Prednisone tapering and extreme sweating

I too got cold, clammy sweats while tapering steroid dosing. I was finally diagnosed with secondary adrenal insufficiency after collapsing in the street. This is a rare condition but it can kill you. Many disgnoses are made after death. Just a thought.

Thank you for your response. I sent you a private message.

@mckitty357 , thank you for your response. I sent you a private message.

I was diagnosed with PMR a couple of months ago purely because I had a period of sudden full-body severe pain and stiffness and from blood tests that showed extremely high CRP (178) plus loads of other blood markers that were way too high or way too low. It all came out of nowhere but I've been feeling really ill for a long time with no diagnosis despite seeing tons of specialists.

One of the first symptoms that told me something was wrong with me was excessive sweating with little or no physical effort. That was 13 years ago and hasn't stopped since but obviously much worse in the summer months. I'm a male now aged 73 so it also had nothing to do with hormonal issues that some females are familiar with in later life. Could be male menapause of course but I doubt it. So, for me, it has nothing to do with prednisone since I've only just started taking it.

At age 60 and having been in really good health until then I suddenly started sweating buckets if I was simply out in the sun, or doing the slightest amount of physical movement. It got to the point where, whenever we went out for a few hours, we'd have to take a second shirt or t-shirt knowing that I'd have to change due to so much sweating. And when I did sweat like that my shirt would have salt stains bordering the sweat patch so I was obviously losing a lot of salt too.

I started sweating at night, especially down my back. So much so that I have to sleep on a towel so that I don't soak the sheet or the mattress. Sounds pretty gross I know. The t-shirts I sleep in you could almost wring out but, it's always the back of the t-shirt that's soaked. Never the front or the armpits. I'm not overweight, don't have any heart issues, no diabetes, no bad habits but have been feeling deathly ill at times for all these years with some awful symptoms that make me feel really unwell. Now, with this new PMR problem, I feel even worse. So, is it all connected and all been leading up to this?

My sweating often seems to start from the bottom of my skull which makes me wonder if it has something to do with a cranial problem of some sort. Possibly cervical arthritis or nerve damage. But, sometimes my arms will break out in a sweat as do my legs when nowhere else does. I do have a lot of arthritis in a lot of my joints and nerve pain so perhaps, when I begin to get over-stimulated by physical effort, even just a small amount, or hot weather, my body's sympathetic nervous system reacts to the pain and inflammation in some way and causes me to sweat buckets. Where I live, on the Mediterranean, the weather is fairly mild at the moment so sweating isn't an issue. Full body pain and nerve pain is. When the weather starts to get hot, which it will, l know it'll be a huge problem. Last year, because I could see from my shirts that I was losing a lot of salt when I sweat, I started taking electrolyte powders which included sodium. Trying to replace the salt I was losing. Now, because I'm taking prednisone, my doctor tells me to cut back on salt. So I'm not sure how that's going to turn out when the sweating season starts! I don't think doctors look at electrolyte imbalances closely enough at a cellular level. Serum levels don't always tell the whole story and electrolyte imbalances can cause lots of problems. Especially for the elderly. Some of them serious.