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just been diagnosed with. pmg

Posted , 16 users are following.

mutley2
mutley2

hi. im andy have started tretment of 15 prednisolone 5 days ago havent had any reduction  in pain so far how long does it take to take affect.it probably varies but would appreciate your experience thanks

1 like, 50 replies

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  • Marla0415
    Marla0415 mutley2

    Posted

    Hi Andy,  My experience was by the fifth day of Prednisone I was feeling quite a but of improvement and after a week it seemed like a miracle as most all of my pain was gone. That was at my initial diagnosis and put on 15 mg Pred. I've read on this forum where some have felt relief even within a few hours of starting the Pred! My RA dr said it was one way of knowing whether if was truly PMR as it responds fairly quickly to steroid treatment. I

    don't know why such variations between different people. Certainly hope by now you are feeling some relief. 

    • mutley2
      mutley2 Marla0415

      Posted

      hi marla thank you for your reply.l am feeling slight improvements im now on day six hopefully this will continue as l need to get back to work.andy
    • tony80950
      tony80950 Marla0415

      Posted

      Andy:

      I have been on pred for about 2 years.  I had relief within 24 hours when I started.  Have been in touch with many PMR patients and the general result is within 2-3 days.  My suggestion is to ask for a higher dose, maybe 30mg and work a 5mg reduction per week, seeing how each reduction makes you feel, until you are at 15 or 20 mg then a slow reduction.  I have gone from 30 down to 11 on a monthly reduction of 2, now 1mg. per month.

      Good luck

      Tony

  • tina-uk_cwall
    tina-uk_cwall mutley2

    Posted

    Hello mutley, it would be nice to have received a huge reduction in pain and stiffness by now however, it is not unknown for some sufferers to have to start on a higher dose, eg, 20mgs before they see any improvement. If you don't get any improvement soon then you must get back to your dr. Good luck, regards, tina
  • diana21296
    diana21296 mutley2

    Posted

    It must depend on the inflammation in your bloods - or not.  I had to start on 30mgs and had to stay on that for 6 weeks with 70% reduction in pain after about 48 hours.  I then split the dose of pred - 2/3rd in the morning and 1/3 at teatime ass that managed the pain through the night better.    Good luck.
  • EileenH
    EileenH mutley2

    Posted

    My stiffness was gone in 6 hours and I could walk down and back up stairs normally, not like a toddler - some of the pain took longer to fade, the hip and foot pain especially took a few months.

    The basic criterion is that overall, your symptoms should improve by about 70% within a short time and then should return in a similar time fram eif you stop the pred. The most recent guidelines suggest starting at 20 or even 25mg - and there is also a question of size! Bigger blokes need more than tiny ladies - not unreasonably!

    But I hate to have to disillusion you: whatever your doctor has told you, you will not be back to 100% just because you are on pred. The inflammation, and thus the stiffness and some pain will be helped considerably by the pred, but the underlying autoimmune disorder that causes it all isn't really touched by the action of the pred. The fatigue remains - and your muscles will still be intolerant of exercise. That is something that has to be managed by you - by pacing yourself and resting as needed. If you do things in small bites you will achieve much more because you will stop and rest BEFORE your muscles are exhausted - but if you overdo it on one day because you feel so good, you will very likely suffer for it the next day.

    It all depends what your job is - but you will struggle to manage a normal day working if you have a physical job. Most of us know we would struggle to even GET to work of we had to commute - never mind then do a day's work. And resting, not sitting and doing nothing but gentle exercise, walking and gentle activites, is a very important part of recovery. 

    If you don't start to feel noticeably better at 15mg, your doctor should try 20, possibly even 25mg pred, but if that doesn't make a real difference within a couple of weeks then the diagnosis does need to be reconsidered - there are other things that can start looking very like PMR.

    • LayneTX
      LayneTX EileenH

      Posted

      Mutley, For me, 15 mg for a week, not much change, then 20 mg., I was still 70% pain for months (vs 70% better). But anything less than 100% was better for me! 

      Just be sure to protect you stomach. Pred did a number on mine. 

      Good luck, ask a lot of questions on this forum, many of us can relate or maybe help out. 

    • EileenH
      EileenH LayneTX

      Posted

      Remember though, it is a GLOBAL improvement - so if the stiffenss is loads improved that counterbalances the pain to some extent - if you have shoulder/hip bursitis or tendonitis/synovitis then that generally takes longer to fade because these areas have poorer blood flow so less pred gets to them - that's why a local injection often works much faster.
  • ptolemy
    ptolemy mutley2

    Posted

    I found a miracle happened within twenty four hours. As others have said you may need to up your dose to say 20mg and see if that works. If you are a big tall man 15mg may just not be enough. Have you had blood tests? If you had a raised CRP and ESR initially, they should be reduced by the steroids.
  • karenjaninaz
    karenjaninaz mutley2

    Posted

    Within a few hours I felt so much better I was ready kiss the ground my doctor walked on. I then felt so much relief I took naps to make up big sleep debt caused by PMR pain.

    But everyone is different and the collective group experience on this forum is invaluable. 📚

  • maid_mariane
    maid_mariane mutley2

    Posted

    My husband thought i was nuts when i told him after an hour i could feel the drug working and that was 15mg. However it didn't get rid of all the pain and the following week we upped the dose to 20mg and it made a great improvement. I noticed pains returned in the afternoon so i then started splitting the dose and now take the majority in the morning and 5mg at 3pm. Which keeps afternoon pain in check unless i overdue it which doesn't take much.

    This is a great forum for learning. Good luck.

    Mariane

    • diana21296
      diana21296 maid_mariane

      Posted

      That's just what I did only my pains started coming back in the small hours.  After splittiing the dose and taking some at teatime, the night pain disappeared.  But this is not what the Dr's advise, which I think they should.  My Dr hadn't heard of splitting!!!  Well she has now!
    • EileenH
      EileenH diana21296

      Posted

      Their received wisdom is to take it all at once, in the morning about 8.30am with breakfast. This dates from a study that showed you have less adrenal suppression from a 15mg dose taken then than from a 5mg dose taken at 10pm, before bed. 

      However - I believe that while this may have some merit when someone is on a short course of pred for an infection or asthma attack, for patients who are on a longer term pred management at above 10mg at any point, there is going to be adrenal suppression anyway so WHEN you take your pred is less important.

      The other factor is they all assume that since pred can affect your sleep patterns, especially at higher doses, the earlier in the day you take it the less likely that is to happen. Except that ignores the fact that all of us are different in our response to pred - it isn't the pred that wakes me, I'm sure, it is the shedding of the inflammatory substances in the body causing a hot sweat. As soon as the pred kicks in, they almost disappear.

      And they seem not to remember that the length of effect of pred also varies, being anything from 12 to 36 hours. If you are a 12 hour person - the effect isn't going to last until the next dose if you only take it once a day. In fact - for those people, I wonder if using dexamethasone might help as its effect is about double that of pred.

  • mutley2
    mutley2

    Posted

    Thank you everybody for your advice . after  8 days of 15 i feel 50% better which is a great relief. The remaining pain is everything connected to the shoulders like one of the replys mentioned could be down to less blood supply so less pred getting to the deep tissues im going to use. some gentle massage to help the blood supply.thanks again for your advice.andy
    • EileenH
      EileenH mutley2

      Posted

      Bowen therapy helped my shoulders a lot - I'm not the only one. It doesn't work for everyone but really is worth trying the 3 sessions which they reckon will show if it can change anything or not. A few of us have staggered in to a session and walked out after an hour with far fewer problems - one lady forgot the walking stick she'd needed not to fall over and had to go back to fetch it.
    • LayneTX
      LayneTX EileenH

      Posted

      Funny Eileen, when I leave Bowen session I feel I can take on the world! 

      Cant remember if I said this before, but recently she and I were talking, I don't always talk much, then she did the shoulder blade area and suddenly I shut up! I told her that later and said if you ever need to shut someone up just do that move! She laughed and said most of her clients like that move. 

      wink 

    • LayneTX
      LayneTX mutley2

      Posted

      Regarding shoulders, many of us posted a while back about the pain and how washing hair was so difficult.  I've just had to learn to use other muscles around the shoulder, such as do not internally rotate, it pinches mine, and use my lats and PT taught me to externally rotate shoulders when lifting things.  It really helped! Gotta save those babies! Don't want to wear them out. wink 
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