I am currently taking 20mg of Arava. At my last appointment my Rheumy said to lesson the side effects ( you know bathroom time, lol) I could split my dose- one pill in the am one in the pm.
My question is does anyone else do this? and have you noticed that it is not as effective?
I noticed right away that it was helping, I did get 2 cortisone shoots right before I started taking Arava again, I believe they have wore off...
I am not sure if any of this is a coincidence. I see my Rheumy again in 6 weeks.
I started taking Arava 4 months ago. After 2 months on, I went back to the rheumy, told her it was working amazingly well, but. . . Way too much bathroom time, as you said, and my hair was thinning. We added in biotin for the hair, and cut back to every other day for the Arava (20mg). The diarrhea side effect is lower, not gone. It's more manageable now. The hair loss? Continuing, but this medication is working really well for my inflammation. Actually, it was working better at 20 mg/day, but that was getting extreme. So while it's not working as well as at full dose, we seem to have found a relatively happy medium.