How to Counteract Prednisone Side Effects
If you need to take prednisone, it’s essential to know how to counteract prednisone side effects. As a former nurse, turned functional medicine health coach, I understand the importance of powerful medications such as prednisone and other steroids. I have also seen the side effects and repercussions of taking these medications.
That’s why, when I met Dr. Megan from https://prednisonepharmacist.com, who specializes in how to counteract prednisone side effects, I knew that she had valuable information to share about when to take prednisone, and how to recover from, or prevent that post prednisone downward spiral that many people experience.
Below you will find a summarized outline along with the video. I hope that you find it valuable and it can help guide you when deciding if prednisone is right for you, and how to counteract prednisone side effects if you choose to take it.
Dr Megan Milne is a pharmacist who specializes in helping people who want to learn how to counteract prednisone side effects. You can learn more about Megan and what she does at prednisonepharmacist.com
How to Counteract Prednisone Side Effects
Sarah: Tell us a little bit about what led you to specialize in prednisone particularly.
Dr. Megan: When I went to pharmacy school, you know, we had to memorize all the side effects of all the drugs and there were some it’s like I could handle being on that drug, but that drug I don’t even want to touch with a 10-foot pole.
So when I had this bizarre rash just start on my chest and spread all the way down to my feet and they tested my blood and discovered that I was bleeding internally. They said you better go to the hospital immediately. I get there and they give me some blood platelets and then they say we need to give you prednisone. I was like “no, you can’t, no way”.
They’re like “yeah, kind of high doses” and you know, “here it is take it and we know it’s going to cause insomnia so choose which insomnia med you want us to prescribe you because we know you’re a pharmacist” and that was where it began. I thought it was just going to be a few days.
The reason I was bleeding was this autoimmune condition called ITP. I thought it would just go away as soon as I took like 10 days of prednisone and then I’d be fine. And 10 days turned into 10 weeks turned into nine months and then I had to eventually use a chemotherapy medication to get off of prednisone and get my autoimmune condition under control. So during that time, I suffered so many side effects. It was horrible. I would go on high doses and then lower doses and high and it was just this roller coaster not just of the doses but of the side effects and how it was affecting me, my appearance, my emotions, and my relationships. And so I was lying there one night and not night one afternoon trying to take a nap with my toddler and because I hadn’t slept in a very long time because of, or at least I hadn’t slept well for a long time because of how awful the side effects are with prednisone causing insomnia and I was just like I just need a nap. I just need to like recover from the chemo and the prednisone. I just need this.
So that it’ll actually work I’m staring at the ceiling not sleeping and thinking there has to be something better than this. And then it occurred to me that the prednisone side effects are actually caused by nutrient depletion and you might be like wait what? What is nutrient depletion? So that was the moment I, it just like there’s something I can do. I can help myself and other people to counteract prednisone side effects and that was when I first figured it out and so four and almost and a half years later, here I am still talking about prednisone.
Sarah: Wow, that’s so interesting. Thank you so much for sharing your experience.
Dr. Megan: You’re welcome.
Sarah: So when you talk about like the nutrition and how that’s causing these side effects, can you go into that a little bit deeper and tell us like what’s going on, why is this happening and what we can do to counteract that?
Dr. Megan: Yeah, so the first thing that you have to memorize in pharmacy school about prednisone is that the doctors who prescribe prednisone the most recommend everybody who’s on over two and a half milligrams a day takes calcium and vitamin D. And why would that be? To prevent osteoporosis, because a long-term irreversible side effect of prednisone is osteoporosis. So, I knew that before I took prednisone when I was just a student and it was just a bottle on the shelf, I knew prednisone causes osteoporosis, so take vitamin D and calcium. Every pharmacist knows that, whether they share that message with you or not, whether anybody actually recommends that to you, that’s a totally different story, but they all know it, right? So, everybody has this baseline understanding that prednisone is causing this amount of nutrient depletion, it’s stealing the calcium and the vitamin D and causing osteoporosis. So everybody gets that. But what I didn’t realize until I dug deep into the research was it wasn’t just those two. It wasn’t just the calcium, wasn’t just the vitamin D, but it was at least nine nutrients and possibly 13 or 15. There’s just not a lot of great research right now. So, the other nutrients that are depleting, chromium. So chromium is vital if you’re going to have healthy blood sugars because chromium makes this matrix with insulin and the blood sugar situation. And if it’s not there, if there’s no chromium, then the insulin and the blood sugar kind of just get out of whack. It’s called insulin dysregulation and that causes high blood sugars which causes hunger cravings which causes weight gain which causes diabetes which causes all sorts of complications all because prednisone is making you pee out chromium. And when I realized that I was like, oh my goodness, there is so much more that we can do. So, would you like to dive deeper on that or would you like me to…?
Sarah: This is so interesting and it just occurred to me too, I mean, my audience is primarily chronic urticaria and nutrient deficiencies actually can also contribute to symptoms of that and then, you know, they get put on the prednisone so it’s like, wow, this all could actually kind of become a cascading event and that’s maybe why people get stuck taking prednisone and they’re not able to get off it. They feel like they have these rebound effects and their hives are even worse than before they took it. So, it’s very interesting.
Dr. Megan: Exactly, because you mentioned on our other interview that chronic urticaria correlates with low vitamin D, right? And then you’re taking prednisone on top of it so it’s even lower vitamin D and so it’s like, oh, it’s the spiral. And so it’s not just those, it’s at least nine and I could go into all nine if you want but essentially prednisone is given as a life-saving medication because it mimics our body’s hormone called cortisol and cortisol is mother nature’s miracle stress hormone. It’s designed to be released in periods of stress like famine, like being chased by a tiger, like war when you need to just survive and hopefully there’s an end in sight like eventually the crops are going to grow, eventually the war will end, eventually the tiger will stop chasing you, either it’s gonna catch you or it’s going to give up. These things are temporary, they go away and cortisol is meant to be a temporary measure and it’s meant to be like this much but when we take prednisone it’s like this much and we’re taking it for way longer. We’re not just running away from that tiger, we are spending weeks, months, years taking this prednisone on super high doses and so if we were just having mother nature’s cortisol being used to run away from a tiger it would be releasing blood sugar into your blood so that you can run away from the tiger right and so essentially the idea is cortisol is stealing all of these nutrients from your bank like your bones, your muscles so that eventually you can replenish those nutrients because it’s going to be short term. So, how long can you safely stay on prednisone then before these side effects start becoming a real issue?
Sarah: So, the real thing is there is no safe dose of prednisone. One dose is enough to cause certain side effects and they say that the biggest amount of withdrawal of nutrients from your bones like the biggest jump to osteoporosis is within the first three months. So, there’s no like safe amount of time to take it but usually, between five and ten days is a common short term amount of time people take prednisone and you don’t need to necessarily worry too much about the nutrient depletion at that point but when you’re going beyond 14 days it’s like you better start taking some actions to counteract the side effects, right?
Dr. Megan: Right, okay. So, that’s good to know. So, when tapering prednisone, you’re on like a shorter term or on the shorter dose like a shorter course of prednisone, is there like, do you have to taper off or is it okay to go from like, you know, a higher dose like 20 milligrams and just stop after a few days, how does that work?
Sarah: Yeah, so tapering is something that is super confusing and super individualized and so usually if it’s that five day dose of 20 milligrams say you’re taking 20 milligrams every day for five days you can just go off that’s a common prescription that people take all the time and no problem. It’s when you’re getting over 10 days beyond 14 days you’ve got to taper so it’s between 5 and 10 it’s like you’ll probably be okay, beyond 10 to 14 oh, you better start tapering. Tapering means going off slowly so instead of going 20 milligrams down to zero you’d go 10, 20 milligrams, 10 milligrams, five milligrams, zero over a period of days to weeks.
Sarah: Okay, so it’s short term versus long term.
Dr. Megan: Okay, so that’s the safer course if you’ve been on it for 10 days or more it sounds like.
Sarah: Yeah, kind of that 10-day mark where you said the nutrient deficient and all that starts happening too. So, can you tell us like, where would short term prednisone used to be more appropriate than like your longer-term prednisone?
Dr. Megan: Yeah, so I often call taking prednisone the nuclear option because it’s kind of blasting your entire body with, if you were going in for, you know, like, choosing a weapon would you choose the like shotgun or would you choose a nuclear bomb, you know which one would you choose prednisone is the nuclear bomb it goes everywhere and can like destroy everything whereas there are targeted medications you could use first. So, I always recommend using those more targeted medications first and then if you have to then use it short term. The most common refrain you hear when it comes to prednisone is the lowest effective dose and so whatever it is it’s going to get you out of that flare, out of that situation you’re in and taking the least amount possible for the shortest amount of time because every single milligram matters and causing side effects.
Sarah: Okay, that’s good to know. So for people who are on it more long term, they have to take this every day, it’s so the dose matters, so it’s better to, you know, take the lowest dose possible to get your symptoms under control, right? And that’s something you really have to work with your doctor to figure out, what that lowest dose is, but getting there is it needs to be the goal.
Dr. Megan: Okay, okay, so with people with chronic urticaria a lot of times, you know, we’re given like that as needed prednisone pack that five-day pack of prednisone to take if we’re having a really severe flare but a lot of times too like a doctor will go straight for the long-term prednisone in treating our symptoms without trying other medications first so it sounds like that’s more of prednisone is more of if these other medications don’t relieve our symptoms or if we’re having a severe if they’re just putting that fire out.
Dr. Megan: Exactly, yeah, you would use this if if they’re like if you’re willing to exchange the risk for up to 150 side effects many of which are irreversible and potentially leading to permanently being having to take it. So, a lot of people are like nobody told me it couldn’t make it so I would become what’s called adrenal insufficient where it would make it so your system that normally makes that cortisol no longer works and you have to take prednisone forever. And so if you’re willing to run that risk if whatever you’re going through is bad enough that those risks seem they pale in comparison then do it you know like I, I was about to bleed to death, it was worth it. Not bleeding to death is important, yes certainly.
Sarah: Certainly, okay. So, it’s that risk versus benefit and that’s what, you know, again a discussion to have with your doctor and to really think about on a personal level you know, um what am I willing to do, what am I willing to trade to get that symptom relief, exactly, okay great so we talked about some of the side effects and you know you talked a little bit about vitamin deficiency and things like that what are some things that people can do if they have to take the prednisone to kind of counteract that.
Dr. Megan: Yeah, so I have a whole checklist of things people can do, it includes the top 15 side effects, 25 ways to counteract them so like I have tons of ways but if you want me to just focus on a few like specifically the nutrient depletion I can do that as well.
Sarah: Okay, yeah if you just want to talk about the couple and then we can talk about where people can find that resource that you mentioned.
Dr. Megan: Awesome, so the nutrient depletion you can either eat those nutrients, some of them are kind of hard to get or you could also supplement by taking um like there are lots of different medications you could use to supplement but I actually was thinking when I have to go back on prednisone I don’t want to have to be taking this and that and that so I created them all together in one it’s everything you need while in prednisone and it’s not just those nutrients depleted but it’s also other herbs to help to counteract the side effects so it’s called Nutrinize Zone and there’s the the morning bottle that helps with like helping to counteract the cravings the hunger cravings and the bedtime bottle helps you get restful sleep at night so it’s not just the nutrients depleted but it’s also a total of 17 ingredients that help you feel like yourself again while you’re on prednisone so that’s Nutrinize Zone and it’s at nutrinize.com.
Sarah: Hey, that’s great. I love how you have them split up into an a.m and a p.m dose.
Dr. Megan: Yeah, that’s really helpful I think for people so well great so where can they find you if they want more help if they want to look for that resource that you mentioned yeah so I am like I blog I YouTube make all the things at prednisonepharmacist.com two of the hardest words in the English language to spell but if you just look at your prescription bottle, pharmacy and prednisone just kidding um pednisonepharmacist.com, I’m at prednisone pharmacist on all of the social media and then um this is you can buy this at nutrinize.com and at the bottom of every single page of either website, it you can download that checklist and it’s got tons of information of all the things you need to know while you’re on prednisone.
Sarah: Okay, great. I’m really excited to share that resource with my community because I think that’ll definitely help a lot of people so well thank you so much this was so informative.
Dr. Megan: You’re welcome, Sarah. I’m glad to help get the message out about prednisone because like your condition it is so misunderstood and there’s so much more people can do if they only know about it.
Resources Dr. Megan Mentioned to Help Counteract Prednisone Side Effects
Visit Dr. Megan’s Website HERE
Get the Supplements Dr. Megan Recommends to counteract prednisone side effects HERE
Grab the Checklist Dr. Megan mentioned HERE