I’m wondering whether there’s a link between extremely hot weather, and symptoms of PMR/pred side effects? I’m normally well and virtually symptom-free on 3mg tapering to 2.5, but felt very stiff and uncomfortable during the UK July heatwave, so that at first I thought it was a flare: but when the weather got cooler, I went back to normal. Something similar is happening during the current heatwave, so I’ve paused my planned reductions, hoping to resume when and if I feel better again. Anyon else got any thoughts?
symptoms in hot weather: I’m wondering whether... - PMRGCAuk
symptoms in hot weather
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calibriel
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You'll find some answers here, calibriel, with the same question posted by Sharitone and found in Related Posts:
healthunlocked.com/pmrgcauk...
At the moment I'm dripping after taking a few steps. It will be cooler next week! Yay! It won't hurt if you stay on your current dose for another week 🙂.
I do wonder if sweating with this heat we need sa lt, or more of it......I have often read with adrenals struggling we need more salt. I cook everything from scratch...don't add it to food or my meal...(O H does).........never thought about till this heatwave....
Very possibly ...
Think I'll start a light sprinkling on my meals.......can only but try....
I was on holiday a few years ago and every morning woke up with a headache which usually, not always, went away with food, but I also was taking aspirin. Which meant at dinner I'd have to turn down the included glass of wine. On the last evening my neighbour at table, when I explained about the headaches, remarked that I was probably salt deficient. The technique PMRpro is likely referring to is what my table mate told me to do. Sprinkle a small amount of salt on my side plate, lick my fingertip and pick up a few grains of salt. If it tasted good to me, almost sweet, it would mean that I needed it. I was to keep on doing this, tasting a few grains at a time, until it no longer tasted good. I didn't actually reach that point that evening, but will note here that I woke up the next morning with no headache! The following evening I was staying with my cousins and asked them to let me have bit of salt. At first it tasted nice, then quite suddenly it tasted awful and I knew then that I had finally consumed enough.
It interested me to find out that several other apparently unrelated symptoms also cleared up at around the same time. Can't remember them all but they included a sensation that my heart was "skippy" although complaint to a doctor had revealed no problem. I think my skin also seemed to become more resilient in that if you pinched the skin on the back of the hand it would return to normal right away, rather than staying pinched for a few seconds. I think this showed I was better hydrated. But it was the morning headache cure which really made me happy. It was something which had started before I had ever taken pred, but only occasionally, and had become over time much more frequent.
I found a calculator on-line and, slightly overestimating to make sure, I figured out how much salt I was taking in and it was almost certainly under 1000 mg a day. This would have been when I had only been on pred a couple of years and still eating hardly any prepared foods, including bread, which would have contained salt. We had removed the salt shaker from our table decades earlier. So, yes, I was salt deficient.
The taste test only works when you eat the salt alone. On any food it is, of course, just going to make the food taste better! Remember, just a few grains at a time, and continue only if it tastes good. I assume this is how mammals which seek out salt licks know when they've taken in enough salt. 😋
That's really interesting thank you.....will definitely do a salt test as you have e xplained...
I've often wished I had contact information for that fellow traveller so I could let her know how much she helped me.
Bet if you advertised n FB you could find her!!!!!!!!
Hate to say it, but you won't find me on there or anywhere other than here!....I'm very fussy!..😂....
It has its uses ... Free video calling using Messenger and some indication of where my offspring are and what they are doing!
As PMRpro says it is useful -my daughter is in NZ -snd we use messenger a lot - free video calls are essential over the miles involved!
You don’t need to get involved in the “rubbish” if you don’t want to!
Certainly if I had relatives abroad I would use one of the other......
You can make your name not searchable. That kind of defeats the purpose from my point of view, but a friend of mine used FB for one purpose only, to communicate and share pictures of family with her daughter who lives in another province. She would not agree to be friends with anyone else, other than family.
PMRproAmbassador
It seems to depend - some people find heat beneficial, others don't. I don't have a problem with heat or cold as such - but accompanied by humidity or wind I can really be uncomfortable.
My old barometer is moving towards humidity. Hot and humid - ugh!
Heat is good: extreme heat not so. But then I’m not standard (who is?). For instance, I found my existing problem with fluid retention actually got better on pred …
Where do you draw your lines? What is extreme heat?
I suppose I’m accepting the classifications offered by others- apparently the temperature broke records for the UK last month; but also the evidence of my own bod. I’m just a fair-skinned northerner who’s never sought out the heat, on holiday or any other time. I’m not used to it
Well yes - over 40C in the UK or anywhere else come to that is pretty extreme! But there are people who are struggling and complaining bitterly at 28C which really isn't extreme, just warm!
Another vote for adrenals not keeping up with their work. I got similar in very hot days last year, although more fatigue & lightheadedness than stiffness. I was at about 2.5 at the time. I seem to have coped better this year, now on 0.5mgm
I'm sure there is for some. I felt very stiff during last extreme heatwave, Not so bad this time. I'm waiting for cooler weather to try to drop to 2.5mg.
I have definitely found the heat has affected me, I felt better in the brief, cooler weather in between July and now. Symptoms are worse and my body feels bloated and my ankles are swollen.
I've been wondering about that. I'm down to 5.5 mg which is the lowest I've ever been and I've been struggling with the heat the last couple of days in a way I haven't before. In fact just thinking about it i coped better in the earlier heatwave when I was still on 6 so maybe I've answered my own question!
Thanks everyone for interesting and supportive replies. I’m looking forward to the forecast cooler weather tomorrow! (and, no, I won’t be complaining of the cold - not for a while yet 😉)
Hi calibriel, I live in Western Australia where our summer temperatures can reach 40C for days on end. Nobody enjoys that kind of heat! I haven't found the weather to be of any consequence with regard to PMR, but it can just be a bit of a bugger with everything else! The cold is worse I have found, and we have relatively mild winters.
But it is relative, isn’t it - what you’re used to? I know I’m not good in the heat: I don’t choose to holiday in the sun, and if I do find myself somewhere where it’s hot, I stay indoors in the heat of the day. The temperatures here have been a good 15deg hotter than I’m comfortable. Lovely though I know it is, I wouldn’t choose to visit Australia in the summer. I know my limits: at my age, it’s too late to acclimatise.
Completely agree. Xx
When we went to Perth and Melbourne, we deliberately chose to go in June and July. In Melbourne some nights were minus 3c but 17c in the day. Lovely. I did have to buy a scarf though for the evening!!
For Melbourne, that was mild. You would have enjoyed the Perth winter.
Yes. We were there for 5 lovely days. But when we went round the Great Ocean Rd it was slashing with rain 😳 deserted though 👍
Not a bad day to go possibly, though next day might have been better. We arrived in Melbourne to torrential rain and about 5C. We'd wanted to do the penguins but hadn't got ski gear with us!! The next day we set off along the Ocean Road and stopped at all the requisite places - actually stalking a local guide doing a private 1-2-1 tour. He was telling his client that because of the storm the previous day we were seeing things that were really rare - water shooting up through holes in the rocks amongst other things. It was fantastic. And still pretty quiet 
We landed in slashing rain too! Loved the nice winter days. We went in 2009. That will do now. Passports have run out!!
We'd just driven down from Brisbane via a few days in Sydney so it was a nasty shock! Must have been September, the meeting was end of August, so Brisbane had been pretty cosy! After Melbourne we went to Uluru and Alice Springs so Melbourne was a change!
Wz
I spent the first 30 years of my life in Perth, and I usually thrive in the heat. Living in the UK now I return every couple of years to get my blast of proper heat, however, this heatwave has knocked me out. I had Covid a few weeks ago, and wonder if that has something to do with it.
Perhaps it has something to do with the kind of heat you've been experiencing, very humid I believe while WA's heat tends to be more dry. And of course the housing is very different with air-conditioning not common. And then there is the good old aging factor which tends to make everything just that little bit more difficult. Hope you make it back for a swim in the gorgeous Indian Ocean this summer.
Yes, I have considered all that, and hopefully I’ll be back on Cottesloe beach early next year. It is definitely a different heat. Thank you xx
I sympathise, I'm in real pain since this heatwave ! I've been ok when the heat has been normal.But with this heat my legs feel heavy like wooden poles and I'm aching from head to toe ! So much so that I have had to stay in while this hot. Many people on here are in the same boat, it seems it has something to do with air pressure, this makes perfect sense to me as I'm far better in the cooler weather. I'm tapering from 7/6.5 going slowly till this passes.Btw I had no idea I thought it was just cold weather that affected us !🌹
Does it help if I tell you that the locals here also stay in in the afternoons in these temps? Even we feel sorry for the guys on the building sites! You can tell the locals - we walk on the shady side of the street.
The place is dead again today - everyone is either indoors or sitting in the shade or they have headed up the mountain to walk where it is 1C cooler per 100m extra altiitude and there will be a breeze.
I thought it was just me!
Dehydration? Thinking back to my endurance riding days, I used to soak my horse as often as possible during the ride to help him to stay cool and also offer water to drink, to keep him hydrated and to help to avoid muscle damage. He only ever had a pulse over 44 at the vet checks. I expect that with inflammatory diseases in us, where inflammation creates heat, if the ambient temperature is getting close to body temperature, it becomes difficult for our body to lose heat, exacerbating the inflammation. I used to give my horse a tablespoon of bicarb of soda in his tea daily to help reduce the occurrence of lactic acid in the muscles but I draw the line at that, although maybe I will get some electrolytes like athletes use. Horse turned his nose up at electrolytes.I have had 2.5 litres of liquid today, so far, which I log onto my Fitbit and have the fan blowing on me all day. I feel OK. Neigh. Neigh.
To tell if the horse was hydrated, I did a pinch test. Pinch up some loose skin over his shoulder or neck. Let it go. If it sprang straight back to normal, he was OK. If it took more than a couple of seconds to go back flat = dehydrated.
Always had salt/mineral licks in stables. They got well licked in the summer.
I definitely find my osteoarthritis is worse in hot weather (not that cold weather helps particularly, brings its own issues) and I've heard the reason is because the synovial fluid in the joints is expanding in the heat and causing discomfort, or something like that - don't quote me!
The weather is affecting me, I sweat all the time when I go out in this heat wave. My energy level is in the dumps, so I want to lie down and take a nap and I have some odd pains. UGH!!!
I experience the exact same thing
I agree with you, during the heatwave just slow everything down!
I thought for a while yesterday (see my latest post) that the Heat 🔥🥵🔥 had well & truly beaten me! Everyone was having a hard time tbh not just me but l possibly may have felt like my Number was up!
Heading back to ‘Normal’ now 🙏🏼
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