I think I found the cure for HS. At least for my own. Maybe yours too!
I've been trying to pass this on for awhile now. Not easy for some reason. After 25 years of suffering, half a dozen doctors and eating pails of antibiotics and steroids, about 2 years ago I recognized on my own my HS was a fungal infection. A single over the counter 150 mg Fluconazole caplet (Canesten) knocked down my HS in a week like nothing ever had. I've been treating the flareups with Fluconazole ever since with incredible success. I'm not totally cured yet but very close. My doctor made some error applying Fluconazole in the same way as antibiotics for a bacterial infection. Aggressive daily doses for a week at time. It's more subtle than that. It's a longer slower fight with fungi and antifungals. The best treatment regime seems to be one 150 mg Fluconazole once a week for several months. But you should see a big improvement in a week or two. Also quit caffeine entirely. Zero intake Caffeine seems to a growth hormone for the fungi. Squeeze as much of the discharge out of the sores as you can daily washing the area with soap and water. Apply a dressing of hydrocortisone cream, clotrimazole antifungal cream and polysporin to the area. The fungus lives both on the surface of the skin and below. It needs to be killed off in both places. Yeast and fungi love sugars. Makes sense diabetics would be more prone to these sores right? Also if it is a microbial infection makes sense it could be passed on in families living in close quarters with each other. Good luck with this! Thank God I finally found an accurate diagnosis and treatment for myself. I can not tell you the relief........
And yeah! I lived everything everyone here has. Gave up my career as engineer because I couldn't work anymore.
Yeah I get that about medical advice. I try to be careful, but the doctors are so useless in the face of this disease and people suffer so badly with it. The only advice I offer here is trying fairly safe over the counter medications. Like if a someone has a persistent sore throat and you suggest they try Dequadin or Cepacol lozenges. They have active synthetic anti-microbials. Is that stepping over the line with advice? If anyone else has the same fungal infection I do they should be able to see a noticeable improvement after just 2 or 3 150 mg Flucozanole taken a week apart. That's about as safe an experiment at treatment as you can get. And OMG the relief it gave me. Just a long shot chance at that for sufferers is worth the small risk. And wanting to give other sufferers a shot at that relief makes it worth the risk of any bad blowback for me. A safer experiment still is just trying the topical Clotrimazole cream. See if it has affect on external features. If it does, then try the oral Flucozanole. If it burns and stinks, multiple interconnected pockets and antibiotics don't do didley to it, then that's the morphology I have. If yours is the same......... How much have you suffered? How badly do you want relief? And even if yours isn't affected by antifungals zero caffeine intake will give you a noticeable improvement. Again, how much have you suffered? Willing to give up caffeine for a chance at some relief? It takes at least 3 months of zero intake to show the best improvement. No cheating. That just puts you back to day one. All in all it took me almost 3 years to quit caffeine even after I knew it was helping a lot. Addiction! For some of you it might be the main cause of HS if you're a heavy user. Caffeine and meth work the same way, meth only like 10 times more powerful. Ever notice the chronic skin sores a lot meth users develop? I'm just saying..
Hi
. Though we don't allow medical advice, we always encourage members to share what has helped and you have done that. Thank you! Caffeine can be really tough to quit. I have a lot of respect for you for giving it up. I gave it up during my pregnancies, but I always knew I would be able to have it again after. I hope your treatment approach continues to be effective for a long time to come. - Lori (Team Member)
I was diagnosed about 2 years ago by my obgyn but she never gave me any advice or cream or anything. I'm reading hibiclens washing is beneficial, I use boil ease, salves ,war. Compress. They are so fn painful. I don't see myself giving up coffee. It's ok to use all 3 of those products together on a dressing then apply? I didn't even go to work today! And I have type 2 diabetes which does not help this disorder. I'm very depressed 😔
Hi
. I wish you were not in so much pain. My heart goes out to you. Is your employer understanding when you have to call in sick?
I'm surprised your OB GYN didn't refer you to a dermatologist. Dermatologists generally have the most expertise in treating HS disease. If you can find one who has treated several patients with HS disease, you might find other treatment options that can make a huge difference in your quality of life.
Unfortunately, we are not medical experts, so we can't tell you whether you can use all three products together, but here is an article about treatments that you might find helpful: https://hsdisease.com/treatment. You might also try asking a pharmacist. They are usually super knowledgeable about whether products interact negatively with each other.
I hope you find a doctor who can treat your HS disease and that makes a big difference for you. Sending lots of gentle hugs your way. - Lori (Team Member)
Have you tried antifungals on yours? Or have you taken them for other reasons while you had it? Whatever the cause I strongly suggest all HS sufferers stop using caffeine. Caffeine makes any inflammation problem worse. It's likely why a lot of women have painful periods. I've noticed a few women who complain of such are heavy caffeine users. Other things like IBS and Colitis also seem to made worse by heavy caffeine use. If you have HS and are a heavy caffeine user and eating pails of anti-inflammatories they're just nullifying each other. Drop your caffeine use to zero intake and the AFs will work much better and you might even be able to stop using and having to buy them. This was a hard learned lesson for me with my HS! Have you suffered enough to give it a try. It is a h*ll of deadbeat lethargy for 3 or 4 months but you start to see results in a couple weeks or so.
On another note. I started buying and using antifungal cream for my HS years before I tried an oral antifungal. The doctor who started me on this recognized the really bad external inflammation of my skin one summer as fungal. He thought it was an opportunistic fungus feeding on the discharge from a bacterial infection. In the process I experimented with applying the antifungal cream to odd patches of skin I had. I had some rough red scaly patches of skin on my knees all my adult life. I always thought it was scars from childhood. Two weeks of Clotrimazole made them flake off dry scales and heal up to healthy pink skin. I also had itchy skin problems in dry winter. I had been using just ordinary hand lotion daily for it. I tried the Clotrimazole. Two or three days of using it and the itch goes away for a couple months, no other treatment. That white dry scaly skin women go to spas to have abraded off their heels is also fungal. The antifungal flaked it all away on my heels. I had yellow brittle toenails. Clotrimazole made them white and soft again but it took a few months one application weekly. I now suspect many chronic skin problems are fungal or yeast infections. Topical Clotrimazole cream may be the cure for many of them medicine has kinda of given up on like Psoriasis, Seborrhea and others. Got bad skin. Give the AF cream a try. Note: Acne does not seem to be impacted by AFs. Quitting caffeine does have a positive impact on acne.
All in all I've come to realize the doctors of modern medicine aren't very good at recognizing and treating fungal infections. Likely because microscopically they are hard to tell apart from our own body cells, especially skin and other sheet like tissue. I've heard some buzz some cancers are now being linked to fungi and yeast. But there are several effective and safe treatments for fungal and yeast infections now. (We never had such when I was young.) The doctors have to catch up to their modern pharmacy. Anyone can try the over the counter anti-fungals on their own. Just read the product monograph if you have any other health issues that they may impact. I'm pretty sure the topical ones are as safe as it gets. If you get a bad reaction just wash it off with soap and water. The antifungals are very effective at very low concentrations on and in the body compared to other anti-microbials and they persist in the body for much longer.Hi
. We have to be really careful here about giving medical advice since we are not experts. That would violate our community rules (https://health-union.com/community-rules/). It's best to simply share what helps you. We greatly appreciate it when people like you share their own experiences with treatments and other approaches. Others can take that information to their doctors to start a discussion about new approaches to treatment. So, thank you.
It's always possible that some people with dry heels might have a fungus, but there are many other potential causes of cracked heels, such diabetes, a lack of circulation, and the gradual reduction of collagen that comes with age. I have dry feet and my dermatologist and I both agree it's due to the fact that I have very dry, high-risk skin and because of my age. If I always take excellent care of them, I can keep them looking good and healthy.
I don't have HS like some of our moderators, but I do have seborrheic dermatitis, which looks similar to the dry patches you described and responds very well to anti-fungal medications. Did you ever have those patches looked at by a dermatologist? If I apply antifungal cream as soon as I see a patch forming, it's gone within a day or two. It's great because it's such an easy and afforable treatment. I always have some on hand.
Several people in this community have learned that they HS disease is caused or triggered by funguses or certain types of bacteria. I do with the medical community was more informed and more willing to experiment with such things if experimenting would cause no harm. There is so much more research to be done when it comes to HS disease.
Warm wishes. - Lori (Team Member)
Hi
. How wonderful that you found something that works for you! I hope the medication eventually knocks out the fungus entirely and that you are done with flares and medications for good. I can't even imagine what I difference this has made in your life. Thanks so much for sharing. It seems HS disease has many different causes and triggers, but maybe someone else out there will find antifungal medication helps them as well. Wishing you the best. - Lori (Team Member)
