Hi Mccourtis. Tapering off prednisone is hard. I actually taper by a half milligram every 14 days. The half milligram is by cutting the 1mg pill into half. I will not taper until I feel stable without any weakness or pain. It is important to be taking a sparring drug while tapering off prednisone. If I do not take a sparring drug then I will flare when tapering down. I have not been able to go below 5mg without flaring because I have active disease. I have a new endocrinologist that tells me that he will be able to get me below 5mg. I hope he will be successful! The sparring drug will replace the prednisone in controlling the disease once you fully taper off the steroid.

DM/PM is often a cycle of taper then flare. Some of us may never be able to get below a certain level of prednisone, while others go on to fully tapering off. The important thing is take your calcium and vitamin d while on prednisone. I have severe osteoporosis now due to prednisone, and kidneys sucking the calcium from my body. I have only had DM for three years.

Be sure to drink Gatoraid when tapering down. Gatoraid provides hydration and a nice balance of sugar & sodium which supports the kidneys. I find that I will feel much better with the Gatoraid during a taper.

Everyone on this site will have good information on this subject. We all have our stories on our good friend prednisone!

I think it gets really tricky from 10 mg down. My advice is to go slow and steady. I crept it out of my system. Each taper was still really difficult but after 5 years (3 years tapering below 10 mg) I was off. My last dose was 12/10/12.

I like it best to get several mega doses by injection, and then there's no need to taper off. Also, some times the doctor has put me on pills for about a week, without the need to taper. But when I have been on it for longer periods of time, I had no trouble tapering until I got to 3mg. I did better on Medrol than Prednisone.

tapering under 10 mg is harder, some can go to 7.5 and then slow the taper, depends on how long you have been on it and how your body responds to needing to start making your own cortisol... I usually go 10 to 8 and then 1 mg a month till it is really hard. I got a big reaction at 6 and then 5 so docs advised me to stay at 5 or 4 to 6 months till i feel ready to decrease again... Keep in touch with your doctor... Good luck.

Tapering can make you feel you are flaring which makes many of us stay with the Prednisone. The feelings below 10mgs can be very similar, tired, depressed joint and muscle pain. It's the withdrawal from the drug not the disease usually. I feel really terrible below 10mgs and ill and depressed at 2mgs. I plough on as my labs are fine and I know its the taper. I always feel better eventually and then have to drop again. I started on 60mgs fourteen months ago and go to 1mg in about a week. I have been tapering by 1mg every month since I reached 10mgs. The prize for me and going through all this is to be off the drug at last. I think its really important to persevere. I wish you all the best with your taper. Autumm

Some people are able to come down off of prednisone without any problem but others are not I am one of those that have a lot of reaction to coming down off prednisone. I was sensitive to the sun and I was very itchy I Also begin to flare up. Hopefully you will have no problems coming down. Good Luck

Prednisone was the only med I was on, and started at 100 mg. I did lots of research on how to successfully wean off long-term prednisone. Everything I read said that it was difficult or impossible, and that the final 10 mg were the most difficult. Several doctors said that a person should support their adrenal glands. Two M.D.s recommended a supplement called Drenamin from Standard Process. I started taking it at least a year before getting off prednisone and continued for about a year afterwards.

When I got down to 5 mg. every other day of prednisone, my doctor transitioned me to 5 mg. daily of hydrocortisone. Then we started tapering that. The strength of prednisone is 4 times greater than hydrocortisone. So even though it sounds like I doubled my steroid dosage, I actually cut it in half. Hydrocortisone is supposedly bio-identical to the cortisol produced by the body. It has a shorter half-life and is supposed to leave the body more quickly. Theoretically, this supposedly wakes up the adrenal glands. Don't know if it did for me or not, but I did feel better on daily hydrocortisone compared to every-other-day prednisone.

May 7, 2011, was my last dose of steroid; however, I do take natural anti-inflammatories daily. I pray your taper will be successful.

Nanny, thank you for the good information on prednisone taper. I like the switch to hydrocortisone. I will discuss that switch with my endocrine doctor when I get to 5mg. It would make sense that we need to be sneaky with the prednisone because the drug is sneaky with us! The other trick is getting past active disease and avoiding a way that might trigger a flare. Never a dull moment!

To echo what everyone else has said: go slowly!! Try to get pills in the lowest milligram dosage you can, and divide them.

No shame in going slowly, and adrenal crisis is a horrible feeling.

There is a tool you can buy from the Pharmacist which evenly devides 1mg tablets. It is very cheap to buy and means the Pred is properly divided which is so important. Autumm