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New Diagnosis of Adrenal Insufficiency. Anyone else?
Diabetes & Endocrine System | Last Active: Mar 29 10:42pm | Replies (7)Comment receiving replies
Ok, so if this is secondary to the steroid use, have you been told your adrenal glands will recover? When steroids are used long-term, the adrenal glands start to shut down because the body is recognizing it already has (replacement by prednisone) steroids in place. Usually a person is placed on a long taper off the steroids in order to allow the adrenal glands to start working again. If the taper is not long enough or the steroid use was really high, the adrenals glands need more time to recover. It sounds like this may have happened to you which is a much better prognosis. It is more rare that the adrenal glands will stop making cortisol all together after steroid use but certainly can happen. With the hydration, too much hydration can dilute the electrolytes which often are significantly affected by low cortisol. Low electrolytes would affect your heart among other things. In your shoes, I would listen very carefully to your doctors about excessive fluid.
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@sb4ca My adrenal glands are not expected to recover. The pituitary is not secreting any ACTH to the adrenal glands. As for the hydration issue, I also have Idiopathic Chronic Pancreatitis and have an issue with the intracellular level absorbing fluids orally. Therefore, I am chronically dehydrated as well. The abnormal heart arrthymia was caused by the severe dehydration which started an adrenal crisis and the fluids were needed to stabilize my condition. I was so depleted that 3 Liters was required. Afterwards, I felt amazingly better and all the cardiac symptoms disappeared.
This is why frequent hydration will be necessary for me throughout my life.
I am interested in whether i could have received less prednisone for the steroid trial to determine autoimmune pancreatitis and have wondered if I was adequately tapered, but my PCP and Endo think that it wasn't the taper that caused the adrenal insufficiency but the length of time prescribed for the trial.
Thanks for your input.