Prednisone side effects?

I am on and have been for awhile: promethazine (12.5mg), seroquel(25mg), zoloft(25mg), and zantac(5ml, twice a day). All these medications enjoy caused weight loss. I am however worried about the side effects of my foreign medicine prednisone(60mg) that I was put on today for crohn's disease. Will this cause any big amounts of weight gain? I'm ok with a few pounds but nothing more. It have made me lose my apitite rather than increase it, is that a good sign I won't gain?
Answers:
Prednisone is a synthetic steroid closely related to the pure hormone cortisol made by the adrenal glands to combat stress and inflammation. There are three categories of steroids, and this one is a corticosteroid (cortisol, as the name suggests, is made in the cortex, or outer layer, of the adrenal).

Side effects are divided into those from short-term use and those from chronic use, such as for several weeks, months or years. For Crohn's disease, it can be either. Your doctor will probably keep you on the lowest does that works for you for the shortest time possible.

In the short run, like a week, corticosteroids approaching Prednisone can cause a little water retention and for a moment weight gain and appetite stimulation. It interferes with the action of insulin, and your glucose will turn up a little, but you won't feel that or care unless you are diabetic. I put a diabetic on pulse steroids on Monday (big dose sunshine 1 and 2 with tapering doses over a week and then stop) and warn him that his glucose, which he checks continually, will be higher. Corticosteroids also make some people surface euphoric, which is a great feeling, but still a side effect. None of this usually matters, and short-term use of steroids is very out of danger and often effective. If you're lucky, that's what you're doing now and it will work to quell the flair that I know that you must be have to get this prescription. And if your luck continues to hold out, you wont need intervention again soon, and that when you do, a pulse for a week will do it again and again.

If you're unlucky, it won’t work. In between is where it works, but merely when you're taking it, which means either abandoning it or taking it day after day. 60 mg is a nuke dose, and is typical for a pulse, going to 40mg in a day or two, then 20mg, 10mg, 5mg and stop. But if your have a major flair with lots of bloody diarrhea, your doc may be thinking of keeping you on high doses for a week or a month, and trying to bring it down to zilch if he/she can, or at least under 10mg if he can. But if every time you take it you take relief but every time you taper, you flair, you may be on 10 or 20mg a day indefinitely: chronic corticosteroid therapy.

In that skin, you have some more serious side effects to consider, although they will be worth the risk, one being adrenocortical failure (low blood pressure, abdominal misery, dehydration, electrolyte = sodium, potassium etc disturbances). This would happen if you tapered or stopped your Prednisone too abruptly after weeks or more of use. The aim is that you are getting more corticosteroid by mouth than your own gland normally makes, and the body knows it. So it shuts sour the signal to make cortisol, which is a hormone called ACTH made in the anterior pituitary floppy from the bottom of the brain above and between the eyes. This hormone stimulates the adrenal cortex to secrete. But on high dose steroids, it shuts off, and within its absence, the adrenocortex shrinks and shuts down like a muscle that you stop using,

Within a few weeks, the adrenal can't make the usual on a daily basis dose of cortisol, and if you take away the Prednisone, you'll learn what corticosteroids do by experiencing their deficiency: adrenal fiasco (Addison's syndrome). In this state, you are dependent on your pills. Not forever. You could go on a taper: 20 then 18 then 20 after 16 then 18 then 16 then 14 etc and wean down to nothing as you adrenocortex wakes up under the influence of a whipping from pituitary ACTH telling it to stir up. But the transformation from steroid dependency to normal takes weeks and a weaning regimen.

There are a few other important unpromising effects seen in some but not all chronic steroid users, including gallstones, ulcer, cataracts, steroid-induced diabetes (goes away when the steroids go away) and osteoporosis. Also, the drug Levaquin, an excellent antibiotic, can cause the Achilles ligament to rupture.

You can see why we have a love hate relationship with corticosteroids approaching Prednisone (and cortisol and dexamethisone). They’re lifesavers for some people with inflammatory disease like Crohn’s, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. But they’re treacherous to work beside. The choice to use them is close to a no-brainer. Short-term and pulse anytime they might help, long term only when no other treatment make life bearable, and in those cases, you not only hold no choice but to use them, it’s a fair trade. If it’s the difference between a normal life and cataract in ten years and painful bloody squirts for ten years, take the steroids. Therefore, we don’t use them when we don’t own to. We use short-term pulse or low dose therapy when it works, and chronic steroids at whatever dose is necessary if that’s the paw we’re dealt.

BTW, the other two categories of steroids besides [1] corticosteroids are [2] mineralocorticoids like aldosterone that regulate fluid, electrolyte and acid-base homeostasis of the blood and interstitial fluids at the kidney, and [3] Source(s): Guess. (Med academy and a gazillion years on the job)
Prednisone can cause GI upset, it can make you jittery or cause insomnia and fluid retention. These are the signs a party can detect.

However, you have been prescribe prednisone for a condition which highly warrant it and you have to outweigh the benefit of taking it over the risk. It might be that after you get your condition somewhat under control, the prednisone can be reduced and conceivably even phased out.

Don't worry about the potential to gain weight, Just do what you obligation to do in order to take trouble of yourself and your disease.
Fluid retention is a major side effect of prednisone therapy. Take with food otherwise it will bring gastric upset. Changes in appetite occurs on an individual basis. Some lose their appetite, for others the appetite increases. Source(s): Pharmacist

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