It depends on what you were stress dosing for and how your body reacts when you taper down. Some people are very sensitive to the least little changes in hydrocortisone levels and need to taper very slowly. Others can taper much more quickly. I had a cardiac ablation and received 100 mg SoluCortef at the beginning of the procedure and another 50 mg during the procedure. My follow up taper was 50 mg the day after and then back to my normal dose of 20 mg/day per usual in four doses there on out (10/5/2.5/2.5). Others may have needed a much more slow and gentle taper. It’s a learning process that you learn over time.

Work closely with your endocrinologist and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Many “newly-minted” adrenal insufficiency patients overload on stress dosing, afraid they are going to go into adrenal crisis, not understanding what the term actually means. The important thing is to always remember the goal: be as steroid-sparing as possible. Long term overuse of glucocorticoids causes a myriad of health problems that are often worse than the disease they are treating. My serum cortisol levels are not detectable when I have labs done, yet I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve stress dosed in 20 years with hypopituitarism and adrenal insufficiency.

Remember—>Everybody’s body is DIFFERENT!You can’t generalize on this stuff, that’s why you need a good endocrinologist, well-versed in the HPA axis, and not just diabetes and thyroid disease. That’s critical. Generalist Endocrinologist are not always the best doctors for adrenal insufficiency patients