Natural Remedies for Lichen Sclerosus: Effective Treatments

I had LS for more than 10 maybe 15 years. Saw my gynecologist (no idea of what it was); saw my skin doctor who did help and I can't remember what the ointment was but could only use it for a short amount of time, 2-3 times per week for a limited amount of time. This did take the itching away but the ointment was not healthy to take every. single. day. Which is what I needed to eliminate the itching.

Sooooo, I quit using it and suffered, for years. I tried all the diets, no sugar for more than 5 years, no gluten which I'm still off both these. Sometimes, no sugar/gluten would help but then it would flare up and no help again. I had the paper slits on both sides of my labia, one side was always worse than the other. The itching was INTENSE! Then the pain from the slits or the itching too much would be intense...AARGH.

Ok, so fast forward to today, errr well, 2 months ago. I read about the carnivore diet many years ago and this was one I had never tried. 2 months ago, I tried it...100%. Amazed me. 3 days after starting the carnivore diet, 100%, the itching stopped and has never returned. I still have the paper slits scars but there is no, opps repeat here, NO itching! None, zero, ziltch! And, it's been over 2 months with me being on the carnivore diet with only one minor cheat (hot herbal tea, 2 cups, with 2 hours inbetween) terrible reaction but still...NO itching. The diet is easy but greasy. No food craving...none.

The itching has never returned. My eczema rashes are nearly gone, just discolored skin. They have flared up during this 2 months but I associate that with loss of fat. I've lost 22 #'s and feel great. NO ITCHING! Heaven. I truly hope this helps someone.

So, I started taking Culturelle and eating a 90% raw food diet (MOSTLY vegetables and SOME fruits). I like to blend them up so the sweetness of the fruit makes it more enjoyable to eat a lot of greens. I recommend watching documentaries like "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead" and "Food Matters" to kick start your new diet. Supplements I take are liquid B Complex, Zinc, Fish Oil, and a did a 2 week Essiac tonic detox which is easy and inexpensive. YOUR BODY IS ABLE TO CURE ANY DISEASE OR ILLNESS IF YOU PROVIDE IT WITH THE RIGHT FOODS. You should avoid sugar and minimize animal products (milk, eggs, meat). Less than 6% of Doctors get any nutritional education in school so don't listen to them if they tell you you don't need to make dietary changes like they told me.

I've had LS for at least 7 years now....diagnosed for 5 years.(I am 55) I have tried so many lotions, potions, treatments, etc....I've been reading your posts and will try some of these! I eat organically, eat pasture fed meat and eggs, drink Reverse Osmosis water and exercise.I eat healthy. I am going to try the gluten free diet and see if that helps. I take all kinds of vitamins, etc...a lot of these were mentioned in your posts. I have been using steroid cream....but it has stopped working about 10 months ago....I hated using it anyways......but kept me from going mad. I was using organic, bio-identical progesterone cream..(Natpro).....I didn't think the cream was working, and thought maybe that I didn't use a high enough dosage, but after discontinuing the cream my LS became much worse. I was also under a lot of stress since about that time...so I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or not. I belong to an online support group and some of the women on there say they have had remarkable success using concentrated cannabis oil (topically). Makes one think. I know my doctor would never give me a prescription for it. :( They rarely give people here prescriptions for medical cannabis...let alone the oil. Makes one want to break the law! A lot of the LS treatments are just that.....treating the horrible symptoms that we get....never getting at the cause. It definitely has something to do with hormonal imbalance. Almost everyone that has LS has hypothyroidism...and I think the ones that don't have hypothyroidism just haven't been diagnosed with it yet. It makes me think that maybe we should be finding something that cures hypothyroidism which in turn would cure the LS. I am going to start researching into the thyroid issue. I've been rather down about my LS lately. I hate the horrible itching, the pain, the atrophy.....and especially how it effects my sex life and relationship with my husband. I usually try to be positive and up beat about things......but lately it's been bad.

I encourage everyone to read the book "Wheat Belly" by William Davis MD. Modern Wheat has an inflammatory effect on the body, whether you feel the symptoms or not. There is a myriad of diseases that disappear when wheat is eliminated from the diet. Modern Wheat has more in it than just the gluten that causes allergies and doctors do not test for these. Even whole wheat bread (thought to be healthier than white bread) will raise your blood sugar higher than eating a candy bar! There is an episode of Dr. Oz where they showed this is true. This is true even if the bread is made from organic wheat.

To add to the inflammatory effect on the body of Wheat, here in the United States, 90% of the wheat (including corn, soy and canola) produced is "RoundUp Ready". (Only a few years ago that number was 60%) It has roundup poison molecule inserted into the grain so the fields can be sprayed to kill only the weeds. Then the whole field is sprayed with RoundUp, which is absorbed into the crop adding more poison which is later ingested by animals and people. In the US they do not have to label any food that is GM. Every time it goes to vote the industry uses scare tactics about the cost of food going up as a result of new labeling laws. This is simply not true. Many grocery prices have doubled in the past 5 years regardless. You can't put a price on our health, because the alternative is costly for sure! * * * I believe we are already seeing the health consequences from these genetically modified foods, but we can't yet prove it is due to them. I think we are going to see more illnesses that used to be rare, and see new unexplained illnesses due to GM RoundUp ready foods.

Take LOTS Of Vitamin D3 and also a small amount of Vitamin K2 to complement it, and the other cofactors for D which include magnesium, Omega-3s, and boron.

Your Vitamin D levels must get up to about 60-80 ng/dl. but not over 90 ng/dl. I was out of pain within 2 days of taking chewable Vitamin D3 3 X a day 5,000 units each. Still need to keep on top of it all. And now also include MSM, sulfur, another mneral we really need. ALSO Colloidal silver works to heal skin and other soft tissues.

For the past week I have been drying myself, after having a pee, with a tissue, and then wiping myself with a tissue with some Witch Hazel on it. The effect has been quite dramatic. No more itching or soreness at all.

Is it possible, I wonder, that there is some toxic reason for the urine to affect the vulva so badly. All one gets from the medical profession is that Lichen Sclerosa is believed to be an auto-immune system breakdown. That seems to be their answer for anything they don't have an answer for.

In closing I should say that I don't believe my Lichen Sclerosa to be a really bad version of the complaint although I have had it for the past ten years. If I can stop using the Diprosone Ointment by using Witch Hazel I shall be well pleased.

If you start out making 100 mistakes and you take away 50 of those mistakes your results will improve in the short term. That doesn't mean you are doing something right, it's just means you are doing less wrong.

Keto and Carnivore are both highly restrictive diets which utilize fasting and calorie restriction, essentially people lose weight because they are starving themselves in the short term. This is why so many people fall off the diet. You can only starve yourself for so long before your body screams for sugar and since most people on these diets don't understand their natural diet they don't feed on fruits when the body cries for sugar, instead they go for cake and cookies. The other reason that people appear to lose weight is extreme dehydration. The dark circles and sunken face are another sign of the dehydration, as are the veins bulging from the skin. If you hit a certain point of dehydration your body can no longer create life saving edema so they lose water weight. Since most people on a SAD diet eat salt their bodies are full of edema water weight which sheds when they dehydrate their body on a high protein diet. As soon as they fall off the diet the weight comes back quickly because the body starts to hydrate again and needs to dilute all those acids. Usually they put even more weight back on then before they started the diet because they have put even more acids into the system that require even more dilution. You see this with every high protein diet. The person calorie restricts and dehydrates leading to short term weight loss, then they binge because you can't starve that long, then they regain all the weight plus some. The body has no choice but to respond this way because it was never designed to handle high protein.

You can look at the marketing or you can look at the science and how your cells function. Keto and carnivore diets have good marketing. The carnivore diet even takes testimonials of raw vegans from their own websites and posts them on the carnivore diet site as if these people ate meat to recover their health.

Looking at the science and you see the mortality rates for Keto, 54% increase in mortality in just one year on the diet with a pre existing condition and 25% increase in mortality for "healthy" population. Meaning better than half the people with chronic disease who try keto die within one year on the diet and one quarter of people without a chronic disease diagnosis also die. Those are not statistics I would want to play around with.

It's important we understand the difference between marketing/advertising and science.

As for the carnivore diet, I would not wish that on my worst enemy. I cannot even put into words adequately the pain that people suffer on that diet. I hear from people every day trying to recover their health and with the carnivore diet it's always the same, I felt great for the first 1-3 years, (usually 1 year) and then I felt like I was dying. The pain was everywhere in my body. You can see the disease in their swollen faces before the pain hits too. First they get the sunken face with dark under eyes, then they get the swollen face like Shaun Baker has now. That swelling is edema. The body uses edema to dilute acids. Acids damage the bodies cells so the body floods the area with water as a protective mechanism to deal with the excessive quantities of acids surrounding the cells. Some people get away with it longer than others because of their bodies ability to create more edema to dilute the acids. Others hit the pain very quickly. It depends how bad of shape their body was in to get started. This is why Carnivore heavily targets the very young with their marketing. They know that a young body can go much longer and create more edema then an older body.

As for why people “feel good” on keto and carnivore and why they have short term success you have two primary reasons.

1. Meat is a stimulant drug, so people eating meat are literally getting high, with the same damaging effects on the body as taking cocaine or any other drug which stimulates and damages the body.

2. Most people who fall for the keto or carnivore marketing are coming from eating a SAD diet which includes Meat, Dairy, Eggs, cooked foods, salt, refined sugar, processed foods, alcohol, food coloring and many other poisons. If you start out doing 100 things wrong and then you remove 50 of those wrong things your performance is going to improve in the short term. Disease is all about burden. The more you burden your cells the more disease conditions are created in your body. So if you are making a lot of mistakes and you cut down some of those mistakes you will see some short term improvement. But ultimately if you are not providing your body with the necessities of nutrition which your physiology demands (fruits and tender leafy greens) then ultimately your system will shut down.

Improved obesity- not got to ideal weight - any time you calorie restrict and starve the body some weight will come off. Any time you dehydrate the body you lose water weight.

Improve hypertension - lose some weight and some burden is lifted. Improved is not healed, it's just a better number where the disease still exists but the score is lower. That's not healing.

Improved diabetes - this one is so ridiculous. If you are not eating sugar in the moment you will not have blood sugar spikes. But diabetes is a fat issue, it's never been a sugar issue. Fat blocks the absorption of sugar into the cell. When the body has excess fat coating the cells the cells are unable to push sugar into the cells so the sugar remains in the bloodstream. If you eat a keto or carnivore diet you are putting more fat in and making the situation far worse long term but you are hiding the damage being done short term because you are not putting in the warning indicator, the sugar. As soon as a person comes off the unsustainable carnivore diet and binges on sugar their diabetes shows that it was never gone in the first place.

Improved gastro symptoms- most gastro symptoms are a result of mixing foods which constipate and digest very slowly with natural foods which digest at normal speeds. If you put fruit into a system that is constipated from cooked foods and proteins then the sugars will ferment. If you remove the constipating and dehydrating substances from the diet then fruits digest as designed and there is no fermentation. If you put in only meat the body becomes highly constipated, hence the reason keto and carnivore diet followers poison their body with coffee, because coffee creates diarrhea as the body tries to rapidly flush out the poison, further dehydrating the body.

Improved psychiatric symptoms- most mental health issues are digestive issues. See above. Less digestive distress leads to less mental symptoms due to not combining foods which digest at different speeds. Lauren Whiteman

MMS (Miracle Mineral Supplement) - I started with one drop for a couple of days and moved up to 2 drops. With the sitz bath I used 5 drops MMS and soaked for 20 minutes in hot water. By the eight day I wasn't using and witch hazel for the itching and calendula ointment.

My mentor acupuncturist's first comment 15 yrs ago was "this sounds like a boundary issue to me..." Why is the skin tightening, atrophying?? I was in a yucky relationship... keep him out, down there!!

I am currently dealing with boundary issues in my life and hello LS.....I am offering that, for some, straightening out there life and head may be part of the cure. I definitely believe we can cure ourselves of this. I say something you perceive as embarrassing and your skin turns RED!! The mind affecting the body....As part of your healing you may want to be kind to yourself and shift what you can in a positive direction.

I am working on a cream with Chinese herbs for a natural vaginal alternative.

Over the holidays I splurged eating too much of the good stuff and started with it in the vulva area. At first I thought I just scratched myself while wiping. I started getting worse in the next three weeks. Sleepless nights and the scratching and rubbing was getting out of control. I finally called the gyno. I couldn't get in until Monday so that meant go the whole weekend. I faithfully took me essential oils and immediately got off everything that had sugar in it. I was in and out of the tub with a few inches of water and baking soda at least 25 times or more to get relief.

I had called the doctor on call that Saturday morning she told me to use desitin. It helped a little along with the bath. I also took some Benedryl. I finally got a mirror out and looked down there. I knew right away the Lichen Sclerosis had got me. Saw the gyno next day. She wrote the script for a steroid. When I went to pick it up they wanted 250.00 I just about started crying. I have been out of work for almost two years from that fall.

Little did I know at the time this was in my favor. When I looked up the Lichen Sclerosis I read terrible things about what the steroid cream does to you. There was no way I would use that down there. That stuff shouldn't be allowed. What the doctors should do is hook up with a homeopathic doctor and get educated. I couldn't get it so I went home looked up lichen sclerosis vs alkaline and lichen sclerosis vs essential oils. I get them from a reputable company. Find yourself a health coach that knows how to use them.

I stopped all the sugar, flours, fruits and vegetables high in sugar. (No carrot-sweet potato-potato-rice etc.). When I cheat (like have a few organic gmo free chips) I know it because my lichen sclerosis acts up again. I also used a product called emu oil-then switch to emuaid. They helped a lot. I'm running out of emuaid so someone told me her oncologist told her to tell me to use bag balm.

I am using that now. I also got a squirt bottle and rinse every time I pee with water high in PH/alkaline water. Tap water makes it sting. I no longer have any splitting and cracking and my color is back. I barely have any scarring left. You must take care of leaky gut to get this to clear.

Oh by the way I've already been able to have sex again. I am on the road to recovery and feeling better than I have in many years and I've lost some weight and inches too. I also found stress can also add to this problem. From my experience so far I'm finding for me that changing my eating habits is the way to heal and get past this lichen sclerosis.

The clobetasol is one of the strongest topical steroids and the body seems to build resistance to it and it can not be used in multiple areas of the body such as the face, genital areas and the armpits as it can cause other issues such as thinning of the skin and discolorations of the skin. It can also cause high blood pressure if used over large areas of the body as well as blurred vision and high cholesterol. Hair loss is another side effect as is stretch marks. Itching is also a common one These side effects may or may not be reversible once the clobetasol is stopped.

https://www.drugs.com/sfx/clobetasol-topical-side-effects.html

I say this, not to scare you, but from experience.

Art