How do you help stupid.

[Whippetygirl]

As you know I am moving house and you have probably guessed I have over done things. My arms from my elbow to shoulders hurt and I am having trouble lifting them, do I increase my Prednisilone for a few days and by how much, then how to go back to 25mgs or use pain killers. Many thanks.

[DorsetLady PMRGCAuk volunteer]

Could try painkillers first just to see if it's normal muscular pains that we all get when doing something different. If they don't help then you probably have caused your illness to flare, so an increase to maybe to 30mg would be enough to catch it. if it does, then you can go straight back down to 25mg after say 5 days.

Further advice - Delegate a bit more - if you can!

[PMRpro Ambassador]

Pred isn't a painkiller in the normal sense of the word. It reduces the inflammation of PMR and that reduces the symptoms. It does NOT relieve pain due to delayed onset muscle soreness. The soreness you develop due to overusing the muscles is different, caused by breaking the connections between the muscle fibres. In PMR not only does this happen more easily but the healing of these tiny tears takes longer - and pred won't speed it up. Pred may make it happen more easily and that is why we emphasise to everyone starting this journey they need to cut back on their activity - or they will think the pred isn't working any more.

I suspect that is what has happened to you. I don't think taking more pred will help - maybe using some NSAID gel might without causing too much in the way of side effects. It took the edge off it for me but wasn't entirely effective. Rest and time is what you need - and someone else's arms on loan.

[Yellowbluebell]

I moved house a week ago today. I thought I had everything covered to make things easy and even had the packing done by the removers. I have since spent a whole week just trying to find stuff!! Then we discovered the removers hadnt emptied our kitchen and we had to go back to old house!! We tried to take it easy whilst unpacking and stopped for plenty of coffee breaks and although a bit stiff we seem to have survived. We have refused to unpack anything over the weekend and just rested. For my aches I just took cocodamol and everything has settled down. Hopefully yours will respond to pain killers as well.

[HeronNS]

My personal feeling is pred is hard enough to taper down at the best of times and I'd be reluctant to increase a dose when you do in fact know why you hurt more today, probably not a "real" flare, i.e. increase in disease activity. Do as suggested, especially rest breaks, and let someone else do the lifting and carrying. I recently moved myself and I know the temptation to get things into place as quickly as possible. I was okay, but I paced myself, and also I'm much further on in the PMR/pred adventure than you are.

If you find things don't improve or get worse, then re-evaluate, but give yourself time.