I'm posting this for my girlfriend who suffers from SLE and has been on prednisolone for nearly 2 years now.
She never had any problems sleeping (except multiple awakenings caused by polyuria), even on high doses of prednisolone she was able to sleep whenever she liked to.
Now that the prednisolone has been tapered down to 10mg / day she's starting to have problems.
She falls asleep early around 21:30 then wakes up around 00:00 - 00:30.
After this she can't fall back asleep or has bursts of very light sleep until 04:00 - 04:30
Then she sleeps until 08:00 when i wake her up for breakfast. After breakfast she takes her 10mg prednisolone and goes back to sleep until 12:00 - 12:30. (how she does that goes beyond me, i personally bounce off the walls from a tiny 2mg dose.)
This started only two weeks ago after she dropped the dose from 12.5mg to 10mg so she hasn't tried much yet for intervention except munching on salty potato snacks. Eating something carbohydrate dense around midnight does help her to fall back asleep until 4 or so.
Her adrenals are almost completely shut down, labwork 2 months ago showed cortisol and DHEA are both very deficient.
Is it possible that her adrenals are coming back to life (at the wrong time of day)? Releasing cortisol at times it shouldn't, hence causing her sleep problems?
She never had any problems sleeping (except multiple awakenings caused by polyuria), even on high doses of prednisolone she was able to sleep whenever she liked to.
Now that the prednisolone has been tapered down to 10mg / day she's starting to have problems.
She falls asleep early around 21:30 then wakes up around 00:00 - 00:30.
After this she can't fall back asleep or has bursts of very light sleep until 04:00 - 04:30
Then she sleeps until 08:00 when i wake her up for breakfast. After breakfast she takes her 10mg prednisolone and goes back to sleep until 12:00 - 12:30. (how she does that goes beyond me, i personally bounce off the walls from a tiny 2mg dose.)
This started only two weeks ago after she dropped the dose from 12.5mg to 10mg so she hasn't tried much yet for intervention except munching on salty potato snacks. Eating something carbohydrate dense around midnight does help her to fall back asleep until 4 or so.
Her adrenals are almost completely shut down, labwork 2 months ago showed cortisol and DHEA are both very deficient.
Is it possible that her adrenals are coming back to life (at the wrong time of day)? Releasing cortisol at times it shouldn't, hence causing her sleep problems?