Posts Tagged ‘Prednisone’

Crohns Disease and Zofran

01.29.10

Zofran is VERY effective for severe nausea. The only downside is the cost, its expensive. I get so nauseated that I cannot move or talk. Zofran is the only medicine that works.

Best of all, I had no side effects with Zofran. When I was in the hospital, the doctors were aware that I was allergic to Compazine. In the ER I was given Zofran in my IV. When I was admitted to the hospital, I told the doctors several times that I could not tolerate Compazine. Then I started throwing up (later found Crohn’s to be in my esphogus and I have gastroparesis).

The doctor told me “You can take the Compazine or put up with the symptoms. It’s up to you to decide what is worse.” I could not move, I could not talk, even breathing was causing me to heave.

So I took the Compazine–never again! I started loosing all feeling in my body. I got disorientated. I felt like I was floating, and had no control of myself. This lasted for at least 8 hours until the drug wore off.  Then the doctors put me on Phenegran–yuck! I took half a tablet and was so tired, that I slept for 12 hours.

I could not keep my eyes open! I only would trust Zofran. I am not messing with any other medicine. Zofran works and is worth every penny. I have Crohns disease and I find that MMJ helps with the vomitting and the stomach cramps. MMJ has even kept me out of the hospital several times.

I often find it helps better than other prescibed medicines, such as prednisone or zofran, What do other crohn’s or GI patients think? mikessss, usually heavy indicas and indica concentrates do the trick for me, they stop the symptoms in their tracks, unfortunately I am still on lots of meds, hoping to taper of some in the coming months. Zofran is used to treat or prevent the nausea and vomiting that may occur after therapy with anticancer medicines (chemotherapy) or radiation, or after surgery.

If you vomit within 30 minutes after taking this medicine, take the same amount of medicine again. If vomiting continues, check with your doctor. Along with its needed effects, a medicine may cause some unwanted effects. Although not all of these side effects may occur, if they do occur they may need medical attention. Chest pain, pain, redness, or burning at place of injection, shortness of breath, skin rash, hives, and/or itching, tightness in chest, troubled breathing, wheezing.

Other side effects may occur that usually do not need medical attention. These side effects may go away during treatment as your body adjusts to the medicine. However, check with your doctor if any of the following side effects continue or are bothersome:
More common
Constipation, diarrhea, fever, headache
Less common

Abdominal pain or stomach cramps, burning, tingling, or prickling sensations, dizziness or lightheadedness , drowsiness, dryness of mouth, feeling cold, itching , unusual tiredness or weakness
Other side effects not listed above may also occur in some patients. If you notice any other effects, check with your doctor.

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Crohns Disease Medication

11.13.09

Treatment for Crohns disease depends on its location and severity, the presence of complications and the patient’s response to medications. The goal of treatment is to reduce the inflammation that triggers symptoms. Treatment relieves symptoms and results in long-term remission.

Treatment for Crohns disease usually involves medication and/or surgery.Drug therapies must be custom-designed for each patient. Finding which medications best alleviate the symptoms may take time. When a patient with Crohns disease undergoes surgery, it is important that the health care team (including the surgeon, anesthesiologist, and the primary treating physician) know which medications the patient is taking. Many patients with mild to moderate disease are treated with medications containing mesalamine.

These medications differ based on what parts of the bowel are treated. The use of mesalamine to treat Crohns disease, either to achieve or maintain remission, is sometimes controversial because not all studies have consistently shown that mesalamine is effective for Crohns disease. Mesalamine is usually well-tolerated and has no serious side effects. Patients may experience nausea, headache and diarrhea.

Some patients who have severe active disease or do not respond to mesalamine therapy may need corticosteroids such as prednisone to control inflammation and induce remission. These drugs are effective but have significant side effects, such as increased susceptibility to infection, mood swings, anxiety, depression, elevated blood pressure, glaucoma, cataracts and osteoporosis.

Physicians may use different strategies to administer these drugs in order to reduce side effects. Budesonide is a corticosteroid that is rapidly broken down by the liver, resulting in a much lower frequency of side effects. These medications are gradually reduced once remission is achieved — and mesalamine or a drug that suppresses the immune system is used to maintain remission.Antibiotics such as metronidazole are sometimes used to treat Crohns disease.

They are particularly helpful in patients with fistulas and are often combined with other medications. The use of metronidazole to treat active Crohns disease or to delay the recurrence of Crohn’s for the first two to three years after an ileum resection surgery is often controversial because not all studies have consistently shown that metronidazole and other antibiotics are effective in these patient groups.

Metronidazole can be effective in managing perineal Crohns disease (involving the pelvic area). Many patients require surgery because medical therapy does not control their symptoms or because complications such as blockage, abscess, perforation or bleeding into the intestines have developed

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Can You Die From Crohns

05.24.09

Crohns disease is a condition where there is inflammation in the gut. The disease flares up from time to time. Symptoms vary, depending on the part of the gut affected. Medication can often ease symptoms when they flare-up. Surgery to remove sections of the gut is needed to treat some flare-ups. Medication taken each day may prevent symptoms from flaring-up.

IF YOU HAVE Crohns disease, you probably already know the bad news: The illness is incurable. If you’re a vegetarian with Crohn’s, the news is even more distressing: The standard medical solution often includes eating meat. Fortunately, though, there is hope. Natural medicine can help you control this potentially debilitating condition, in many cases without becoming a meat eater.

PATRICK DONOVAN, N.D., a naturopathic physician in private practice as well as a professor of gastroenterology at Bastyr University of Natural Health Sciences in Seattle, has seen several dozen cases of Crohns disease in the past 10 years. Donovan is quick to point out that allopathic medicine plays an important role in managing the disease. “There’s a place for prednisone and hospitalization when treating Crohn’s,” says Donovan. “A person can die from this disease, especially during a flare-up. Conventional treatments can save lives.”

In fact, Donovan will treat only those Crohn’s patients who are also seeing a physician with hospital privileges. He also stresses the need for a correct diagnosis. He recently saw a patient who had been treated unsuccessfully for Crohn’s for 10 years; he determined that she in fact had celiac disease, a condition in which gluten, a protein found in various grains, damages the intestinal lining. Crohns disease cannot be prevented but you can reduce your symptoms. We know living with Crohns disease or ulcerative colitis can be difficult, but the right resources and support can make day-to-day living easier.

Crohn’s Disease is not normally fatal, however complications from the disease could be fatal if not seen to. These could be due to infection. Such as a perforated bowel if medical attention to it is not sought out quickly enough. About 1 in 1500 people have Crohns disease. It can develop at any age but most commonly starts between the ages of 15 and 40. It affects women slightly more often than men. The myth was created by the medical system to allow them to profit from those who are chronically ill. The cause and cure remain perpetually just beyond reach.

All they need is more money to keep looking. The elusive search for the cause and cure for Crohns disease is as futile as the elusive search for the cause and cure for Multiple Sclerosis. There is no need to search any further than the word toxicity, the one place the medical profession never looks. That is the smoking gun.

Look where they are not looking and you’ll find it. I was struck down by Crohns disease in the summer of 1993 when I was 44. I nearly died in 1994. I believe the name of an illness should help the person who has it to understand what he or she has, not to disguise the nature of the illness, which is what disease names usually do. Crohn was the name of the doctor who observed and described the disease. He gave his name to it. But, unfortunately, the word Crohn explains absolutely nothing about the nature of the condition.

It merely tells us the name of the person who claimed it for his own and, like Alzheimer and Parkinson and Hodgkin and so many other disease names. Disease naming actually keeps us in the dark. In my opinion, Crohns disease is caused by toxicity. In my case the intestines were poisoned by mercury leaching into the digestive tract from my mercury fillings. The body eliminates mercury extremely slowly. Chelation is the only way to effectively remove mercury at a rate that will allow the body to recover from disease. 90% of the mercury that is excreted from the body is eliminated through the intestines. When it is not eliminated quickly via chelation it is allowed to accumulate in the intestines where it causes tissues to become diseased through mercury poisoning. Mercury destroys the tissues and attracts parasites, unfriendly bacteria and fungus which contribute to toxicity in the intestines.

In my opinion, it would be more helpful if Crohns disease were called Toxic Intestinal Disease (TID). It is not easy to understand “we don’t know the cause, we don’t have a cure”, so we’ll name it after Dr. Crohn. But it is very easy to understand the word toxicity. Toxicity means poisoning.

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Alternative Crohns Disease Treatment

05.17.09

The main treatment for Crohns disease is medicine to stop the inflammation in the intestine and medicine to prevent flare-ups and keep you in remission. A few people have severe, persistent symptoms or complications that may require a stronger medicine, a combination of medicines, or surgery.

The type of symptoms you have and how bad they are will determine the treatment you need. Aminosalicylates (such as sulfasalazine or mesalamine). These medicines help manage symptoms for many people who have Crohns disease. Antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin and metronidazole may be tried if aminosalicylates are not helping your symptoms. These medicines work especially well for disease in the colon.

Antibiotics are also used to treat fistulas, which are abnormal connections or openings between two organs or parts of the body. But 50% of fistulas come back when antibiotics are stopped. Corticosteroids (such as budesonide or prednisone) may be given by mouth for a few weeks or months to control inflammation. But corticosteroids have serious side effects, such as high blood pressure, osteoporosis, and increased risk of infection. Budesonide causes remission in mild or moderate Crohns disease of the ileum and the right colon. It does not work as well as prednisone or other corticosteroids. But it also does not have as many side effects as other corticosteroids. The long-term side effects are not well known, so your doctor will probably not have you take it for a long time.

Prednisone may help if budesonide does not. Medicines that suppress the immune system (called immunomodulator medicines), such as azathioprine (AZA), 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP), or methotrexate. You may take these if the medicines listed above do not work, if your symptoms come back when you stop taking corticosteroids, or if your symptoms come back often, even with treatment.

If you have tried all the medicines listed above and none of them have worked, your doctor may give you a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) antagonist such as infliximab (Remicade). This drug may work for people who have not had any success with other medicines for Crohns disease. Infliximab is also used to treat fistulas if antibiotics do not heal them. Another TNF antagonist that may be used to treat Crohns disease is adalimumab (Humira). It may work for people for whom infliximab has stopped working and for people who have a bad reaction to infliximab.

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