I am suffering dreadful a dry mouth to the point of gagging i am on 6 1/2mg pred and Omeprazole which i didnt take today but my mouth is still dry .its not long enough to know if its that. Does anyone else suffer from this. Went to the hospital about my cateract today will be done in 6 to 8 weeks not looking forward to that. My Potassium and Billirubin levels have been raised recently dont know if thats anything to do with PMR. All these extra little things rearing their ugly heads driving me potty. Rheumy wants me to take Vit D should i have blood tested first really dont want to take all this stuff.
Hello Liz, I can't help you with the dry mouth query but many of us take vit d as a precaution as steriods effect vit d absorbsion and because steriods effect bone density it is needed to help on that front to.
my bilirubin levels are some sometimes high.....only just. When I explained that I was on a diet, the 5:2 diet my dr said that fasting could compromise the levels.
Hopefully someone will be along soon with some better information. Regards' tina.
Hello Liz, I believe dry mouth is a known side effect of Omeprazole but there are mouth washes and sprays available to treat dry mouth and you might find these help. As far as a Vit D supplement is concerned, as Tina has said, we are frequently prescribed a Calcium + Vit D supplement to try and combat the effects of the steroid treatment on our bones. If you don't get enough exposure to the sun, particularly during the winter months, a Vit D supplement is often recommended. Good luck
Biotin is really good for dry mouth. You want to keep it moist or you could end up with gum disease or teeth problems. All of this having to watch out for everything else is so exhausting.
I think i read somewhere that pred can make you thirsty..I am always thirsty
Because I'm taking pain pills. I have not found a solution to the problem other
than just drinking lots of water. The one thing to be concerned about is diabetes
Diabetes can happen when you're on pred and it show as thirst. So you might want
To tell your dr.
Water, water and more water! That's all I know.
I don't have dry mouth, not yet anyway, but my tongue is raw and very painful. Is this a related symptom?
If you are in so much distress you need to talk to your doctor. Possibly the omeprazole is causing it, and if you need that kind of drug perhaps a different one would work better for you - although a lot of people are prescribed it with their pred even though they don't really need it. There are treatments for drug induced dry mouth. Talk to your pharmacist if you have to wait a while to see your doctor.
Could that be thrush which I understand can also be a pred side effect. Lots of probiotic foods may help prevent recurrence after you've been treated.
Yes, I've had the dry mouth since about the beginning of Prednisone. I'm down to 1 mg and still have it. I lost my taste buds for about 4 months.
Did go through Trush as well. Also dry nose. And of course skin, hair,...
Pred did mess up my stomach, so the silent acid reflux could also be causing the dry mouth, but not sure those occurred at same time in the beginning.
My stomach has gotten better but my dry mouth is still there.
chew gum helps release saliva. Dentist said must brush more often and longer. My last visit they said my teeth and gums look very good. I use a dry mouth toothpaste.
I am surprised that you are still on Omeprazole at relatively low level of pred. I was on it while on higher dose of pred and stopped when I came down to 10mg. I had all kind of issues, including dry mouth ( but apparently not as bad as you have).
You should have been on calcium and vit D since you were started on pred and yes, it is advisable to check your vit D first. Low vit D levels can cause similar symptoms to PMR - sometimes that's all that needs putting right and vit D is often low in all autoimmune disorders. Without good vit D levels your bone density can be affected even more.
As for the dry mouth - is anything else dry? Eyes? Which, perversely, would show up as watering! Once you have one autoimmune disorder it is more likely you might develop another and one possibility is Sjogren's syndrome or, sometimes sicca syndrome. The symptoms are the same, the difference is that sicca syndrome doesn't develop antibodies that can be measured. Increased potassium can be due to dehydration - and that could also contribute to the dry mouth.
It is worth discussing it with your doctor.
Hello Eileen
I was interested to read that you say that Dry Eye can occur whikst on Pred. I am suffering with persistent watering of the right eye which has happened since starting on steroids. The eye specialist has not connected the two. I am using eye drops to combat the watering but they do not have much effect. It is causing me a problem when watching the tele and also reading road signs so I do not drive. Hopefully when the day comes when I can cease taking the steroids things will resolve themselves.
Gill
Mine started with PMR rather than with pred - it was still a pain!
What sort of eye drops? I used to use a liposomal spray which you spray onto the outside of your closed lids and I found that quite helpful. The watering is the eye's attempt to protect the surface because the proper viscous tears are lacking - and usually you need pretty thick artificial tears to provide the same protection.
I'm very much of the opinion that if something starts to happen soon after starting a new procedure or medication - blame that until proven otherwise! Quite why some doctors struggle so much with joined up thinking is a mystery to me!
I am using Hypromellose eye drops. I agree with you about doctors! Especially when it comes to treating PMR. Mine seems to think that reducing the dose of Pred is some sort of standard procedure depending on the ESR reading. I have great difficulty in reducing the dose without pain - something that other people seem to have a problem with. I spoke to a locum doctor last week and he said that you can reduce in 'chunks'when on a large dose but you then reduce 1mg a month when you reach 5mg. I reduced from 15mg to 10mg overnight and it nearly crucified me! (On Dr's orders).
Thank you for your response
Gill
Good grief - you CANNOT reduce in chunks in PMR! You can reduce 5mg at a time from the doses of 40mg+ used for GCA but if you do that in PMR it is asking for trouble.
If you haven't seen this:
https://patient.info/forums/discuss/pmr-gca-website-addresses-and-resources-35316
you will find loads of reading for you - and your doctors. As a start, off the doctors the "Bristol paper" where a top rheumatologist and his group expalin their approach to managing PMR for the benefit of GPs. They do 15/12.5/10 - and keep the patient at 10mg for a year. Then they reduce 1mg at a time.
The experiences of hundreds of patients over 7+ years on 3 different dedicated PMR/GCA forums has shown that even that can be a bit difficult for many patients, especially after having had a flare due to reducing too far or too fast. So we developed the "Dead Slow and Nearly Stop" reduction approach which you will find described in the responses to that thread, just scroll down past the reading list. It is all explained, how it came to be and the reasoning behind it. It is in use in a clinical study now in the north of England - but there are a lot of patients on the 3 forums who have used it or something very similar to get to lower doses than ever before, without flares in most cases. Some have even got off pred altogether.
Your agony dropping from 15 to 10 was most likely steroid withdrawal rheumatism, something you don't get in normal use of tapers with pred because you weren't on them long enough. I dropped from 15 to 10 after 2 weeks - no bother. I reduced from 10 to 5 after a further 2 weeks, I was still fine. But having stopped and a flare setting in - it took me a few years to get to 5mg again.
PMR is not like other illnesses where pred is used - it is a chronic illness and, if you were going to compare it to rheumatoid arthritis, your GP cannot use pred as he may do there where you use the pred for a flare until the DMARD usually used in RA is adjusted or changed and takes over managing the RA again. In PMR pred is your DMARD, it is managing the symptoms to allow a reasonable quality of life until the cause of the PMR, an underlying autoimmune disorder that is making your immune system attack your body and cause inflammation, dies out and goes into remission. Nothing else does it - and until that happens you will need enough pred. For 75% of patients it takes between 2 and 4 to 6 years - not months, years.
So stand up to your GP if he tries to get you to do that again. Because it doesn't work. The dose you are looking for, the lowest dose that manages the symptoms as well as the starting dose of 15mg did, will most likely be somewhere between 10 and 5mg at present - go down in 5mg steps and you will overshoot and bang, there will be a flare. Which will send you back to the beginning to get it under control and that may turn out to be harder second time around. So you will have taken more pred and had far more pain than if you had just chugged on down the dose, reducing 1mg at a time over a few weeks each time.
Have you been tested for sjrogens disease, this gives you dry mouth nasał and intimate mucous membranes, joint and muscle pain. It is autoimmune also and you can have more than one autoimmune.
Thanks to everyone who replied to my Dry Mouth problem, In reply to Eileen i don't think i have dry eyes. So how can Sjogren's syndrome be diagnosed if the symptoms are the same as PMR. I have never drunk much so no change there. it is my second day without Omeprazole it seems a bit better but could be my imagination. I have been on Natecal for 2yrs since having PMR, so think i will ask for Vit D to be included in my next blood test.
It feels like I've burnt my tongue.. It's painful to eat or drink anything but ice water. Could it be that if prednisone changes the condition of you skin, that it also affects mucus membrane?
I will up my intake of probiotic foods, thank you for the suggestion.
It sounds like you have something that I have which is unrelated to PMR or prednisone. It's called burning tongue syndrome. I recommend you go see your dentist.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/burning-mouth-syndrome/home/ovc-20179959