OK…
I go to my eye doctor for an infection and pick up my prescription.
I visit the pharmacist who, as he is handing me my eye drops abd telling me that this is a steroid medication and I should use it as directed or… Even not that much… my Chinese and his English are pretty sketchy…He was warning me that they contained steroids.
I also suffer from dangerous food allergies…
At least once a year I have to visit the hospital and get life saving doses of steroid based antihistamine.
Once I had a bad year and was at the hospital 7 times. The doctors told me there were no long term effects from my repeated treatments.
So, what’s the deal. Are the levels of steroids in medicines like eyedrops or antihistamines high enough to worry about?
Are these the same steroids that Soviet Olympians used to use?
How much do you need to take to get muscles.
They are cortisone steroids. They do not build muscle, opposite in fact.
They are not the same thing as anabolic androgenic steroids.
As Andrew said, it’s not anabolic steroids and your eyes won’t become…muscular.
Your eyedrops probably contain some corticosteroid like betamethasone or prednisolone, the role of which is to reduce the inflammation associated with the infection. I use steroid ointments on my eyes from time to time as well, as well as eye drops regularly, because my eyes are pretty dry and I seem to have the habit of occasionally scratching them in my sleep, which is super painful/distracting when I wake up. The steroids help with that.
You’ll probably just need to use them for a couple of days and topical use for that length of time over a small area shouldn’t be an issue. (Potential adverse effects with prolonged use over large areas include (I think local) immunosuppression and skin thinning etc., but those shouldn’t be a problem here.)
Corticosteroids are commonly used to reduce inflammation, but they have some side effects if you use them too much. The main side effect to look out for is immunosuppression, meaning that using them too much will make you more prone to an infection (ironically).
Also, no, the levels in eye drops are not even remotely close to being high enough to worry about.
Just some eye drops, the cortisone based steroids injected at a higher level can cause weight gain.I use the eye drops quite a bit on the Island as I ride a motorcycle.
Great point. Which leads to another question.
When I get taken to the emergency room, I’m usually given two drugs. One muscle and one intravenous.
Weird… I seem to be developing a resistance and required a double treatment to get under control. My last big encounter screwed up my immune system for almost a year. But that’s an other issue. I am much more careful.
Anyway… one of the drugs I was given was
prednisolone.
I was also given it in pill form for after care.
I continue to buy it and keep it as an emergency kit. I use it as a prophylactic.
One or two seem to fight off the allergy symptoms if I just take a bite of something and realize it may be tainted.
I guess… At moderate use, by the emergency room staff… Or myself, it’s not a problem. I think the immunosuppressive effect is what they were counting on.
After my last major allergic encounter, I could not tolerate any animal protien.
Milk, fish, eggs caused hives or worse. The doctors put me on hydroxychloroquine.
the side effects I kept reading in the literature I had to sign made me a little afraid. I was imagining vision loss.
I left that treatment for Chinese herbal medicine and in about five months I was able to eat normally. whether it was the Chinese that medicine helped me or whether I spontaneously recovered is a question.
I trust the Chinese Doctor because of previous experiences.
if eye drops are not a problem why did the pharmacist take time to warn me ?
Sorry to hear about your severe health issues. You sound like you had some traumatic experiences and must be understandably worried about any medications at this point.
We are giving general advice, if you have a history of eye problems then that is a different story. Yes, long-term hydroxychloroquine use can cause retinopathy and doctors are supposed to check your eyes when you are on it.
If you don’t have a history of eye problems, I think that steroid eye drops are not a concern as long as you use them as directed. Some pharmacists will rattle off all the main precautions for every drug they give out. So, it may be something you need to worry about, or it may not be.
Yes, And I’ve found that traditional Chinese medicine, through our NHI doctors, Chinese Chiropractors with the scraping and the cupping, acupuncture have helped me beat several chronic problems western medicine made worse.
Although my work is in Western medicine, I’d have to agree with you there. For chronic illnesses, traditional Chinese medicine and techniques are better, and much less harmful to the body. My husband has rheumatoid arthritis and chronic back pain for years now, it’s the Chinese chiropractor he sees that helps him the most. (Plus he did this intensive chiropractic & TCM regimen during an acute flare-up that helped to put out the fire, while high-dose opioids were completely unhelpful and just masking the symptoms.)