12 ms·

Dexamethasone is a serious drug and corticosteroid [1]. It was prescribed for a friend after eye-surgery and having skin / eye inflammation problems, I used it

by csomar 6y ago

Dexamethasone is a serious drug and corticosteroid [1]. It was prescribed for a friend after eye-surgery and having skin / eye inflammation problems, I used it (with no doctors advice) recklessly albeit with very small quantities. The drug was hyper-effective. An unbelievably tiny quantity can remove any inflammation (eye, skin, hair skin rash, etc...). But the fall out and side-effects are no joke even for seemingly super minuscule doses. It was a horror story for me with horrible eye inflammation, small inflammations in different parts of the body and a skin rash I still struggle with until today. Mind you I took small localized doses and not an injection. I wasn't aware that it can travel through your skin, get into your blood and make a mess. I think the research will need to specify potential side-effects and their probabilities. It's trade-off at the end of the day. PS: Do not ever think of trying it without medical advice and doctor supervision. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethasone#Adverse_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethasone#Adverse_effects

ceejayoz 6y ago
To be clear, it's generally advisable to only take a prescription drug under the direction of a doctor. This isn't unique to dexamethasone. Steroids plus eyes can lead to glaucoma. My doc won't let me use them anywhere near the face.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  Random aside - I wish I had a tough love doctor that would tell it to me like it is, and pay close enough attention to refuse to let me do things. I don’t even really use the term “my doctor”, I just see a doctor when I need to. I’m 30 and live in a large city, and I’ve rarely seen the same doctor more than a couple times in a row. I go in for a physical roughly once a year, and the doctor will sit and talk with me for 10 minutes or so. But otherwise if I need something checked out in between I often get seen by a PA or whatever doctor in the practice is free. I’ve never really felt encouraged by the same doctor to see them repeatedly, or to email them personally if I have a medical question like I know some people do. So when I move to a different neighborhood or something, I just end up seeing a different doctor next time. Am I just getting bad doctors? How do you find this type of buddy doctor that becomes a long term relationship and really cares about you personally, like I hear about other people seeming to have.
  - whateveracct 6y ago
    I think you get it by going to the same doctor over many years. Continuity of care is important!
    - jonlucc 6y ago
      That can be very difficult. Increasingly, physicians employ a staff of PAs and/or nurse practitioners who handle cases. Those staff seem to move around more frequently than physicians, so even if I keep going to the same office, the staff may have almost entirely changed.
      - zucked 6y ago
        This, coupled with the fact that, as an American, my ability to see a particular doctor (or even supporting staff) is highly dependent on whom I am employed with at any given time. If you switch jobs regularly, you will likely end up on multiple insurance plans, each with their own set of participating medical professionals. Sometimes there is overlap, often there is not.
        michaelmrose 6y ago
        For those that can get insurance via their state or federal health care exchange you can pick your insurance based on doctors covered.
  - war1025 6y ago
    That's been my experience with doctors. Even our kids doctor, who we see multiple times a year. My mom has a fairly good relationship with her doctor, but she worked in the same hospital with him for 30 years.
  - arkades 6y ago
    > Am I just getting bad doctors? How do you find this type of buddy doctor that becomes a long term relationship and really cares about you personally, like I hear about other people seeming to have. Doc here: Stay in one place, go to the same guy repeatedly over time, and ideally, be really candid with them, and send them your family members. When I see half (or more) of a household, it's an entirely different dynamic. You can't buy the sort of relationship that comes of seeing someone's kids grow up, and then treating that kid. That kid is like... 5% blood relative to the doc at that point. He will never be "just a patient." Or when you treat someone and their mother - that's a different level of candor right there, because that person trusts me with their mother - that right there suggests I can be more open with them, because they won't immediately blame/hate me for news they don't like. Time is the key, though. A lot of patients, if they get "tough love", turn around and go to a different doc. Especially the ones that say they just want to hear it straight - they are trying to convince themselves, I think. So getting to "tough love" is something that's built up over time, in both directions. (Also, studies suggest that it's somewhere between "not effective" and "actively harmful" when it comes to positively changing patient's health-related behavior, so it's not a super high priority.) Bonus points if you go to someone that only takes cash. For a once or twice a year visit, it's not that much money (compared to, say, one month of most prescription meds), but it means they don't have to hustle you through an 8-minute visit to keep their lights on. You can only get so much of a connection with someone that's forced to hustle you out of the door - it's jarring and kind of upsetting to everyone involved, on both sides of the interaction. (When I was in training I was told pretty candidly I'd make a fantastic attending one day, if I learned to actually hustle patients fast enough to be able to afford keeping an office open. ... You can imagine, I structured my career towards cash patients only. I don't like being inaccessible to folk, but I hate it less than I hate giving people half-assed help when they're in need.) Another good element is going to a physician that you're community-bound to in some way other than a strict transaction. Your kid's little league coach will have an entirely different relationship to you than "random doctor." That's becoming less common these days, unfortunately - with the way reimbursement is swinging, I don't know of many docs that still have time for much in the way of community activities. They exist, but they're a lot rarer than they used to be.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  As someone who has glaucoma (diagnosed at the young age of 25, unfortunately, but thankfully with almost no vision loss) and also has a need for corticosteroids due to other issues... yes, this is a very fine line I sometimes have to walk. Corticosteroids exacerbate eye pressure problems that come with glaucoma, which could counter the effects of my glaucoma medications.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    Yeah. I've got psoriasis on my eyelids, and it's not a fun calculation to have to make. Especially during "rub my eyes all the time" allergy season.
gambiting 6y ago
Well, yeah, steroids are incredible, shame they have such severe side effects. Following a parvovirus B19 infection I developed severe joint problems(basically got advanced arthritis at the age of 28, how fun), and all it took to sort out was one steroid injection. I won't lie, for the next few days after the injection I felt like a superhuman, all the issues went away and in general I felt super great. Obviously that's not something you can continue doing because the side effects get really bad after a while, my doctor warned me that if the issues come back I probably won't be able to get another injection because the risk is too great, but for a one-off thing it was like a miracle cure.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  That's the problem with evolution. Any protein in the body ends up with multiple completely unrelated functions. If it's in the blood stream for enough generations, the body will find some alternate use for it. It's like a compression algorithm on your DNA. ...and so when we try to use meds to counter certain proteins or block receptors, we discover that it has a dozen totally unrelated impacts. "Oh, that blood pressure medication? Well let's just have it also randomly give you prostate cancer!" (real example). Organic evolved animals are the worst type of spaghetti code - if there was ever something you'd want to redesign from the ground up, it's us. Then add to that that there isn't even any "standard" type of human. We're all different - and even different groups of us have different smatterings of genes. Sometimes it correlates with our ancestors background - sometimes it doesn't. Who knows! Evolution! We're all each just individual experiments running around to see which genes can procreate the most. ...and it's not even as though each of us is a single experiment on a specific gene, that would be too easy. We're each an experiment on a unique collection of thousands of genes that evolution hopes will average out the results across the entire population. Try to wrap your statistics PhD around that! Then also factor in that modern human evolutionary pressures are totally different than they were even a couple of generations ago, and it becomes clearly evident that evolution is in a complete state of dysfunctional disarray.
  - nwienert 6y ago
    Spaghetti code has more negative connotation than I’d attribute to our insanely adaptive, flexible, and efficient organism.
codingdave 6y ago
Am I understanding you correctly, that it both fixed your eye inflammation, and had a side effect of horrible eye inflammation?
- Invictus0 6y ago
  I think parent is saying it can fix eye inflammation, but for him it caused eye inflammation.
  - wjn0 6y ago
    Not to be over-speculative, but I think OP is probably referring to the rebound effects of corticosteroids which have been documented recently as related to skin conditions [1]. [1] https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(17)32533-1/pdf https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(17)32533-1/pdf
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      The "a skin rash I still struggle with until today" is probably skin thinning, too. Powerful steroids can permanently reduce the thickness of the skin, revealing capillaries in thin-skinned places like the face. It can look like a permanent sunburn.
- cstross 6y ago
  Corticosteroids are strongly contraindicated for topical application to the face, because of the risk of glaucoma. Systemic (that is, oral/intravenous for full-body effect) corticosteroid use doesn't usually have this specific side effect. The side-effects of corticosteroids are generally No Fun Whatosever (I speak both as a former pharmacist and as someone who has needed them on occasion) but they're the go-to treatment for some very unpleasant inflammatory conditions. But you should remember that they're immune system depressants and should never be used without medical supervision. (Side effects range from glaucoma leading to blindness -- for misuse of topical creams on the face -- through to sudden death -- for abrupt withdrawl from prolonged systemic doses.)
jonny_eh 6y ago
Sorry for the probing question but why did you take your friend's prescription?
noelsusman 6y ago
All true, but the trade-offs here are clear. This drug is being looked at for patients who are in the hospital on oxygen or a ventilator. At that point side effects aren't very relevant since their odds of dying are somewhere between 25-40%. Anything that significantly reduces those odds is going to be worth it.
bentcorner 6y ago
I had anaphylaxis after accidentally eating something with peanuts in it and went to the hospital. I was given* Decadron (brand name dexamethasone) among other things, eventually I was fine and went home later that evening. The next day I got out of bed and pretty much fell over. I could barely stand up. Wife took me to the hospital again, it turns out I had a reaction to dexamethasone. Definitely not something to play around with. *I don't recall if it was a pill or an injection. Probably injected, since I had trouble swallowing.
jfk13 6y ago
Yes, it's a serious drug indeed. I was involved a few years ago in caring for someone who was taking dexamethasone (as part of cancer treatment). The side-effects when the dose was just a little too high were......scary. In the sense of severe, bewildering psychosis.
WhompingWindows 6y ago
Your post needs to mention that this is for use in SEVERE COVID-19 patients; those on oxygenation and ventilation. At that level, side-effects from the steroidal pale in comparison to DYING from COVID-19.
ankit219 6y ago
While I do believe they should not have announced it in public, but this could be useful. Steroids are immunosuppressants and end up neutering the immune system. Severe cases for Corona virus ended up due to hyperactive immune system (based on various reports). Taking a steroid is good for short term when you have an auto immune disease or inflammation, swelling, but it hurts the body's capacity to fight other infections. I had RA and was given a steroid for a week. No pain whatsover, i could run, and go about my day normally. Side effects: I could not sleep, and the moment i stopped taking them, the pain returned. Could work in short term but this seems more like a stop gap than any cure/medicine which works against the virus. This is something which would taper your immune system down so you wont have adverse effects. The potential side-effects are huge.
- ascorbic 6y ago
  They aren't claiming that this cures the virus. It's purely to treat the cytokine storm that causes most covid deaths. This is for people who are already hospitalised and receiving oxygen, with the most dramatic results for those on ventilators. At that point the mortality rate is high enough that the risks of side effects are worthwhile.
  - ankit219 6y ago
    Thank you. Yes, that makes sense. That was what got me confused.
gonational 6y ago
For systemic inflammation problems (including uveitis, joint pain, and intermittent brain fog), have you experimented with probiotics, especially acidophilus (including L-92), as well as cutting gluten and other potential allergens from your diet?
pc86 6y ago
The only thing this comment should used as evidence of is that taking prescription medication without a prescription - especially a steroid of all things - is idiotic. The layman has absolutely no way to tell what a small or minuscule dose actually is.
dumb1224 6y ago
I'm surprised that medical studies seem to happen in silos. The severity of adverse effect is well known in China during the 2003 SARS period. Dexamethasone is cheap probably due to the mass production of the drug in China in the early noughties. Before isolating the coronavirus of SARS corticosteroid drug abuse led to serious problems where patients had their lives saved but eventually disabled. The chinese lead scientist in SARS/Covid19 is known for saving lives with these drugs (super high dose and cocktail drugs) but also warned their serious effect after the treatment. There was a huge debate of stop using them all together in favour of traditional chinese medicine (which is equally biased). Of course they save lives but you are at risk of huge comprises of the human body. reference: http://www.j-smu.com/oa/pdfdow.aspx?Sid=2009112284 http://www.j-smu.com/oa/pdfdow.aspx?Sid=2009112284 or https://wenku.baidu.com/view/7eef29aa0029bd64783e2c40 https://wenku.baidu.com/view/7eef29aa0029bd64783e2c40
tia4tia 6y ago
Is this true? I have taken the strongest steroids topical, oral and by injection (undiagnosed DH) and never had any side effects except small time relieve of my symptoms that could have been fixed by a strict diet
credit_guy 6y ago
Not sure what side effects you experienced with Dexamethasone, but I can speak about my experience with Prednisone, which is a drug in the same family (glucocorticoids [1]). I was prescribed Prednisone in order to fight off a severe allergic reaction to something that was never identified (this is not an unusual scenario). It worked wonders. I would say it's at 100 to 1000 more potent than benadryl. Now, once you get on Prednisone, you become dependent. You can't just quit cold turkey. You need to taper off. I didn't know that if you try to accelerate the tapering you might experience some surprises. I was just very enthusiastic to reduce my dose. I ended up with some excruciating joint pains in the Emergency Room (or A&E, as this was happening in London). After some MRI, they concluded I have nothing, gave me an ibuprofen and discharged me. This was not a fun experience (except for seeing how many drunk people visit the ER on a weekday night in London). While modern medicine was not able to tell me what happened with me, I created this little mental model: Prednisone was keeping my immune system in check. Without enough of it, the immune system went haywire, and I was experiencing something akin to severe acute rheumatic arthritis. Once I upped my dose, this went away. I was then very disciplined with my tapering, and eventually, after 3 more months, I got off of Prednisone. Five days from now I'll be 2 years Prednisone free. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucocorticoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucocorticoid
- cull 6y ago
  I can speak to both. But, for me, Prednisone was the hardest to break; I took Prednisone for more than 10 years with very high doses first and slowly tampering off. It saved my life and, yes, it worked wonders. On very high doses I was on the top of the world—euphoria. But once the tampering started, that’s when the negative side effects came: sleepless, agitation, restlessness, depression, mood swings, and much more. My doctor mentioned that with its benefits she could list a side effect from A to Z. You have one year one me, but I too get to celebrate being Prednisone free.
stcredzero 6y ago
I think the research will need to specify potential side-effects and their probabilities. It's trade-off at the end of the day. Here's a different perspective on dexamethasone: https://youtu.be/pnS4MbRribw?t=1188 https://youtu.be/pnS4MbRribw?t=1188
dbbk 6y ago
Why on earth would you take something like this without medical direction?

by csomar 6y ago

ceejayoz 6y ago

To be clear, it's generally advisable to only take a prescription drug under the direction of a doctor. This isn't unique to dexamethasone. Steroids plus eyes can lead to glaucoma. My doc won't let me use them anywhere near the face.

cactus2093 6y ago
Random aside - I wish I had a tough love doctor that would tell it to me like it is, and pay close enough attention to refuse to let me do things. I don’t even really use the term “my doctor”, I just see a doctor when I need to. I’m 30 and live in a large city, and I’ve rarely seen the same doctor more than a couple times in a row. I go in for a physical roughly once a year, and the doctor will sit and talk with me for 10 minutes or so. But otherwise if I need something checked out in between I often get seen by a PA or whatever doctor in the practice is free. I’ve never really felt encouraged by the same doctor to see them repeatedly, or to email them personally if I have a medical question like I know some people do. So when I move to a different neighborhood or something, I just end up seeing a different doctor next time. Am I just getting bad doctors? How do you find this type of buddy doctor that becomes a long term relationship and really cares about you personally, like I hear about other people seeming to have.
- whateveracct 6y ago
  I think you get it by going to the same doctor over many years. Continuity of care is important!
  - jonlucc 6y ago
    That can be very difficult. Increasingly, physicians employ a staff of PAs and/or nurse practitioners who handle cases. Those staff seem to move around more frequently than physicians, so even if I keep going to the same office, the staff may have almost entirely changed.
    - zucked 6y ago
      This, coupled with the fact that, as an American, my ability to see a particular doctor (or even supporting staff) is highly dependent on whom I am employed with at any given time. If you switch jobs regularly, you will likely end up on multiple insurance plans, each with their own set of participating medical professionals. Sometimes there is overlap, often there is not.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        For those that can get insurance via their state or federal health care exchange you can pick your insurance based on doctors covered.
- war1025 6y ago
  That's been my experience with doctors. Even our kids doctor, who we see multiple times a year. My mom has a fairly good relationship with her doctor, but she worked in the same hospital with him for 30 years.
- arkades 6y ago
  > Am I just getting bad doctors? How do you find this type of buddy doctor that becomes a long term relationship and really cares about you personally, like I hear about other people seeming to have. Doc here: Stay in one place, go to the same guy repeatedly over time, and ideally, be really candid with them, and send them your family members. When I see half (or more) of a household, it's an entirely different dynamic. You can't buy the sort of relationship that comes of seeing someone's kids grow up, and then treating that kid. That kid is like... 5% blood relative to the doc at that point. He will never be "just a patient." Or when you treat someone and their mother - that's a different level of candor right there, because that person trusts me with their mother - that right there suggests I can be more open with them, because they won't immediately blame/hate me for news they don't like. Time is the key, though. A lot of patients, if they get "tough love", turn around and go to a different doc. Especially the ones that say they just want to hear it straight - they are trying to convince themselves, I think. So getting to "tough love" is something that's built up over time, in both directions. (Also, studies suggest that it's somewhere between "not effective" and "actively harmful" when it comes to positively changing patient's health-related behavior, so it's not a super high priority.) Bonus points if you go to someone that only takes cash. For a once or twice a year visit, it's not that much money (compared to, say, one month of most prescription meds), but it means they don't have to hustle you through an 8-minute visit to keep their lights on. You can only get so much of a connection with someone that's forced to hustle you out of the door - it's jarring and kind of upsetting to everyone involved, on both sides of the interaction. (When I was in training I was told pretty candidly I'd make a fantastic attending one day, if I learned to actually hustle patients fast enough to be able to afford keeping an office open. ... You can imagine, I structured my career towards cash patients only. I don't like being inaccessible to folk, but I hate it less than I hate giving people half-assed help when they're in need.) Another good element is going to a physician that you're community-bound to in some way other than a strict transaction. Your kid's little league coach will have an entirely different relationship to you than "random doctor." That's becoming less common these days, unfortunately - with the way reimbursement is swinging, I don't know of many docs that still have time for much in the way of community activities. They exist, but they're a lot rarer than they used to be.
munchbunny 6y ago
As someone who has glaucoma (diagnosed at the young age of 25, unfortunately, but thankfully with almost no vision loss) and also has a need for corticosteroids due to other issues... yes, this is a very fine line I sometimes have to walk. Corticosteroids exacerbate eye pressure problems that come with glaucoma, which could counter the effects of my glaucoma medications.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Yeah. I've got psoriasis on my eyelids, and it's not a fun calculation to have to make. Especially during "rub my eyes all the time" allergy season.

gambiting 6y ago

Well, yeah, steroids are incredible, shame they have such severe side effects. Following a parvovirus B19 infection I developed severe joint problems(basically got advanced arthritis at the age of 28, how fun), and all it took to sort out was one steroid injection. I won't lie, for the next few days after the injection I felt like a superhuman, all the issues went away and in general I felt super great. Obviously that's not something you can continue doing because the side effects get really bad after a while, my doctor warned me that if the issues come back I probably won't be able to get another injection because the risk is too great, but for a one-off thing it was like a miracle cure.

koheripbal 6y ago
That's the problem with evolution. Any protein in the body ends up with multiple completely unrelated functions. If it's in the blood stream for enough generations, the body will find some alternate use for it. It's like a compression algorithm on your DNA. ...and so when we try to use meds to counter certain proteins or block receptors, we discover that it has a dozen totally unrelated impacts. "Oh, that blood pressure medication? Well let's just have it also randomly give you prostate cancer!" (real example). Organic evolved animals are the worst type of spaghetti code - if there was ever something you'd want to redesign from the ground up, it's us. Then add to that that there isn't even any "standard" type of human. We're all different - and even different groups of us have different smatterings of genes. Sometimes it correlates with our ancestors background - sometimes it doesn't. Who knows! Evolution! We're all each just individual experiments running around to see which genes can procreate the most. ...and it's not even as though each of us is a single experiment on a specific gene, that would be too easy. We're each an experiment on a unique collection of thousands of genes that evolution hopes will average out the results across the entire population. Try to wrap your statistics PhD around that! Then also factor in that modern human evolutionary pressures are totally different than they were even a couple of generations ago, and it becomes clearly evident that evolution is in a complete state of dysfunctional disarray.
- nwienert 6y ago
  Spaghetti code has more negative connotation than I’d attribute to our insanely adaptive, flexible, and efficient organism.

codingdave 6y ago

Am I understanding you correctly, that it both fixed your eye inflammation, and had a side effect of horrible eye inflammation?

Invictus0 6y ago
I think parent is saying it can fix eye inflammation, but for him it caused eye inflammation.
- wjn0 6y ago
  Not to be over-speculative, but I think OP is probably referring to the rebound effects of corticosteroids which have been documented recently as related to skin conditions [1]. [1] https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(17)32533-1/pdf https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(17)32533-1/pdf
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    The "a skin rash I still struggle with until today" is probably skin thinning, too. Powerful steroids can permanently reduce the thickness of the skin, revealing capillaries in thin-skinned places like the face. It can look like a permanent sunburn.
cstross 6y ago
Corticosteroids are strongly contraindicated for topical application to the face, because of the risk of glaucoma. Systemic (that is, oral/intravenous for full-body effect) corticosteroid use doesn't usually have this specific side effect. The side-effects of corticosteroids are generally No Fun Whatosever (I speak both as a former pharmacist and as someone who has needed them on occasion) but they're the go-to treatment for some very unpleasant inflammatory conditions. But you should remember that they're immune system depressants and should never be used without medical supervision. (Side effects range from glaucoma leading to blindness -- for misuse of topical creams on the face -- through to sudden death -- for abrupt withdrawl from prolonged systemic doses.)

jonny_eh 6y ago

Sorry for the probing question but why did you take your friend's prescription?

noelsusman 6y ago

All true, but the trade-offs here are clear. This drug is being looked at for patients who are in the hospital on oxygen or a ventilator. At that point side effects aren't very relevant since their odds of dying are somewhere between 25-40%. Anything that significantly reduces those odds is going to be worth it.

bentcorner 6y ago

I had anaphylaxis after accidentally eating something with peanuts in it and went to the hospital. I was given* Decadron (brand name dexamethasone) among other things, eventually I was fine and went home later that evening. The next day I got out of bed and pretty much fell over. I could barely stand up. Wife took me to the hospital again, it turns out I had a reaction to dexamethasone. Definitely not something to play around with. *I don't recall if it was a pill or an injection. Probably injected, since I had trouble swallowing.

jfk13 6y ago

Yes, it's a serious drug indeed. I was involved a few years ago in caring for someone who was taking dexamethasone (as part of cancer treatment). The side-effects when the dose was just a little too high were......scary. In the sense of severe, bewildering psychosis.

WhompingWindows 6y ago

Your post needs to mention that this is for use in SEVERE COVID-19 patients; those on oxygenation and ventilation. At that level, side-effects from the steroidal pale in comparison to DYING from COVID-19.

ankit219 6y ago

While I do believe they should not have announced it in public, but this could be useful. Steroids are immunosuppressants and end up neutering the immune system. Severe cases for Corona virus ended up due to hyperactive immune system (based on various reports). Taking a steroid is good for short term when you have an auto immune disease or inflammation, swelling, but it hurts the body's capacity to fight other infections. I had RA and was given a steroid for a week. No pain whatsover, i could run, and go about my day normally. Side effects: I could not sleep, and the moment i stopped taking them, the pain returned. Could work in short term but this seems more like a stop gap than any cure/medicine which works against the virus. This is something which would taper your immune system down so you wont have adverse effects. The potential side-effects are huge.

ascorbic 6y ago
They aren't claiming that this cures the virus. It's purely to treat the cytokine storm that causes most covid deaths. This is for people who are already hospitalised and receiving oxygen, with the most dramatic results for those on ventilators. At that point the mortality rate is high enough that the risks of side effects are worthwhile.
- ankit219 6y ago
  Thank you. Yes, that makes sense. That was what got me confused.

gonational 6y ago

For systemic inflammation problems (including uveitis, joint pain, and intermittent brain fog), have you experimented with probiotics, especially acidophilus (including L-92), as well as cutting gluten and other potential allergens from your diet?

pc86 6y ago

The only thing this comment should used as evidence of is that taking prescription medication without a prescription - especially a steroid of all things - is idiotic. The layman has absolutely no way to tell what a small or minuscule dose actually is.

dumb1224 6y ago

I'm surprised that medical studies seem to happen in silos. The severity of adverse effect is well known in China during the 2003 SARS period. Dexamethasone is cheap probably due to the mass production of the drug in China in the early noughties. Before isolating the coronavirus of SARS corticosteroid drug abuse led to serious problems where patients had their lives saved but eventually disabled. The chinese lead scientist in SARS/Covid19 is known for saving lives with these drugs (super high dose and cocktail drugs) but also warned their serious effect after the treatment. There was a huge debate of stop using them all together in favour of traditional chinese medicine (which is equally biased). Of course they save lives but you are at risk of huge comprises of the human body. reference: http://www.j-smu.com/oa/pdfdow.aspx?Sid=2009112284 http://www.j-smu.com/oa/pdfdow.aspx?Sid=2009112284 or https://wenku.baidu.com/view/7eef29aa0029bd64783e2c40 https://wenku.baidu.com/view/7eef29aa0029bd64783e2c40

tia4tia 6y ago

Is this true? I have taken the strongest steroids topical, oral and by injection (undiagnosed DH) and never had any side effects except small time relieve of my symptoms that could have been fixed by a strict diet

credit_guy 6y ago

Not sure what side effects you experienced with Dexamethasone, but I can speak about my experience with Prednisone, which is a drug in the same family (glucocorticoids [1]). I was prescribed Prednisone in order to fight off a severe allergic reaction to something that was never identified (this is not an unusual scenario). It worked wonders. I would say it's at 100 to 1000 more potent than benadryl. Now, once you get on Prednisone, you become dependent. You can't just quit cold turkey. You need to taper off. I didn't know that if you try to accelerate the tapering you might experience some surprises. I was just very enthusiastic to reduce my dose. I ended up with some excruciating joint pains in the Emergency Room (or A&E, as this was happening in London). After some MRI, they concluded I have nothing, gave me an ibuprofen and discharged me. This was not a fun experience (except for seeing how many drunk people visit the ER on a weekday night in London). While modern medicine was not able to tell me what happened with me, I created this little mental model: Prednisone was keeping my immune system in check. Without enough of it, the immune system went haywire, and I was experiencing something akin to severe acute rheumatic arthritis. Once I upped my dose, this went away. I was then very disciplined with my tapering, and eventually, after 3 more months, I got off of Prednisone. Five days from now I'll be 2 years Prednisone free. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucocorticoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucocorticoid

cull 6y ago
I can speak to both. But, for me, Prednisone was the hardest to break; I took Prednisone for more than 10 years with very high doses first and slowly tampering off. It saved my life and, yes, it worked wonders. On very high doses I was on the top of the world—euphoria. But once the tampering started, that’s when the negative side effects came: sleepless, agitation, restlessness, depression, mood swings, and much more. My doctor mentioned that with its benefits she could list a side effect from A to Z. You have one year one me, but I too get to celebrate being Prednisone free.

stcredzero 6y ago

I think the research will need to specify potential side-effects and their probabilities. It's trade-off at the end of the day. Here's a different perspective on dexamethasone: https://youtu.be/pnS4MbRribw?t=1188 https://youtu.be/pnS4MbRribw?t=1188

dbbk 6y ago

Why on earth would you take something like this without medical direction?