When I got down to 8mg some tolerable pain in the previously painfree joints came back. On John's pain scale, I had moved from 1/10 pain with zero pain in shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands and back of the knees (the only pain which never went away was base of thumbs), to 3/10 pain returning in some joints. I sat on the 8mg for 4wks hoping it would resolve by itself but it got no better. The new pain was tolerable but to me was a warning that a further reduction could only make things worse.

Whenever I reduce, some slight aches usually come back in the first week but are gone by week 2-3. Faster reductions wouldn't give enough time to see if the body is able to adjust to the new dose.

Edit: To directly answer your question about pain level after the slight dose increase, yes, I mean zero pain in all joints, apart from occasional aching twinges in the base of the thumbs and the odd finger. I have no problem with that at all.