Coping With Prednisone

Approximately one million Americans per year take high doses of prednisone and related drugs. While these medicines may be necessary to treat serious illnesses, they may also have unpleasant, and even devastating, side effects, including changes in mood, weight, and physical strength, and vulnerability to infection. In 1997, after acclaimed flutist Eugenia Zukerman was prescribed prednisone for a rare lung disease, she teamed up with her sister, Harvard physician Julie Ingelfinger, to write the first book that helps patients deal with the side effects of the prescription. This welcome update to a superb resource—which is still the only book on the subject— covers the latest knowledge about bone health, the use of steroids for children, and new steroid compounds, along with additional strategies and exercises based on their own experiences and responses from other patients and physicians.

Approximately one million Americans per year take high doses of prednisone and related drugs (glucocorticoids) to treat serious illnesses and conditions ranging from asthma to rheumatoid arthritis to kidney disease to organ transplantation. Wile these medicines may have unpleasant, even devastating side effects, including gastrointestinal problems, intense mood swings, changes in hair and skin, and increased susceptibility to infection, they may also be the only treatment available for serious or life-threatening illnesses. When the world-renowned flutist Eugenia Zuckerman was prescribed prednisone to combat a rare lung disease, she teamed up with her sister, Julie R. Ingelfinger, a well-known specialist in pediatric nephrology and hypertension at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, to write the first ever, comprehensive guide for patients undergoing this difficult treatment. Packed with everything your doctor didn't have time to tell you, including recipes, exercises, and tips based on personal experience, Coping with Prednisone is an invaluable handbook for health-care workers, caregivers, and especially for patients themselves.

Clinical & internal medicine.

Having practiced yoga for more than thirty years, Audrey Pearson had always felt fit, strong, and flexible. Then one day in October of 2004, she awoke to flu-like symptoms, unable to move her limbs. These symptoms never decreased and only inflated. She was diagnosed with Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR), a mysterious autoimmune disease; and was treated with the steroid drug Prednisone. Written in diary format, My Four-Year PMR & Prednisone Challenge describes Pearson's daily struggle not only with the disease but with managing steroid treatment and her painful journey of withdrawing from Prednisone use. She attributes her successful recovery to her long-term practice of yoga, a gentle way to optimize the flow of life energy to help a person feel their personal best at any given time. The yoga practices helped her understand the counterintuitive healing purpose of the presence of the autoimmune disease in her life. Though the four-year experience was difficult, Pearson realized that PMR was an important and strict teacher who arrived at her door to teach her tolerance and acceptance. In My Four-Year PMR & Prednisone Challenge, Pearson relates how PMR and Prednisone withdrawal was tolerated, embraced, and experienced as an opportunity for personal and spiritual transformation.

Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) and Giant Cell Arteritis (GCA) are linked rheumatic inflammatory illnesses that affect older people - generally, people over 50. They are chronic autoimmune conditions that cause untold misery, pain and debilitation. More acutely, undiagnosed GCA can lead to blindness, which is irreversible. In the United Kingdom each year, there are an estimated 40,000 new cases of PMR and 10,000 new cases of GCA, with a significant degree of overlap, many people having both conditions together. Many people, when they first get their diagnosis, have never heard of PMR or GCA before, and have to get used to the idea of having a chronic inflammatory illness, together with the steroid therapy that is the only standard effective treatment widely available. Several months into their diagnosis they often have many questions about why their journey through PMR and GCA isn't as smooth as they were led to expect. This book is written to give people who have Polymyalgia Rheumatica, or Giant Cell Arteritis (sometimes known as temporal arteritis), and their friends and carers, information about these illnesses, drawing on recent research. It also aims to give insights into what it is like to have these conditions, and how sufferers and those close to them can help themselves in the self-management of their condition towards recovery. It is not intended to replace information provided by your doctor or clinician. This second edition incorporates recommendations by international working groups on the diagnosis and management of PMR and GCA, and findings from research published since 2014. A full references list and index have been added. The author, Dr Kate Gilbert, PhD, is a semi-retired lecturer in management development, now concentrating on writing and voluntary work. She has spent several years, as a PMR survivor, studying these conditions and working as a volunteer with the PMR and GCA charity, PMRGCAuk. A former Chair of Trustees, she helps to edit the charity's website www.pmrgcauk.com and its regular newsletter. She has also served as a patient representative on a number of working groups, including the ACR/EULAR group to develop international recommendations for PMR, and has recently contributed a chapter on patient education to a medical textbook on PMR and GCA published by Oxford University Press.

Coping with Myasthenia Gravis is a self-improvement book inspired by the need to provide different perspectives to myasthenia gravis patients on how to deal with the challenges brought by the said disease. This important guide book introduces readers to the disease’s history, mechanism, and clinical features. It also shares some coping mechanisms that were discovered by patients. These information is not present in the medical textbooks and only patients can speak about their experiences.

With about 10–20% of the adult population in Europe being tattooed, there is a strong demand for publications discussing the various issues related to tattooed skin and health. Until now, only a few scientific studies on tattooing have been published. This book discusses different aspects of the various medical risks associated with tattoos, such as allergic reactions from red tattoos, papulo-nodular reactions from black tattoos as well as technical and psycho-social complications, in addition to bacterial and viral infections. Further sections are dedicated to the composition of tattoo inks, and a case is made for the urgent introduction of national and international regulations. Distinguished authors, all specialists in their particular fields, have contributed to this publication which provides a comprehensive view of the health implications associated with tattooing. The book covers a broad range of topics that will be of interest to clinicians and nursing staff, toxicologists and regulators as well as laser surgeons who often face the challenge of having to remove tattoos, professional tattooists and producers of tattoo ink.