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Any benefits to taking prednisone 5 mg for long Covid symptoms ?

Posted by radapanich @radapanich, Aug 30, 2023

An immunologist in NYC who works with long Covid patients prescribed prednisone 5 mg for my long Covid 19 symptoms: brain fog, fatigue , joint and muscle pain. I am already on low dose naltrexone (LDN), aspirin 84 mg and statin Lipitor 10mg. She said that all of those drugs can be helpful to address , micro blood clots, chronic inflammation associated with long Covid. Does anyone have experiences with using prednisone 5 mg daily? She also mentioned antivirals like Paxlovid , but stated that there were side effects. A few people on the forum mentioned Adderal for fatigue ? Comments and thoughts greatly appreciated !

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diverdown1 | @diverdown1 | Jun 12 9:39am

I did try prednisone when I first got sick. It did help with the fatigue, but it caused me to be anxious and ravenous with hunger. I have not taken it in over a year. If it helps, that is great, but I do not believe it can be sustained, although I do not know for sure. Vyvanse, for ADHD, has helped me a lot, as well as Low Dose Naltrexone and Gabapentin.

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sfletch | @sfletch | Aug 1 4:06pm
In reply to @radapanich "The immunologist stated that prednisone 5 mg is a very low dose. It is not immunosuppressive..." + (show)
@radapanich

The immunologist stated that prednisone 5 mg is a very low dose. It is not immunosuppressive at that dose, i.e. it does not make you more susceptible to infections. There is a huge range in doses, as high as 100 mg or more, for autoimmune conditions or following g organ transplants to prevent rejection, in which immunosuppressive doses are required. Update from yesterday: prednisone takes effect very rapidly. I took my first dose yesterday. Already today 24 hours later, I feel significant improvement in terms of muscle pain, joint pain, energy, overall well-being. Very low doses of prednisone are well tolerated. Of course, check in with your physician, if you are diabetic, pre diabetic or have other issues where prednisone is contraindicated. The immunologist I saw specializes in post acute Covid 19 syndrome. Fear of prednisone is so common that there is term “corticophobia”. People confuse low anti-inflammatory doses with high immunosuppressive doses which DO have serious side effects.

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are you still taking prednisone for long covid. I am considering taking a low dose if it can help with my symptoms and i saw that you took it

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j77 | @j77 | Aug 2 4:16pm

Low Dose Prednisone for a couple weeks gave me the ability to swallow again and I think it gave me a boost to finally get out of bed. Covid attacked all of the muscles in my body including my throat. I could barely even swallow ensure and got down to barely 100 pounds. My primary treated my symptoms like one Giant Autoimmune Disease. Prednisone has alot of bad side effects, but I think at the time it saved my life.

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