Third times the charm?

​All good things come in threes. Third time valid. All good times three. Third times the charm For the 3rd time I am down to 5mg prednisolone and today is the longest I have been down to 5mg since I started taking prednisolone in December. A conversation with rheuma ward confirmed that the blood tests last Monday looked fine. Slightly low count of white blood cells, but nothing unusual. Do I dare to get my hopes up? Hopefully I get to stay down at 5mg this time. Because this little white pill is a powerful little devil. As the doctor in the podcast below says (46:38) lupus patients should keep in mind that medications such as corticosteoroids are toxic to the body in the long run. At the check-up in August, I told the doctor that to the extent that I can influence the dosages I receive, I want to use as little prednisolone as possible.

But even though prednisolone is poisonous, it's also life-saving. At this point I have been on it for almost 10 months, so my body has reduced the ability to produce cortisol itself. The body produces daily the equivalent of between 5-7 mg of prednisolone in the adrenal glands. With stress, trauma or illness occur, they produce more. When the body has been supplied with this in high doses and for a long time, the hypothalamus in the brain perceives that it's producing too much and asks the adrenal glands to stop production. In the same way that a muscle becomes weaker when not in use, the adrenal glands become a weaker producer, and must be "trained" back up again. Since the adrenal glands now have reduced their ability to produce cortisol, the body will not be able to produce extra if needed for stress or illness (Lupus encyclopedia). This is one of the reasons I should avoid stress. This may explain why the working days feel more fussy and tiring than it used to. It also makes me more vulnerable to the cold season that is about to start. A simple cold can quickly get worse than I'm used to. So even though I am very eager to ge off the prednisolone, this is still far ahead. Probably after I have been pregnant. And then the body will slowly but surely learn to produce cortisol on its own again ..

Sources:

The lupus encyclopedia
https://nhi.no/sykdommer/hormoner-og-naring/binyresykdommer/binyrebarksvikt/
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