DHEA | Arthritis Information

I have been taking pred. for 2 years now and when I taper down below 5mg I have a severe flair. The dr. tested my cortisol levelsand told me my adrenal glands were not working and you have to have at least 5mg to be normal. I've been reading about DHEA which works on the adrenal glands and am wondering if any of you have tried this. If that would get the adrenal glands working we could get off pred. I hope some of you can help with this.

Jule

jule, i wish it were so, but i have been taking dhea, for about 10 years, who knows maybe it kept it away til now, but it is here now........Jule,

My GP and Rheumatologst and the NHS website et al, say, as far as I understand it, that
when taking long-term co-costeroids (long term being anything over a month and higher than 7.5mg) the bodies natural production stops.

It takes about 6 months for your adrenal glands to kick in again, which is why a long slow drop is recommended, ie 1mg drop every three months and then stop. But if it flares then you are back to where the steroid can hold the pain and make life livable, which , of course, can mean a higher dose.

So if you have a flare when dropping below 5mg the pmr has not 'burnt itself out' and you are holding it at 5mg.

I was taking DHEA for several months the first year of PMR. I felt that it really helped (100 mg per day I believe) but there were too many warnings about the possibility of DHEA increasing the risk of breast cancer (which my mom died of) so I decided to stop. I had been able to decrease my prednisone dosage while taking DHEA. So it may or may not help you to decrease the prednisone.

BTW, I am now at 3.0 mg of prednisone, but have been reducing very slowly - only .5 mg at a time, alternating for several weeks at first. There is a lot of achiness, fatigue, etc., for the first couple of weeks after a reduction, until the body starts producing enough cortisol to make up the difference.    I think taking just 25mg./day DHEA may have helped the PMR symtoms go away in my case. I ran out of the pills and didn't get any more, ( which is what i normally do to see if a pill is really working), and I'm starting to get pains in my shoulders again.
     I'm buying some more tomorrow, this time I'll take 50mg. twice a day.
     I know for men there's some concern about prostate cancer, but when I was taking it last time all that checked out O.K.
The reason the adrenals "stop" working is because of the way they are stimulated to produce cortisol which is the natural, home made version of pred. It's a very complex feedback system which involves at least 3 organs (hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenal glands). As long as there is a certain level of cortisol/pred present in the blood, the body thinks there is enough and doesn't produce any more. They don't stop working altogether but it takes time for the set-up to get back into sync after you reduce the amount of the artificial stuff.

I'm not going to say DHEA is rubbish, it's suffering from the over-hype of saying that it will cure everything - like it was with vits C, E etc etc and other substances - and work needs to be done. There is some evidence that needs following up that it is useful in various things including lupus which has some parallels to PMR. However - if 25mg is helping that much, Tom, why go up to 100mg/day? There are considerable concerns about taking more than 50mg a day long term and the damage that results can't be reversed. The lower doses (there are some who think you shouldn't be able to buy it in doses above 5mg) seem to be not associated with the bad aspects but heart arythmias (your heart beats irregularly) have been found in men taking above 50mg/day over long periods. A higher dose seems OK for a couple of months but if you want to keep taking it longterm, it's better to keep the dose lower. And you really should be monitored for cholesterol and a few other parameters. Remember that as a supplement it isn't checked rigorously for what's in the pills - there have been problems with the dose: some sources have no DHEA whilst others have more than they say! So if you have a source that works it would seem a good idea to use the lowest dose of that that gives a result.

MrsE