Chigirl

I take 6.5mg of Prednisolone a day - 5mg in the morning, 1.5mg at night. My adrenals were completely shot before I worked out what was going on, found my way through idiot doctors, and finally found none who would treat me. ~By then I was a hypoglycemic, insomniac, weak, shaky, rake-thin wreck. I would wake every night at 3am unable to sleep due to low cortisol and low blood sugar. I craved sleep more than anything else, but couldn't.

My doctor suggested the Pred because he thought HC wouldn't be strong enough. I tried it for a couple of days, but running out of cortisol every 4 hours was even more stressful, so I switched to Pred. This gives a more constant supply of cortisol and I have improved greatly on it. Obviously I would like to cut down, but I think that is unrealistic now.

I also take DHEA - 20mg a day, and have been for over a year. I'm not sure what effect it is having, but I don't look so haggard. It is supposed to be THE anti-ageing hormone, so at 41, I'm not going to complain !

In terms of how long it took for the Pred to take effect - recovery kind of crept up on me over 6-12 months. In that time I also finished having my amalgams out, so I wouldn't know what effect that had on my adrenals. Of course I was functioning at a very low extent when I was newly on the Pred. But now I have better function. I can go shopping for an hour without feeling horribly shaky. I can walk from one end of the supermarket to the other. I can go several hours without becoming hypoglycemic. I can take my kids where they need to go. I still have the bulk of chelation ahead of me.

My view is that if you have adrenal fatigue, it isn't going to get better by itself. In fact, detoxing and chelating will stress your adrenals more, and you could end up worse after chelation than you were before. It makes sense to support them to the extent that you can function again. I had little choice with three young children.

Of course I'd rather not be taking the Pred, and be dependent on it age 41 (birthday 2 days ago!!). I'd rather not have had a mouthful of amalgams that trashed my adrenals over the years, but I didn't have any say over that either. Sadly, that's my reality now.

Nicola