Myasthenia Gravis Support Group
Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a neuromuscular disease leading to fluctuating muscle weakness and fatiguability. The hallmark of myasthenia gravis is muscle weakness that increases during periods of activity and improves after periods of rest. Although myasthenia gravis may affect any voluntary muscle, muscles that control eye and eyelid movement, facial expression, and...
I am on my fourth week of Pred. Been taking 30 mg this past week and think I will stay at this dosage for another week to see how things go. I am getting some good results. I am thinking perhaps I can go back to 3x daily of Mestinon. Have any of you taken prednisone w/o the Mestinon? Also how long did you stay on the Pred. I know I will have to go back to the neuro eventually and he will probably tell me that hopefully I can start tapering off, just wondering about others.
When prednisone worked for me (at 60 mg per day after several months), I didn't need mestinon at all--in fact it made things worse as it made me quite jittery and twitchy -- what would happen if a normal person took it.
My neuro explained that the prednisone had stopped the immune system from attacking my receptors, they had grown back or unblocked and so mestinon was not helping -- it is useful when we have blocked or destroyed muscle receptors, trying to get a little extra boost out of the remaining functioning ones.
So, if you do a test of skipping mestinon for one time or maybe for a whole day, you can find out if prednisone has gotten things under control or not. It is a safe thing to do as if you start having problems, you can take a dose and in 1/2 hour it kicks in again. In my case, that was the test to know if it was time to start tapering prednisone.
Good Luck
So like with everything else, it is trial and error. I will play it by ear. I will see how I do on 3 Mestinon daily and stay on 30 mg of pred for another week. If I feel that is enough, will stay put for awhile, if not go up to 40 mg.