Does stress flare you up? I swear it can make me sick and flare me up bigtime even with treatment.
~KewaneeKewanee,
Yes, stress always flared me up. It can wreak havoc with a lot of things.
Reni
Kewanee, I know stress makes my PMR flare up. I try so hard not to get upset, but can't sometimes. Stess, and sometimes rainy days make mine horrible. Then other days the rain doesn't bother me.
Stress certainly affects me. I was so stressed with worry about whether I would be well enough to travel that I had a massive flare up. I had gone down to 7.5mg and my RA flared, which brought on phlebitis and faciitis and then the PMR on top of it was driving me crazy. Needless to say my GP said I wasn't well enough to go.
Recently I was having to give a presentation (stressful) but PMR behaved but I came down with this dratted chest infection. Three weeks on and I still have it and back up to 15mg prednisolone. I'm due to see the rheumy on 6th March and I'm hoping I can get off these steroids. I can't seem to get below 12.5mg before my thighs start screaming at me and the headaches start again (got a beauty at the moment!).
Judi xx
Judi,This is my first time - Hi - I'm Wendy and I have had PMR for 2 years - been on pred and metho for 1 1/2 years...
Stress definately ensures that I will have a flare up!! There are also times when it flares up and I don't even know why.
I continue to put on weight and no matter what I do it seems that I am unable to control it. Does anyone have any suggestions for stopping this gain? I have also developed the "buffalo hump" on the base of my neck - anyone else have this?
Wendy,
How much pred. are you taking? And does metho help. They want to put me on it as I want to get off pred. as I have major bone loss.
Are you taking fosamax?
I haven't had too much weight gain. Are you ableto exercise? And keep salt out of your diet
I have been on pred for a year but I still have so much pain..
Susan C
Stress is definitely a factor in this disease, I think mine started from a very stressful event, and I can feel when I get upset or stressed out the difference it makes in the way I feel.Good Morning All,
From what I have read and what I have learned from this message board and other medical online sites, stress most definitely has a serious impact on this disease process. It makes perfect sense to me if I try to correlate my steroid use and my body's own lack of production of natural steroids because of my intake, and realize that my adrenal gland can't give me a counted upon "fight or flight" response to stressful situations; but that I must depend upon the amount of taken steroids to respond to stressful situations. In some cases, I guess this would be enough, but with a low maintenaince dose, it simply doesn't cover the damage done by day to day stress. Its quite aggravating and I often end up chasing my own tail, so to speak, (although I may grow one soon) and I become really stressed, worrying about how to handle my stress.... What a mess!
Also, there are so many of us here with such alot of pain who are taking steroids. This is very frustrating. I do not want to have a higher dose but realize I must continue to watch my sed rate. My doctor told me over a year ago, that I might want to add an nsaid for pain. Yesterday I heard on ABC news that people who are in the population labeled, "at risk" health-wise, should not take Ibuprofen because of associated strokes and heart attacks from clot formation. I think we would be in this compromised group becasue of our steroid use. They reccomended to replace it with aspirin and tylenol. Does anyone know how many mgs. of buffered aspirin we can safely take? I have been told by my doc that tylenol won't touch muscular pain, and it also will not reduce inflammation. It does sometimes help with headaches, though and reduces fever.
On a lighter side, let me just say that there are alot of us, Susan"s here. Maybe that's a common factor among PMR patients. I wish all of you a pain free and stress free day and I thank you again for being there for my blathering. Susan M.
I read on I think the Cleveland site, some interesting info.Georgiana,
I am down to about 8mg. of pred. I hurt if I was on 15 or 8. So it just doesn't seem to matter. My sed rate is also still elevated. I will probably have to go on Methro to see if that helps.
I also have jaw pain.
This pmr sucks.
Susan C
Susan,