Please be careful on the dose you are taking. It is a balancing act and any amount of excess stress can cause you to lose your balance.

"They used to say the physiological dose was around 7.5 mg, but now say it is closer to 5 mg. Having read a lot on this forum, the two points at which an awful lot of people come unstuck are 7-8 mg and 4-5 mg, way more often than chance."

Yes ... I would agree with this. Interestingly, that was what I experienced when I tapered off prednisone with help from Actemra. Before I even started Actemra, my rheumatologist wanted me to taper my prednisone dose as low as possible to see where my lowest effective dose was. It was 7 mg when I started to feel the familiar aches and pains. I stayed on 7 mg as long as I could but I had to bounce back to 10 mg when the pain worsened. I knew this would happen because I duplicated it countless times. My rheumatologist said 7 mg wasn't acceptable and wanted me on 3 mg.

When Actemra was introduced to me, I tapered cautiously from 10 mg to 7 mg in 3 months. I didn't experience the aches and pain like before. I decided to taper by 1 mg per week from 7 mg to 3 mg only because I wanted to test whether or not Actemra was working. When I easily reached 3 mg, I thought it was a good idea to tell my rheumatologist. I didn't feel well on 3 mg and I distinctly remember dizzy spells and black outs. I reported my symptoms and my rheumatologist wanted me to stop tapering. That was the first and only time a doctor ever told me to stop tapering. It was always increase my dose and try to taper again.

My cortisol level was checked via an a.m. cortisol level test. My cortisol level was low but not dangerously low. I was told to stay on 3 mg indefinitely until I could be evaluated by an endocrinologist. My visit with the endocrinologist happened months later so "technically" I was stuck on 3 mg for a long time.

My endocrinologist monitored my cortisol level for a while longer. I "experimented" with fast tapers from 3 mg to zero for a day or two before returning to 3 mg. In general, I didn't feel any different on zero prednisone compared to 3 mg. I conveyed this information to my endocrinologist at my next visit. She didn't know if it would be safe to stop prednisone or not.

It is a long story but I "took the plunge" and went to zero prednisone. That's when uveitis flared up and I was back on 60 mg again. A uveitis specialist was consulted. and she stopped Actemra and said Humira was optimal for uveitis. I was in a familiar territory treating uveitis so I quickly tapered back to 15 mg when the aches and pains returned. My rheumatologist said I needed to give Humira a chance to work so it was 3 or 4 months before we ditched Humira.

Actemra was restarted and I was able to taper my prednisone dose from 15 mg back to zero prednisone a couple of months later.