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PMR - What do you wish you had known . . .
Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: 11 hours ago | Replies (72)Comment receiving replies
@dadcue Super helpful. I find this journey to be a weird one. With many people on the outside looking at me like I was a freak for considering Kevzara (that was after they kept referring to what I have as arthritis or as noted in my first post, just a reality of getting old 🤬). That it seems like overkill (for lack of a better word). Yet it seems like many of these same people have no issue with GLp1s.
And @cwbf Thanks for the 90 day note. I was hoping this would kick in sooner.
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@grownupcf
It doesn't exactly "kick in" after 3 months. IL-6 inhibitors should be working and doing their thing from day #1. Within a couple of days your ESR and CRP should drop to almost zero. Your symptoms of PMR however don't go away immediately in the way Prednisone works. You don't get the instant gratification that prednisone gives you.
The 3 months is for Kevzara to reach a "steady state" in your system when you do the injections. After it reaches a steady state, people should be able to taper Prednisone faster. However, you still need to allow time for your adrenals to recover. The endocrinolgist I saw said it could take months or years for my cortisol level to improve. I needed to stay on 3 mg or less of Prednisone in order for my adrenals to show signs of recovery. I didn't feel so well on 3 mg of Prednisone but the endocrinologist encouraged me to stay on 3 mg.
It took 6 months for my adrenals and HPA axis to recover from being suppressed by prednisone. It takes some people a longer time and some people a shorter time to produce adequate levels of cortisol again. Once Prednisone was out of my system this allowed my HPA axis to "reset" itself although I still have some hormone imbalances 6 years after stopping prednisone. My hormone imbalances might be because of something else that was discovered recently.
When I was diagnosed with PMR, nobody ever told me how my cortisol level would be impacted when I took Prednisone for more than a few months.