I am on 5 mg and about to reduce to 4 how long should I stay on 4 before trying 3 ? Is a week long enough ?

[diduck]

Prednisone reducing

[PMRpro Ambassador]

NOOOOOOO!!!!! And really - a whole mg at a time at this level is pushing it. Even if this is a second dose of PMR and you expect to be fine at well below 5mg. Things do change and two episodes of PMR are rarely the same!

At these lower doses you really need to slow down - have I got it right: you have got from 15mg to 5mg in a couple of months, or even one month? The lower you get the nearer you are to the dose you will need and the idea is to identify that as accurately as possible. When you reduce at 1mg every week you can easily to overshoot and not realise for a few weeks - by which time you have no idea at all where it went wrong.

By the way, it would be very helpful if you wrote your story on your profile - it is difficult to give relevant comments without knowing the background.

[GOOD_GRIEF]

A better course of action would be to follow one of the DSNS tapering plans, which very gradually prods your adrenal glands into waking up and producing cortisol naturally again. The length of each reduction step is more like 4-6 weeks so you have a chance to be able to find out whether the reduction "took". Find the Pinned Posts section of your screen, click on "See All" and scroll through the posts till you find the tapering plans.

A good rule of thumb is "the lower you go, the slower you go". The last thing you want now is to kick off a flare that will require you to go back several steps and start over again, or to put yourself into an adrenal failure mode because your body doesn't have enough pred to operate. That can be life-threatening.

Patience, Ducky. The tortoise beats the hare in the long course journey.

[DorsetLady PMRGCAuk volunteer]

Definitely not - even though you’ve only been on them for a month.

...and as PMRpro says a bit more info on your profile would be good - at the moment we can only go on previous posts so advice can be a bit guesswork!

Except to say no - in this instance!

[Arflane97G]

I started on 15mg last year, once I got to 5mg I reduced by 0.5 mg per month

[SheffieldJane]

How are you diduck? I remember being concerned about you a few weeks back with your horrendous nights. Rushing off Prednisalone will just land you in trouble.

[diduck in reply to SheffieldJane]

I will heed the warnings and rage it slowly . Much as I had Pred it had helped thank you for your concern

[SheffieldJane in reply to diduck]

I guess the typo is how you really feel getting PMR twice!

[diduck]

Fed up

[Loyd]

Slow up big time!! I did the same as you at the start of Covid and reduced 1mg a week from 9 to 3. Horrendous flare and ended up gong back up even higher than I started to 30mg!! Going sooooooo slowly now. Hope this helps. 👍