Prednisone to Deal With Exercise Inflammation ?

[soreoldbiker]

During most of my life, I've experienced a lot of stiffness and soreness after exercise. I've often quiried my friends who exercise similarly whether they experience a similar degree of stiffness and soreness. The answer has always been no. Thus, I have speculated for some time that I just don't clear (repair?) exercise inflammation very well.

I'm currently at a moderately low prednisone dose (4 mg, and was at 3 mg a few weeks ago before a modest flare). I believe that I currently have some adrenal functionality and thus I'm finding that I can now push modestly harder when exercising, although far from less than when I was in the 5 to 10 mg range (and also far less than before PMR). Of course, the side is that once again I am getting post exercise stiffness and soreness. This worries me a bit. Is it possible that the prednisone will act to mop up the exercise inflammation (perhaps even preferentially), thereby leaving the PMR inflammation to perhaps build up over a period of time resulting in a flare? I am even wondering if this was a factor involved in the flare which I recently experienced at 3 mg.

What I am therefore now considering is whether there an argument for taking an extra mg or two of prednisone on exercise or post exercise days when I presumably have some extra inflammation to deal with?

Thanks very much!

[PMRpro Ambassador]

I may be wrong but I don't think that pred deals with DOMS due to overdoing it in exercise - it isn't really inflammation in the same sense. DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is due to the muscle fibres developing microtears which when they heal make the muscle stronger and that is what causes the training effect, In so doing it releases a range of cytokines, inflammatory substances, which lead to healing. Surely use of pred would inhibit that not help? Unless the entire immune system is so deranged it can't heal anyway.

news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...

It has been established that the fatigue of long Covid is due to a mitochondrial problem - I have thought for some years that PMR is also associated with a mitochondrial malfunction. And in both cases, symptoms are made worse by exercise, Maybe your long standing problem is a sign you have a mitochondrial disorder?

[soreoldbiker in reply to PMRpro]

Very interesting thoughts! Thanks. I sometimes think about going back to university to study biochemistry in order to try and figure out this thing out. Hopefully I'm wise enough to not be that silly.

When I was between 10 and 15 mg, I actually felt pretty good. All the aches and pains of being 77 were largely gone. I had a fatigue issue, but not a pain issue. Thus, I think that it's possible that the prednisone was helping with post exercise stiffness. It may be that I wasn't pushing myself to the level of DOMS, in which case the prednisone was perhaps mopping up a lesser level of stiffness and soreness?

I have never thought about the possibility of PMR being related to an underlying mitochondrial malfunction. If it was, I wonder why it is largely localized? Is there some particular pathway that is affected? At my end I have speculated that PMR is perhaps precipitated in part by metabolic disregulation. There are very few of us that do not have a perfect metabolic system in this day and age of Macdonald's and prepared frozen foods. We may not be diabetic. We may not even be prediabetic. However, by our sixties and seventies and if we have any excess fat stores, we aren't processing calories like a healthy 20 year old! There are a few papers that have kind of looked at this issue. However, they seem to be pretty inconclusive in my view.

Again, thanks for your interesting thoughts. What I will may do is experiment a little - perhaps an extra mg after one day's exercise, but not after another day's, or something else?

[PMRpro Ambassador in reply to soreoldbiker]

McD's and prepared frozen meals???? What are they?

[soreoldbiker in reply to PMRpro]

Staple foods??!!

[PMRpro Ambassador in reply to soreoldbiker]

Not in my life!!!!!

[Slosh]

I also have that - since my late 30’s. It’s been suggested that it could be linked to Fibromyalgia and or Mast Cell Activation issues.