Breathing Issues and Prednisone

[Michele]

Hi Valsmum,

I am just going to through out another angle to possible causes to rib cage pain. Be aware that Babesia (a lyme coinfection) can cause symptoms of rib cage pain, pain in the sternum, and air hunger or the sensation of not getting enough air. There are multiple forms of Babesia. I have Babesia WA 1 or the Duncani strain. More common is the Babesia Microti strain. Whenever I see someone mention rib cage pain and problems breathing, I think it’s important that this be considered as a possible cause.

It’s a very disturbing sensation. If it is babesia, with treatment that symptom can mostly resolve. I’m very grateful that I no longer have rib cage pain or air hunger!!!

Michele

[Davit]

You don’t by any chance have asthma. I have a friend who uses it for her asthma. I’ve been using Prednisone for about fifteen years now and can’t get below 7.5 but then I probably don’t produce cortisone anymore. It has been hard on my bones and although I never got moon face I do have buffalo hump and a lot of collapsed vertebrae but I’m still only borderline osteopenia.
I wish I had never started it, but what can I say, I was late starting AB. MTX had already taken it’s toll.
Doctors pushed me into trying MTX again with the guaranty that it would get me off Prednisone. It didn’t and all I got was nausea and very sore muscles.
Back on Minocin till I can find a replacement.

Tried dropping one Mg a month but still never got below 7.5. Might try again if you are successful.

Davit

[A Friend]

Davit,
I was so happy just now to see your name and your post! I’ve missed you. Just recently I did a search for a topic, and among the thread were some of your posts. Hope you are healthy enough to enjoy life. Am sure it is cold up in Canada. Blessings to you for the new year. Take care, dear friend.
AF

[Davit]

Hello A Friend.

It’s not that cold here but certainly colder than where you are. It is hard to tell if I am in remission since most of my pain comes from damage both from RA and abuse. I have a lot of work related damage that has nothing to do with RA.
Hope you and everyone are having a happy new year.

Davit.

[Valsmum]

Dear Davit,
Thank you for replying, I am sorry about your condition. Truthfully, I am scared about taking prednisone for over two years. I too tried metheltrexate and all it did was make me more sore and sad, REALLY tired, I never had such awful medicine, really how can they give that stuff to people for RA :(. I do not have asthma, but thanks for asking.
I heard about licorice root and I was going to look into it.

I read that you can’t get below 7.5 , I am in soo much pain when I wean a 1/4 mg, its just silly. I wish I would have never started it. I had never been sick before like I was with RA and I was desperate for relief, also I had a newborn and did not know anything about medicine. I had never had an ongoing precription, the whole thing was new to me. I do feel better with my strict diet of just fruits and veggies, and a little meat . Anyway, thanks again for posting. Take care.

[Valsmum]

Dear Michele,
Thank you for your reply. I can’t remeber what my lyme test said about Babesia, but when I took the tiniest amount of antibiotics, I mean like 10 mgs I would be at a ten in pain. I treid desperately for a year, and I knew I would have to be hospitalized and on high doses of morphine to continue antibiotcs. It was the most painful thing I ever did and I just thought I would go the diet route, which is helpful as long as I don’t cheat and eat something I should not eat. I can lessen my pain with a strict diet. It just weaning off of prednisone which is very hard for me at the momment, it causes pain, but I am grateful I am at 8 mgs and not 20mgs. I don’t want my adrenal glans to stop making cortisol, I am praying I can get off,I have read it is possible, from other people on it for lupus, so I remain hopeful.Nice of you to reply, how are you feeling? What is the worst part for you? Take care 🙂

[Valsmum]

Hi Krys again,

I thought about what you wrote when you quoted the dr that said if you do the Gerson therapy it is dangerous without detoxing with the coffee enemas. You know what is weird, anytime I tried antibiotcs or some crazy thing I bought on the internet like that MMS(the bleach stuff), I would get pain in my sternum. I ypically do not have chronic pain in my sternum, but when I “herxed” from some of these therapies I got pain in my chest. Now after being REALLY strictwith my diet my sternum hurts more than some of my joints.
I get a little aggravated trying to figure this out myself, but since its been a fews now with RA, I am getting used to certain patterns.

Thanks for posting that quote from your book, I think I might do the coffee enemas and see if it helps. If it does I will post back to this thread.Take care

[Valsmum]

The coffee enemas did help with the pain in sternum and breathing problems. I also was weaning too fast with the prednisone. For me I have to up and down, I can’t just wean down, My body needsa little break every other day or evry two days. Thanks Krys.

[A Friend]

EDITed the morning after my post on down below: Just did a search of our RBF past messages for “costochondritis” and hit a number of them. There is possibly some more information that will be helpful for you. These are links I copied from the search, but there is a whole topic on this about 2011:

search.php?keywords=costochronditis
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6579&p=57338&hilit=costochronditis#p57338

AF

Valsmum,
Was thinking of your mystery problem, and just had a flashback of a word, “costochondritis”, did some searches and wanted to paste these here, just in case they can be helpful. They do sound like possibilities… because when we are treating problems with abx, we often have viral problems as well which abx do not address.

This is what I found/looked at.

Go to:
http://www.earthclinic.com/CURES/costochondritis.html
On this site are some Costochondritis Remedies. Also, suggest you read the links under Table of Contents to the right, and down a little way.

Hope some of this might be helpful. The Lysine listed as part of the remedy caught my eye, as I

[Valsmum]

Thank you Afriend for the article. I remeber getting Costo a year ago and it scared me alot at first. I even went to get a chest xray and it was clear. Its weird how the inflammation moves around my body, but my pain is getting so much better with the Gerson Therapy diet/coffee enemas that I am really optimistic. You see whe I was first dxd with RA the pain moved aound from here to there and gave me some breaks, as I got worse it settld in the knees, wrst and elbow and would not lift or go away which I read is worse becasue it just wasted away your muscles the longer the inflammation sit in one spot. My one knee looks great and my other knee is 85% . I feel better when I wake up in the morning, and I keep tapering down off my prednisone. It should take me about 7 months to get off, 1mg a month.

Thank you for the post again, so nice of you!!!

ps.
In the GersonTherapy book I am reading, they used coffee enemas in WW1 for pain releif , it acfor wounded soldiers it does provide pain relief, it cleans the blood if kept in for 12-15 minutes as the blood does a cycle evey 3-4 minutes.

[Michele]

Valsmum,
Good news about the “coffee breaks.” 🙂

Your symptoms sound similar to mine. It caught my attention when you said you feel better in the morning. Me too. I attributed that to Lyme co infections and not RA though. Did you ever do IGeneX tests? Western blot?

Michele

[lynnie_sydney]

Its weird how the inflammation moves around my body

That is classic pattern of palindromic RA. If you read my testimonial on main site, you’ll see those larger joints (and tendons, muscles) were always the issue with me. They are also classic for palindromic, less so for RA which tends to attack smaller joints (such as fingers) and bi-laterally. My attacks were often on one side only, or one side followed by the other. Again, more typical of palindromic, not of RA. ….This is also typical of Lyme sx. Have you ever been tested?

Be well! Lynnie

Palindromic RA 30 yrs (Chronic Lyme?)
Mino 2003-2008 100mg MWF - can no longer tolerate any tetracyclines
rotating abx protocol now. From Sep 2018 MWF - a.m. Augmentin Duo 440mg + 150mg Biaxsig (roxithromycin). p.m. Cefaclor (375mg) + Klacid 125mg + LDN 3mg + Annual Clindy IV's
Diet: no gluten, dairy, sulphites, low salicylates
Supps: 600mg N-AC BID, 1000mg Vit C, P5P 40mg, zinc picolinate 60mg, Lithium orotate 20mg, Magnesium Oil, Bio-identical hormones (DHEA + Prog + Estrog)

[Valsmum]

Hi Lynnie,

I did an igenex test and had a couple + next to a few numbers, I saw a naturpath and went to a LLMD’s office but was seen by his assistant.I seemed to have a severe reaction to any abx I tried, if I took 10 – 50 mgs of mino I could barely move, I tried over and over and it felt likethe days I had eaten large amounts of dairy or grains.So I started a no starch diet and started to feel better, but I wanted more releif and I read as much as could and recently started a really strict diet which is bascailly fruits and vegs only and once in awhile I will have some chicken or fish. Eventually, I concluded all the doctors out there that help RA sufferers with a diet protocol have a very similar diet. They tell the patient to exclude dairy, somtimes meat, exclude most grains, eat fruits and vegs as close to raw as possible and exclude refined sugar. Doctors like, Mercola, Joel Furman, Seignalet, Gerson, they all have similar ideas that the body is malnourished and toxic from various things.
I believe in AP therapy, I just could not keep it up or I would’ve needed a caretaker 24/7 and morphine 24/7. I did try it for a year so I didn’t put in a couple weeks and throw in the towel. The Gerson Diet/ Therapy has provided me a lot of releif, my knees have not looked this good since my dxs.
The reason I had some breathing issues is that I weaned too fast that particular week. I have to go slow since I have been taking the steroids for awhile. Its best if I go up and down with pred, not just down. The day I posted this question Ihad only been going down for about a week.

I am interested in reading your personal story, I know I have read it before,but maybe I do have palodromic arthrits. Did you ever get pain in your ribs or si joints with it? I have rib pain right now and that is about it.The cofee enemas actaully help wit the pain, its weird.
Are the abx you take now for maintence or do you still have some joint pain?
Thanks for your help, take care.

[A Friend]

Valsmum, have you ever read any of Dr. Sherry Rogers’ books? If not, you are encouraged to get a copy of her books, “Painfree in Six Weeks” and/or “Detoxify or Die.” (Her books are not available from most book stores. I ordered the two I have from Prestige Publishing.com.) Actually, I’d first heard Dr. Rogers on a program I used to listen to (and record on tape) for information and possible subjects for local support group meetings. She had five medical degrees. When asked how she happened to get this many degrees, she said her own illness had been so difficult that none of the doctors she saw were of any help to her (because of her sensitivity); and said this led to her getting the next degree and the next.

The first time I heard her, she was discussing detoxifying with the FIR (far infrared sauna) in “Painfree in Six Weeks.” I’d never heard of the FIR before that day. (You can still hear her interviews. Martie Whittekin, a certified clinical nutritionist, was longtime host of the program, “Healthy By Nature.” You can go to this site: RadioMartie.com and see and listen to the archived programs. You will need to do a search on Martie’s site to find programs with Dr. Rogers more quickly. Martie’s programs are now on a cable channel, XM I believe. I rarely missed her program (or automatically recording it) for years on FM radio.

I was so impressed with what I learned about the benefits of the FIR that I ordered the book mentioned above — and think it is outstanding. Not long after this, I had a FIR, and after a short while, the pain down my spine (then) was relieved. The Painfree book gives explicit directions for replacing minerals and other nutrients when we sweat from the sauna use. This is very important. (By the way, from her book, the coffee enema “recipe” just about saved my life in the middle of one night when taking two abx apparently made my liver rebel big time! … the first time I used this coffee enema “tool.” I literally was amazed at the relief it gave to the acute pain when nothing else was helping in the dark of night.

Anyway, several years later, when my previous AP physician had retired, at my first appointment with my new primary care physician, and discussing my long history, at the end of our visit he suggested I get a copy of Dr. Rogers book, “Detoxify or Die.” I was a bit shocked when those words came from his mouth. I ordered it, and value it greatly. Am thinking you might find and use some of these suggestions. (Dr. S.R.’s illness made her extremely sensitive and constantly in lots of pain. Today, she said she plays lots of tennis and is very healthy. One of the things I remember in her writing was she is very sensitive (or was) to the nightshades, and she said they are in everything!

I believe you will find the solutions to your problems. But it’s always hard work and takes time. Good luck!
AF

[lynnie_sydney]

Did you ever get pain in your ribs or si joints with it?

Sheri – I’m not sure about sacroilliac (SI) joints, although I have had lower back issues from time to time – but not sure whether related. Yes I got pain in my ribs, though often it felt like it was right on the sternum (breast bone). Also often in the pelvic area and right on the pubic bone there (was told possibly referred pain from hips, but I’m not so sure).

I am (thanks to my doc originally) a great believer in diet as a major component in treating and you will see that I am gluten-free, dairy-free, low salicylates, no (or lowest possible) sulphites. Sulphites are one of the worst irritants that people so often overlook. They are present in everything that’s preserved and astonishingly high in deli meats and dried fruit (unless you buy organic or freeze dried). I dont eat anything out of a packet, eat no deli meats and buy freeze dried fruit. I am sorry that you had such a bad time with abx and very glad that dietary changes have given you so much relief.

I do still get some issues (not always joint pain, sometimes muscular/tendon, sometimes great fatigue) but they are occasional rather than all the time and usually mean my abx regime needs changing. That’s what happened last year. According to my doc/naturopath, I had a resurgence of CPn (even conventional medicine will tell you that CPn can resurface throughout your life) and I was harbouring another couple of pathogens. Just felt overall “off” all the time. However, I have been pretty fine since about June last year, about a month after they tweaked my protocol.

Be well! Lynnie

Palindromic RA 30 yrs (Chronic Lyme?)
Mino 2003-2008 100mg MWF - can no longer tolerate any tetracyclines
rotating abx protocol now. From Sep 2018 MWF - a.m. Augmentin Duo 440mg + 150mg Biaxsig (roxithromycin). p.m. Cefaclor (375mg) + Klacid 125mg + LDN 3mg + Annual Clindy IV's
Diet: no gluten, dairy, sulphites, low salicylates
Supps: 600mg N-AC BID, 1000mg Vit C, P5P 40mg, zinc picolinate 60mg, Lithium orotate 20mg, Magnesium Oil, Bio-identical hormones (DHEA + Prog + Estrog)

[Author]

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