Itchy Skin

Damned If They Do, and Damned If They Don't

Topical steroid use for itchy skin can set up a vicious circle.

When faced with horrible itching, steroids are the method most turn to. Why?

Because they work.

The problem is they work in a way that may not be what you’re looking for.

For one thing, they set the body up for a dependency that makes it terribly hard to stop using them.

The internet is filled with stories of sufferers who have been using the creams for years. For many, eventually, they become less effective. So, looking for more relief, they increase their usage of the cream way beyond what their doctors ever intended.

Long-term overuse can lead to complications all the way from additional skin conditions, to serious systemic health issues. But, when these sufferers try to stop using the creams, they are tortured as their skin flares from Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW).

That’s what I mean by, “Damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.” But it doesn’t have to be that way if we add homeopathy into the mix.

Many sufferers ask, “How long will this take?” A fair question when itching is causing misery.

As a first step toward freedom from topical steroids, let me share the Banerji Protocol for super itchy skin all over the body:

Antimonium crud 6 twice a day. (Remember to scroll to the bottom of this page to receive your free remedy card containing this information in an easy-to-reference form.)

That next step might be to use a different homeopathic for the itchy skin, or a different strategy altogether. As a reminder, Antimonium crudum 6 is not the only homeopathic we have in our arsenal for itchy skin, but especially if there's no rash, it's been a winner for my family and me just about every time. 

Allow me to share a word or two about what I mean by “improvement,” because this is important. “Improvement” means it’s better than it was — not necessarily that it is completely gone.

To give you a better idea of what I mean: a friend of mine has recently been experiencing overall itching. Of course, I’ve been trying to help her, so the other day I checked to see if she was noticing any improvement. She said, “I still have itching.”

My question followed, “Has it improved? And if so, by how much?”  

How my friend answered is the most important part of this exchange.  “I’m still itchy … but it's not keeping me up at night anymore. It’s also not making me scratch so much that it causes bleeding like it did before starting the homeopathics.”

That’s it. That’s what I was looking for. An improvement. A net gain. This means we stay with the medicine because it was well chosen. That is, we stay with it until the completion of the condition, or until the medicine stops acting.

If instead, she had reported no change after taking the homeopathic twice daily for a few weeks or, worse yet, that the itching was worse or covered more of her body, it would also give me important information.

This information would mean either a) the medicine was not taken long enough OR b) it was ill-chosen in the first place and ought to be halted.

How do you know that the medicine needs more time to act?

I wish I could give you a list of which ones take longer or which conditions require more patience, but it all reduces down to experience with this method. If pressed for an answer, I suppose the simplest one is that if the itching is rather new and steroids have not been used (or not used for long), it should only take a few weeks to see improvement.

But for a chronic condition to show a change, it’s a different story. This is when we stay with the medicine for about 6-8 weeks until it acts fully, stop because it has made things worse, or stop because it did nothing at all.

Lots of rules … I know, but if you read this carefully, I believe you’ll get the hang of it.

In case you didn’t get it, here it is again:

If the condition is chronic, continue with the use of the medicine for 6-8 weeks or until it's very much improved and the itching is resolved.

If it's done no good, either by not acting or making things worse, the use of the homeopathic ought to be halted.

In fact, anytime a homeopathic has made things worse, stop using it.

However, if you’re honestly not seeing improvement after six to eight weeks, then it might be time to look to the next protocol and learn how to assess more fully. Should you be interested in learning more on your own, check out my course “Skin, the Ugly Truth: Safe, Effective Treatment of Skin Ailments, Chronic or Acute, with Homeopathy.” Many of the questions that you might have after reading this blog are covered — in depth — in this comprehensive course.

For instance, I teach how to read symptoms, and how to know if the remedies are working. Homeopathy is a very complex medicine. I do my best to make it simpler by distilling it for you in these blogs.

It's important to learn how to take care of ourselves without submitting to a vicious circle. I hope that armed with this information, you will be well on your way to freedom from depending on topical steroids!

Warmly,

P.S. I lived an itchy little life during my entire childhood with eczema. Now if I get itchy (though the rash has not appeared in decades), Antimonium crudum 6 is always my go to.