Weaning=Migraines??? | Arthritis Information

 

None of my doctors are supporting me on this, but I KNOW it's true.  I'm looking for anyone else who can back my theory....

I've been weaning off prednisone for weeks now.  I take them at 6pm at night and I wean on Fridays.  EVERY Saturday between 2-4:30pm after I wean, I get a migraine.  The first one was something called an ocular migraine, which I didn't even know existed.  I lost partial vision for the afternoon and ended up in the hospital.  Since then I've seen all sorts of doctors and no one thinks it's the prednisone.  But week after week it keeps happening (not ocular, but regular migraines).  Before this I had maybe half a dozen migraines my whole life, so this is strange to me.  I even did a little experiment and weaned two days later, the day after, wham, another migraine.  Has this happened to anyone before?  TIA!!!

Hi, I'm not taking prednisone for long term. I only took it for a week after a bad bout of poison oak. However, I used to have migraines with the weird, dizzying, eye patterns that disrupted my vision, and then turned into a splitting headache. The weird thing is, I hadn't had a migraine for almost 10 years until today. I stopped taking prednisone 2 days ago. I was only taking between 20-40 mg/day, which was less than prescribed, because of the horrible side effects. I'm convinced it is because of the prednisone withdrawl.You were taking 20-40mg a day and just stopped cold turkey?

When I was on pred. and decided to wean, I went down by .5 every 2 weeks.  You need to wean slowly and be very careful with pred or you can have bad side effects.  It also stops the production of adrenaline, so you need to wean slowly in order to not shock the adrenal glands.  They will slowly begin to work again.  I was on 2.5 for two weeks, (half of a 5 pill) and since Aug 17 I AM PRED FREE!  Yee haw!

Another thing: 

This is weird, but whenever I changed my pred. dosage, I would get tiny white heads all over the edges of my nose.  I have never had problems with my skin, so this was really strange to me!

lynz,
can't really help you with the migraine situation; i am new to the site and the jra(2 yr old daughter diagnosed 2months ago). but i can tell you that we have been trying to wein her off her predisone and every time we get down to 5ml a day she swells up really bad and is super sore and grouchy. she is too little to tell me alot of what hurts, but she has started to complain about her neck and head being sore; so i don't know if that is head aches or what it may be, sorry i couldn't be more help. hope you are feeling better.
tanyajLindsey & Dave,  Yes I have Ocular migraines too.  It's the weirdest thing and makes you feel like you're going crazy.  You see the colors and sometimes a chunk is cut out of someones face you have great pressure but not the normal pain of a migraine.  They are quite maddening!  I have been on 60 mg prednisone for about 7 days now weaning to 40mg and am having an ocular migraine along with extreme weakness and dizziness right now.  I am getting over pnuemonia and I have asthma that is why they had me on the prednisone.  I hate it.  I am getting the moon face and belly and these side effects are terrible.  But I just wanted let you know that yes the doctors are wrong I believe this is from the withdrawl of the prednisone.  Take good care and say a prayer for me please!

and my rd supports me weaning off it.  Enbrel is doing a wonderful job controlling my ra.  RD says listen to your body when weaning.  Well these headaches are hard to ignore
Copyright ArthritisInsight.com