Day 35 - Post traveling review and skin condition

Traveling with TSW

The best way to describe the previous 3 weeks of traveling Europe with TSW would be peaks and troughs. The traveling aspect, partying and sightseeing was awesome, and I shared the experience with a few really good mates who made the trip that much more enjoyable. However, my whole body rash did wreak havoc with my confidence (which usually borders arrogant) but luckily the guy I traveled with was very understanding and patient and was always picking me up telling me my skin wasn't that noticeable.

Just prior to leaving for the holiday, myself and a few others went on a night out which resulted in a terrible flare up the next day, the worst I'd had to date! Having my skin in such disarray the day before I left made me very nervous and it took the first few days of the holiday to come out of the shell I had decided to put myself in!

The weeks building up to the travels I ate a very clean diet however I spent most of the holiday eating and drinking what I wanted. At the start, in Budapest, I did my best to eat healthy food but was drinking waaaay too much alcohol and soon gave up on the idea of being healthy and chewed on everything I could get my hands on and afford! My skin had bad days over the first week and weirdly seemed to improve when I had had a few to drink, but moving into the second week, when we were located in Split and Dubrovnik in Croatia, the rash started to clear up and become very flakey. I'm guessing this was to do with being in the sun, by the coast and sea, and consuming healthier food in the form of fish and olive oil by the bucket!

The 4 days spent in Mykonos were greeted with very pasty but fairly rash free skin, which boosted my morale by a ton! Especially considering I was strolling around in swim shorts for most of the day. I did my best to protect my skin from the sun, and much to my friend's amusement, lathered on sensitive 50+ sunscreen protection and hid in the shade. Chlorine water dried me out terribly so slyly stuck to swimming in the sea which only seemed to benefit my skin!

Moving onto Ios, my skin stayed in fairly good nick, with the odd rash braking out after alcohol or too much time cooking in the sun. I could tell a flare was on the horizon and it hit just after Santorini and conveniently took full form when clothes were required in Athens. The Acropolis is an incredible site but its safe to say i've felt better than I did walking around in 38C with a massive whole body rash with a slight hangover.

Home Time

Post holiday the rash in a state of flare but good food and sleep are calming it down rapidly and today (2nd day back) the rash is already a lot better.

In order to deal with my skin whilst traveling, I took each day one at a time and told myself to get through the bad skin days the best I could and that tomorrow is a different day. Of course, I enjoyed every minute of the traveling aspect, but I'm sure many other TSW sufferers will sympathise with me when I say that sometimes its impossible to think about anything else but my skin. The travels have definitely taught me to care less about what people think and to not stress out when flares occur. The beautiful thing about traveling is that its very unlikely that I will see any of the people that I caught staring at my legs and arms again, so why should I care!

On top of this, I'm now 5  weeks (35 days) into being free of topical steroids and, although the rash is covering most of my body, I feel a lot better about the ordeal and glad I'm finally on the (hopefuly not too long) road to recovery!

Skin blog 1 - topical steroid withdrawal aged 22

Blog entry 1

I've decided to keep a blog about the condition of my skin whilst experiencing topical steriod withdrawal (or topical steriod addiction) so that anyone experiencing similar dermatological problems can relate to the issue and so that I can track any progressions/regressions made. Hopefully this information will help other people get to the root of their skin woes a lot quicker than it took me!

When and Why TSW Started

I've always had excema growing up as a kid. I'm 99% sure that it was due to a couple of allergies that I have to egg, apples, cherries, horses. The excema itself was only in my elbow crease and behind my legs so nothing too serious but the doctors prescribed topical steroids which cleared the issue up temporarily, only to return after eating a food I didn't agree with and then the steriod cycle would begin.

I used heavy doses of antibiotics during a period when I was 8 years old which I believe may have damaged my gut lining making me more susceptive to allergies. I had a nasty reaction to using an antibiotic after a trip to the dentist around 2 years ago which gave me a whole body rash. The doctor prescribed prednisolone  (Correct spelling?) which cleared the rash. Prednisolone is a fairly potent oral steriod. From then on my skin has never really been right, with fluctuations between normal and poor depending on the use of topical and oral steroids. 

In hindsight, the cycle of using steroids on a rash, the rash clearing, then returning with a vengeance and appearing more widespread is an obvious pattern which led to topical steriod addiction and dependence. However, during the year that I suffered with this issue I attributed the cause to multiple areas including:

~Allergies

~Food intolerances

~Deficiencies in my diet

~Using detergents/shower gels/colognes that affected my skin

~Drinking too much

~Leaky gut

Due to these beliefs, I cut out dairy, gluten, sugar (mostly... bar fresh fruit), stopped using any shower gel, deodorant, shampoos etc, took multiple trips to the doctor and dermatologist who prescribed moisturiser, atarax (a skin antihistamine), oral and topical steroids and finally cleaned up my diet and reigned in the drinking. But none of this helped!

Over the first three to 6 months of the diet I lost a stone (@ 6ft 2 and 76kg I'm looking pretty skinny!) and still had a nasty rash on elbows, knees, neck and unusually on my wrists but stopped abruptly at the palm. Summer 2014 was coming around and I had plans to travel the world, yet still had no cure for my bloody skin and I was starting to get highly frustrated so took more trips to the doc for allergy testing and took food intolerance tests. The results came back with a wide spread list of foods to avoid so I then started an elimination diet as I believed I had a leaky gut. The rash still fluctuated between okay-ish skin to a widespread rash that would flare at any time with seemingly no correlation to a set food. 

Cruising ever closer to travelling, I forked out for some time with a nutritionist. This is where I first made my breakthrough. She once again tested for intolerances with a chaos set of results from coffee to pork and chicken (foods I had previously had no issues with!). She also believed I had a leaky gut, but gave me very useful advice regarding the use of prescribed steroids, atarax etc that I was using. She noted that my body was in a state of bad inflammation and encouraged me to stop using the drugs that are meant to clear a problem for good, instead of using them in cycles. She believed that the drugs were putting a big strain on my bodies immune system which was desperately trying to heal itself and has caused my system to become hyper sensitive. She advised a more natural route using probiotics and prebiotics as well as supplementing minerals, vitamins and omega 3. She also noted that the problem may get worse before it got better as the body will clear the toxins through any means necessary, and with the skin being the biggest organ, I expected it to take the brunt!

Discovering The Issue

In essence I believe she was 99% there. Later that week I discovered people online were having issues withdrawing from topical steriod use and looked into the problem further. Www.itsan.org provided me with information on the condition Topical Steriod Withdrawl (TSW) which I matched a lot of my symptoms too... Weird food intolerances, unexplained flare ups, red skin that stopped at the wrist. Despite the healing process taking a lot of time, I was very happy to have finally identified my issue!

Perfectly timed before I went away on holiday... At least I now know!

Check the next blog post for TSW info, and how I'm currently dealing with it whilst travelling!