Prednisone

The side effects are really awful. You gain pure fat that is nearly impossible to lose.

I was on prednisone for a week last summer for sinusitis. My runs were incredible. It didn't register to me at the time that it was the prednisone. I thought i was having some sort of break through in training. The next week when I was back to normal I figured it out.

In my 20s I had really bad skin reactions to soaps. Once I used an antibiotic harsh soap and my whole body felt like it was covered with poison ivy sores. So doc put me on standard week of low dose Prednisone and the itching symptoms went away very fast. But now I continued to have reactions to even the most basic soaps and the next the time was worse than before. So he bumped up the dosage and I was so hyper and anxious and could not calm down so I went for a run and the run lasted for two hours....I thought WOW this is great, but afterward I look in the mirror and I did not recognize myself....my face and body was very bloated..i could not sleep and I could not walk...my ankles were gone the next day....it actually took me awhile to fully taper off the drug...i could no longer eat cereal and grains and had to stop running all together and got on a strength lifting program. Prednisone puts you into fight and flight adrenaline/catabolic mode. It kills your muscles/bones and stores fat. It is performance enhancing in the very short term.

Now you know what the story Magness tells about Salazar and Rupp was all about.

"Galen, did you take your prednisone?"

Prednisone is used by pretty much all muscular dystrophy patients because their muscles are week and Prednisone helps build their muscles. Prednisone is used to keep many boys walking and breating longer by strengtheing their muscles.

It works wrote:

Prednisone is used by pretty much all muscular dystrophy patients because their muscles are week and Prednisone helps build their muscles. Prednisone is used to keep many boys walking and breating longer by strengtheing their muscles.

No one cares. You did not need to bump a decade-old thread to give us this irrelevant fact.

I feel scared but I have to do it now.

fasterandfaster wrote:

Anybody take prednisone before a race? I was taking it last month and had some incredible training runs on it. Gave me some sort of mental/superman feeling boost. Is it illegal to take before a race? Dangerous?

Dude...You are delusional...I've taken it and had a tremendous drop-off in strength....And it's not an anabolic steroid, it's an anti-inflamitory....

How much do you have to take for it to have a recovery effect anyway? Can You take a small dose two days before a workout and feel amazing: or would you have to be taking it long term?

it's good stuff but my hr was way too high on prednisone

Three months ago at age 61 I suddenly developed polymyalgia rheumatica, an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the muscles. It causes severe stiffness and pain in the muscles of the back, neck, shoulders and hips. Within two weeks I went from training for a March marathon (which was cancelled) to barely being able to get out of bed and get dressed. The only useful treatment appears to be prednisone, and I started taking 10 mg/day four weeks ago, and am now down to 8 mg/day. The stuff is amazing--within 24 hours after taking the first dose I felt about 95% normal again. However, I don't feel any better than normal, and other minor aches and pains, like a chronic Achilles tendonosis I've been living with for five years, is unaffected by the pred.

Typically patients with PMR have to stay on pred for 1 year or more, and I'm really nervous about taking this nasty drug for that long, but at least hoping that I can keep tapering the dose. So far I have experienced none of the often-quoted side effects such as water retention, mood swings, sweating, or gastrointestinal upsets. Has anyone had any experience with long-term use of prednisone and how it affects running performance?

Long-term use of prednisone is bad:

You might want to check out "Critical Health News." They have natural treatments for autoimmune diseases. I use some of their nutritional recommendations that has really helped me and I'm an old stiff with 40 yrs of running on my legs.

So i have had asthma for a long time. I developed a chest cold as i was going into the final days before a target marathon. It was an out of town marathon (hotel) so i call my pulmonologist who sends out a prescription for prednisone. THis was the second time that i've been on it.

So sure enough it helps really a lot with the congestion and i feel about normal, i imagine i would have felt like hell without it. But i did not sleep for two nights before the race because the pred. speeds you up. I was a mess. I mean, I am throwing the big guns at this thing just to feel normal.

The race was challenging to start with (yep, BM 2018) but i managed to finish in my worst time ever for any 'thon and about 20 minutes slower than my time there the year before, but considered it a major feat just to finish at all.

I immediately stopped taking it and felt like hell.

So it worked, i guess, but it wasn't fun. Jittery, no sleep, can't relax,... and i didn't even get an energy boost because of lack of sleep and the congestion.

The first time i took it, though, i did get the energy boost others describe.