going higher with HC, was Re: Re: Pred dosing or dropping it - bump last question for Val

[Guest guest]

,

I'm obviously no expert here, but from following your posts, I wonder

if you won't actually need more than 40 mg HC a day, florinef or no.

Wouldn't it be ironic if most of your troubles have been from still too

LOW a dose of HC. Note, I'm not suggesting dropping pred was the wrong

thing to do (I don't like pred, and as you found dosing it is difficult)

But in your place I'd have added HC to total the 40 mg you were on with

the pred.

One thing I'm noticing is that I also resist going to higher doses of

HC, though conscioulsy I think I'm willing to take the dose that makes

me well regardless of what number that turns out ot be. When I actually

get to dosing reality, I resist more. But I'm still stress dosing rather

frequently and do need to do so. Which Val has said means the HC dose is

not optimal. I don't know what Val or Cherie will say to this, but I am

beginning to think I need to go up until I can eat a reasonably normal

diet. As allergies are thought to be related to low cortisol, this seems

logical to me. So in addition to first averaging temps, then watching

BP, now I'm watching allergy reactions. If I could get those totally

stopped for a few months, I don't think I'd have to stay at a high dose

forever, just long enough to break the allergy reaction cycle. Maybe I'm

just kidding myself.

At any rate, since I am stage 7 with a cortisol total of only 10, it

is possible I may never get off HC anyway. Might, but I hate to continue

to suffer them just in the vague hope I may be able to get off HC

eventually. It seems a good trade off to get rid of the allergies, and

take a higher dose of HC? I don't mean going until I'm actually having

high cortisol symptoms, just high enough to get rid of the allergies.

I had been all set to try to reduce to 30 mg HC (have been at 32.5 for

a while now, plus stress dosing) after recent stressors eased off, but

the stress dosing I had to do for a while there really did reduce

allergy symptoms, which was lovely. A couple nights I have even gone

wihtout my bedtime dose of antihistamine, and been ok during the night

(for allergies, skipping it made my sleep even worse--I think I've

become dependent on that bedtime dose of antihistamine to help me sleep

at all).

sol

jasrich wrote:

> My question was more whether what you meant by smidgen more was to go

> back to the 40mg that I was taking before I dropped the pred, or to

> just go up to 37.5mg. I think that I have probably been short all

> along so 40mg is probably more where I need to be, but I also wonder

> what introducing Florinef means for that.

>