quickly.  A couple of evenings later I was doing the same thing, eating grains of salt, when suddenly it tasted awful and I knew I'd finally had enough.  Until the last week or two I haven't had a single morning headache.  But I got a bit slack and didn't taste salt in the evenings to see if I wanted more, and I've had morning headaches again the last little while (not same as a weather-related migraine).  

The point of this long account is, along with not getting morning headaches my heartbeat stopped feeling like it was skipping!  And a few other vague symptoms (aching legs and, for a time, a feeling not of dizziness but of lightheadedness, as though I wasn't really present) also went away.  I have kept tabs on my blood pressure.  Before this all happened my normally low blood pressure had started to creep up close to the danger zone (again the doctor wasn't worried), but now it is completely back to my usual low normal.  

I believe I've had a low salt intake for many many years, brainwashed like so many of us into believing the less salt the better.  But with pred and improving my already healthy diet I wasn't even getting the occasional top up of salt from eating prepared foods, which do contain too much salt, and became definitely salt deficient.