My skin story.

I was diagnosed with severe atopic dermatitis when I was 2 years of age. When I was 4, the diagnosis developed to include asthma. I would regularly wake up in the night choking for breath. If I did sleep through the night, I would wake up with my pjamas stiff from blood and with my fingernails caked with the dead skin that I had scratched off in the night.

My parents refused steroid treatment and sought holistic, integrative doctors and practitioners. From a very young age, I ate a very restrictive diet; I wasn’t allowed to eat bread, processed foods, or sugar. I have vague memories of children laughing at me because my lunch was weird or because I brought in raisons as a birthday class treat rather than the sugary snacks my classmates gifted.

And then at around 10 years of age, it disappeared completely. I went through puberty and my teenage years relatively eczema and asthma free.

Whilst at university, I lost my way. I went through my first-ever break up and my relationship with food deteriorated badly. I was eating in an unhealthy restricted way, drinking heavily, and taking recreational drugs. On top of this, I started to smoke cigarettes.

Emotionally things were not much better, my mental health and anxiety were at rock bottom. I began my teaching training and I started working insane hours during the week, and then binge drinking and smoking at the weekends. I didn’t realise I was unhappy, but when I look back now, at the photos of the tired and swollen young woman I had become, I realise that I was living fully on autopilot.

It was around this point in my life, at the age of 20, when my eczema returned. It started as just small patches; on the back of my legs, under my armpits, and the eyelids. But when I had a bad flare-up around my mouth I immediately went to the doctor. It was here that I began to use steroids.

When I began using steroids, I only used hydrocortisone cream, but I quickly had to increase the potency to manage my rapidly deteroriating eczema. My routine became predicatable. I would go to the doctor, they would tell me to moisturise more and prescribe me more steroids. I would use steroids for a week or two, continue to work 60+ hour weeks, eat takeaways and binge at the weekends. Then after a week of no steroids, my eczema would reappear on a different part of my body and worse than it was before. So off I would trudge back to the doctor and the cycle would begin again.

At this point, I had rejected all of the holistic knowledge my parents had implemented when I was a child. I wanted to drink, I wanted to have fun and I wanted to be beautiful. Steroids hid the problem for long enough for me to think I was “healthy” enough to perpetuate the toxic lifestyle I was living. And so just like that, my autoimmune disease was swept under the carpet.

By the time I was 25 years old, I was using Ultravate (a super high potency steroid) on some parts of my body, fucidin cream (another high potency steroid) in my daily moisturizer, and on my face (especially my eyelids). I was taking regular antibiotics to deal with infections. I was taking antihistamines daily. I was using a steroid and a salbutamol inhaler for my asthma. I was on the contraceptive pill and using painkillers regularly to mitigate the pain of the flare-ups. My skin was at an all-time low, I was suffering from dizziness, depression, bloating, headaches, severe acid reflux, and constant thrush.

It reached a point where the steroids weren’t working anymore. I was lost, so I decided to pay a large sum of money to see a private dermatologist. He told me I had been cheated by the NHS and that he could help me and he prescribed me my first dose of prednisolone.

It is important to note that this recollection of my story is not intended to perpetuate rage and anger toward modern medicine. I am by no means trying to villainize doctors, but rather give an honest and human reflection about my personal experience.

Prednisolone is an oral steroid that is part of the corticosteroid group. The drugs work by lowering the immune system’s natural inflammatory response. When the body identifies something as an invader (antigens) it works to expel those forein invaders from the body. These natural inflammatory responses might manifest as an asthma attack, eczema, allergies, increased stomach acid etc. Predsoloine finds the inflmamation and mininmises it. It is important to note it does not “fix” the immune response, but rather minimises the bodies sympomatic response. So whilst it may appear that you are no longer ill after taking prednisolone, the root cause of the immune response has not been addressed by taking this drug. Corticosteroids are a potent form of steroid that carry side effects including bloating, depression, fatigue, decreased immune response, and nausea. It is not recommended to take this oral course of steroids regularly.

After 3, 8 day prednisolone perscriptions in 5 months my doctor advised that I stop using prednisolone and go back to steroid creams to make sure I wasn’t overusing the drug. Within 3 or 4 days my eczema would begin to creep up again, always more aggressive and inflammed than the time before. Desperate to minimize it, I began to order prednisolone online from different doctors. I did not know at the time, but I was suffering from a prescribed drug addiction. All the while I continued to take over-the-counter medications for allergies and pain. I even started to take sleeping pills because my skin was so sore and itchy it would keep me up at night.

My story thus far brings us to March 2020 when the pandemic hit and the world shut down. I moved back to my family home. After unsuccessfully trying to order more predosoline online, I was forced to sit my mother down and explain what had been happening to me over the last few years. This was the first time I had told anyone in my family what I was suffering with, and the weight of what I had been suppressing both physcially and emotionally came as quite a shock to me. Without minimising the profundity of what the pandemic meant for our soceity, for me personally, it gave me the space to finally acknowledge that I was very unwell and that I needed to get better.

My mother and I made the decision that I would give up steroids. We threw away all of the creams I owned and we researched the withdrawal process. We came across Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW) which at the time was not registered as a legitimate condition. Fearful of what was to come, we contacted a nutritionist who specialised in chronic illness. I worked with her very closely and she supported me in doing specific bloodwork, and stool samples to identify what was happening internally. As suspected we found high levels of gut intestinal permeability, candida, and parasites: dysbiosis. Years of partying and regular pharmaceutical drug use had eroded my natural gut flora and my body was working in complete overdrive.

With the support of my family and my nutritionist, I went through the most difficult year of my life suffering from TSW. I was signed off from work as I could not sleep or move due to the agonising pain I was experiencing. My skin was raw for around 2 months. I would take scolding showers at the start because the burning water gave me relief from the itching for a few minutes.

I lost 2 stone during those first two months as I was eating an extremely restrictive diet. I tried to swim in the sea most days even though the pain made me cry. After a while, I stopped showering and using any cream in an attempt to let my skin heal. I simply left my body to purge what she needed to and tried to support her in any way I possibly could.

I went to a very, very dark place in which I thought a lot about my life and whether I wanted to continue living it if I was destined to live with TSW forever.

During the third month when my skin was feeling less raw, I walked every morning with my brother. We spoke a lot about my parent’s separation and I began to realise that whilst I was healing my body, I also needed to start healing my relationship with my family and the family home.

I started to slowly reintroduce yoga every morning, even though I couldn’t do much because of the pain. I would sometimes just sit on my mat and breath.

Feeling quite claustrophobic after more than 3 months of being locked up inside, I booked a flight to Greece and I stayed on a small island for around a month, eating organic vegetables, doing yoga, swimming in the sea, and laying in the sun. It was during this time I realized that my life was never going to be the same again. Something big shifted in me and it reflected in my skin.

I was well enough to continue teaching after 5 months of Topical Steroid Withdrawal. I moved back to London and started full-time work. Almost immediately I became ill again. My skin was dry, incredibly itchy and I wasn’t sleeping. Back in the grind of normal life and concerned about my appearance, I went back to the dermatologist who prescribed me Dupilimab.

Dupilimab is a monoclonal antibody that works to block 2 protein signals that play a big role in the body’s natural inflammatory response when you suffer from atopic dermatitis. It is a new drug that has been labelled the eczema “cure” in the dermatology world. I was thrilled! Everything I had learned about health and nutrition was too hard to maintain in London whilst I was working, and this new drug could potentially be life-changing. I accepted and I began injecting myself in my stomach every two weeks. Within 3 days my skin had completely cleared. I was cured. I slowly began to go back to old habits: drinking, overeating, partying; but this time, there didn’t seem to be any consequences.

However, what I had been through didn’t leave me. I continued to practice yoga, I drank less than I did before and I read. I read many books about the gut, about trauma, and about inflammation.

Fast forward 2 years. I moved to Colombia to start teaching at an International school. After 6 months of living in Mexico and a few big waves in my personal life, my connection to myself and my yoga had once again become very important to me. I think the deep spiritual healing I experienced in Mexico allowed me to recognise that I wasn’t living in alignment any longer. I felt icky taking medication and my intuition was telling me something was wrong. I started to notice telltale signs of dysbiosis: acid reflux, bloating, itchy eyelids, stomach cramps, and headaches. I had a constant cough and sniffly nose. My hair even started to fall out. It became apparent to me that the medication I was taking was once again hiding the root cause of my condition, it was not fixing it.

As a result of this, I made the decision to stop my dupilimab injections. I joined The LYS program, which is an online 6-month program that gave me the community and tools to safely and healthily stop all medication. I worked personally with a nutritionist, who supported me in a personalised diet plan and supplement protocol. I also found a community of like-minded individuals who knew exactly what I was going through.

At this point in my life, aged 30, I have 80% clear skin and I am 100 percent steroid free. All previous symptoms of bloating, fatigue, depression and swelling have disappeared and I am the healthiest version of myself.

Without realising it, the journey to heal my skin, has healed my soul. I am the happiest and strongest I have ever been in my life. I still suffer from small eczema flares, but the way that I see my eczema has completely changed. My skin has been the greatest guide, lighting the way back to bodily alignment. My values have completely changed: I prioritise my spiritual practice; I prioritise being in nature; I prioritise deep, intentional rest and I prioritise nutrition. I have never felt as somatically at peace as I do today.

The way I look at life has been completely transformed. I am no longer a victim, I strive to find the lesson in the shadows and as a result I choose gratitude over defeatism. This mindset shift has allowed me to fully accept and embrace my chronic condition; without my eczema, I would never have achieved where I am today.

When I look back to those dark moments I experienced in June 2020, I remember feeling deep grief for what I would lose as a result of my eczema: alcohol, food, fun, and work. But the irony is that I have never experienced more abundance. Whilst focusing on what I would lose, I failed to recognise what I would gain. The distracting behaviours and habits that I thought were a part of who I was have naturally dissipated and all of the values I used to wish I could embody: health, fitness, yoga, patience - come completely naturally to me now.

The journey of healing will remain a journey for the rest of my life, there is no destination and this no longer scares me, it deeply excites me.

I am in the process of transitioning from my teaching career into a holistic health coach, as I believe the journey I have been on, is my calling. I want to inspire and help others reach the place of stability and health that is available to each one of us, especially those of us who have a chronic illness.