Prednisone and Biologics

 In my last post, I said that my first flare was the start of me taking steroids for years. In this post, I will explain the side effects and other medicines that my GI doctor had me take. Prednisone is the medicine that I am most familiar with as of now. The main side effects I personally had from taking a lot of it was a bigger appetite, swelling, fatigue, gas/ bloating, shortness of breath and my heart racing at random times. It was very uncomfortable and, quite frankly, embarrassing. The swelling made me look fatter than I really was. Which, for a young lady like me who is normally very thin, is embarrassing! Anytime I would have something salty it would make me painfully bloated, and the fatigue made it hard to get out of bed a lot of days.

Most of the time, if I walked at a normal pace, I would get very short of breath. There was really not much I could do about these side effects unless I slept a lot, didn't eat salty things, or walked very slowly. Even though it's hard to get much exercise, something that I found that is very good as a gentle exercise is yoga. A lot of mornings I will do a 10-minute yoga session with a video guiding me. My personal favorite yoga channel is a popular one called Yoga with Kassandra. If you would like to try some gentle, easy yoga -- here is the link to her channel: Yoga with Kassandra - YouTube

Something that I found helped a TON with my bloating while taking prednisone were the Align vitamins. Taking Align supplements everyday helped more than anything with my bloating. There was still some bloating, but it wasn't painful anymore. That and drinking coconut water helped with the bloating. Coconut water helped soothe the bloating a little, but it never lasted long. So, I would recommend Align supplements.  

Back to the medicine story: After my doctor realized that the gentle pills weren't doing me any good, we turned our attention to the biologic medicine. If you don't know what biologics are, this is a kind of medicine that shuts down your immune system or makes it much weaker. Which isn't great because prednisone does the same thing. I get sick very easily and when I do get sick, it lasts much longer than it should.

After my second flare in June of last year, they prescribed me Remicade. I came in every once in a while to get an IV in my arm to inject the biologic medicine, Remicade, into me. At first, I thought it was working. I did this for about a month and then my third, and most recent flare happened. This happened in February of 2024 earlier this year. Now about six months ago. In my next post, I will explain how this flare was different from the rest and how it got me to where I am today. 

I included a picture of the supplement I took that helped me a lot with bloating if you have the same issue and would like to give it a try. It's not terribly expensive, but I will say it's not very cheap either. Hope this helps!