HEALTH - TSW (Topical Steroid Withdrawal).

Damn, TSW. Topical steroid withdrawal has plagued my life for over two years now, although it feels like sooo much longer. If you are reading this like WTF is that - read this http://www.itsan.org/. 

I'm gonna try and explain what it is, in short and to the best accuracy I can. Topical steroids are prescribed to EVERYONE with eczema worldwide. They work by creating an immuno-suppresive reaction in your body which allows the the skin to heal, the redness to go away and you to forget about the patch of eczema. They are prescribed willy-nilly by doctors to children of all ages, and although recommended not to use long-term, it seems blindingly obvious that if you have eczema and have a cram in your house that gets rid of it (without any known side-effects told to you by the doctors) you are OBVIOUSLY going to use it.  

Topical steroids work in several ways: firstly, they constrict your blood vessels in your skin in order to effectively 'blanche' the area, removing the red-colour. Secondly, they suppress your adrenal system in order to bring the reaction down, removing the skin irritation. They also put pressure on the kidneys and liver. I almost can't bring myself to explain it all here, as there is so much. But essentially by putting topical steroids onto your skin for prolonged amounts of time, the toxins enter your blood stream and poison you from the inside out. Not everyone will get addicted to steroids, and there is no real explanation why some people do and other people don't. But unfortunately I was one of the unlucky ones. After using them on patches of eczema my entire life, and then being prescribed oral steroids twice in 2016 WHILST going through the most stressful breakup of my life, I stopped taking them and began going through withdrawal. 

My withdrawal was nowhere near as bad as some others, but it was still pretty horrifying. Once you stop giving your body the drug you immediately begin to go into withdrawal, which can last anywhere from 1-5 years, depending on the potency and length of usage of the steroid. You begin by going completely red, totally and utterly bright red, as your blood vessels can no longer constrict themselves and so all dialate. They slowly learn to constrict over time, but it took me about 4 months for the redness to go down, and even now i still suffer on my legs with redness. Your body also totally dehydrates, meaning your skin begins to crack and split ALL THE TIME, making moving and doing anything unbearable. Your skin begings to go through cycles of flaring, going bright burning red where your skin literally feels like it is on fire and you cant move, to then extreme shedding and flaking off of the skin and then the cycle restarts. Apparently it is your skin learning to be skin again. At the same time as this, it is very common to experience major thermoregulation issues (which i still suffer with) because the adrenals have been suppressed for so long. This results in me always being absolutely freezing and shivering, whilst also sweating. Hair thinning was a massive thing for me and so many others too, where your hair literally begins to fall out constantly. Edema is also common, where your body retains excess water because your so dehydrated, and so I experienced major swelling of my face and arms. It is honestly impossible to do anything because everything is so painful. All you can do is sit in the bath for hours. One of the grossest aspects of TSW was oozing, something I luckily only suffered with a bit. Oozing is the explained as - 'The ooze is lymphatic fluid. It is a gold color because of the enzymes and waste in it. What ever our bodies cannot flush out through urine and bowels it will flush out through the skin (and lungs with exhalation). The nitric oxide production in the skin which was once surpressed by the steroid now over produces and causes the skins water barrier breakdown, thus the lymph fluids spills out. As horrid as this process is it is a good thing. If it wasn't coming out your skin it would be collecting in your legs like a sac of liquid. As bizarre as it is for us, the body knows what it is doing and is slowly but surely correcting itself.'.  Its pretty disgusting, but something everyone who experiences TSW goes through.

The whole process takes years to go through, for your whole body to detoxify and the red skin syndrome to heal. It is better explained here -
 RSS or Red Skin Syndrome, also known as Topical Steroid Addiction (TSA) or Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW), is a debilitating condition that can arise from the use of topical steroids to treat a skin problem, such as eczema. RSS can also arise from topical steroid use in individuals with no prior skin condition; such as with cosmetic use for skin bleaching or to treat acne, or in the case of caregivers who neglect to wash their hands after applying topical steroids on someone else.

Topical steroids are also called topical corticosteroids, glucocorticosteroids, and cortisone. They come in many different preparations including creams, ointments, oils, gels, and lotions. Some are sold over-the-counter; others require a doctor’s prescription.

RSS is characterized by red, itchy, burning skin that can appear after ceasing topical steroid treatments, or even between treatments. In RSS, topical steroids are effective for a period of time to treat the skin condition. As time passes, however, applying topical steroids results in less and less clearing. The original problem escalates as it spreads to other areas of the body. In the case of eczema, this “progression” is often mistaken for worsening eczema.

RSS is an iatrogenic condition, which means it is a condition caused inadvertently by a medical treatment. Not everyone who uses topical steroids will develop RSS. It is unclear why some individuals experience RSS secondary to topical steroid therapy and why others do not.

If i could give anyone ANY ADVICE... STAY AWAY FROM TOPICAL AND ORAL STEROIDS UNLESS 100% REQUIRED FOR A SERIOUS MEDICAL CONDITION.

Love

Zoe

HEALTH - weight and body image.

Health has always meant a lot to me, sometimes in the wrong ways.

Growing up, I was always on the chubbier side and so when I was 13 and found out I was going to be moving schools the following year, I no longer wanted to be the fat funny friends and so decided to go on a diet. It was successful, I lost about 2 stone in 6 months taking me from a podgier person to a fairly small girl. Now, although this was a success for my levels of body fat, the way I lost the weight was incredibly unhealthy and left me terrible body image issues and eating habits which I still struggle with now. 

This all happened in 2010/2011, before social media really took off and so for that reason I am so GLAD that it happened then and i managed to avoid the extra pressure of health obsessed people on instagram and model bodies filling my timeline 24/7. However, this was back when Tumblr used to be a thing, and i would follow so many 'thinspo' blogs which encouraged me to eating nothing, drink loads and exercise even more. Thinking back it actually freaks me out so much how dangerously I was loosing weight. Initially it started off pretty healthily, but as soon as i discovered that I could just eat a bit less and the numbers would go down even faster, I was hooked. As someone with an addictive personality it was a dangerous path to go down, but at 13 I didn't know this about myself, and so it just went on. These blogs I would follow would show me pictures of hip bones and thigh gaps, all asking me 'would you rather eat pizza, or see your pelvis sticking out?'... shit like that. I would save hundreds of pictures of SKINNY girls on my computer, put them as my background on my phone as inspiration... it is crazy. Anyway... as time went on i got more and more obsessed, I became scared of eating more than 1000 calories a day & would write the number 1000 on my hand with biro everyday to remind myself. A full day of eating would go like this: i would wake up and eat an orange, go to school and have 2 more at lunch, come home and go to the gym where I would try and burn 100 calories per machine, then come back home and eat vegetables and whatever meat my mum made for dinner. And that was it.. everyday. Somedays I would AIM to be in net-calories. Following this, I then tried out being sick after food. The first week I did this after every meal I lost 5 pounds. I can't even explain how excited I was & so that continued. It got to the point that my form tutor pulled me out of class & asked me if I was ok, because I looked like shit and had no energy. I was exhausted ALL the time, so grumpy and was loosing considerable amounts of weight. They started to make me go to see the school nurse everyday Tuesday to get weighed and drink milk cos they thought I was deficient in loads of minerals etc. I remember once I was walking home from school with some friends and I told one of my friends that they were making me see the nurse cos they were worried about me, and he replied something like 'well your obviously not anorexic' whilst laughing. NOW this really resonates with me... just cos i was not 5 stone, it DID not mean i didn't have an eating disorder. I think thats a really common conception with ED's, its like you have to be skinny 'enough' to classify. Only my best friend knew bits and bobs about what was going on, and she was really really worried. Anyway, when I started this all i promised myself that on my birthday (June 12th) I would eat a slice of my birthday cake. Having started on Jan 6th 2011, after 6 months, somehow I literally snapped myself out of it on my birthday, and many of the habits stopped. I honestly dont know how I managed to do this, but it is something I am SO proud of myself for.

Now, my mum also suffered with anorexia when she was a teenager too, and my grandma has pretty fucked up approaches to eating and her appearance, so I'm sure thats where most of it stems from for me. All of the really dangerous behaviors pretty much stopped from about 2011-2015. I moved to a new school and was still obsessed with my figure, always thinking I was fat and always wanting to change it, but never to such a massive degree (i think). The way that I viewed my body was very damaged, and I still harbor those thoughts about myself subconsciously now in many ways.

For me, eating is a means of control. When I feel happy, calm, stable and in control of my life, I do no feel the need to restrict my eating. I can just live my life and not worry so much about my food. It's interesting actually, because the first posts I wrote on this blog were written at a time of total and complete relapse for me. During the 3/4 of my first year at university, I would say many of the super dangerous eating habits came back. I was extremely lonely, isolated in my room, with nobody checking on me. My boyfriend at the time was aware of this stuff but obviously couldn't do anything / didn't know anything about what I was doing. He was also a massive part of why I was doing what I was doing too, although I didn't really know it at the time. I am sure that it all started again because I felt so unhappy and out of control at uni that food was something I could control to a tee, and so I clung on for dear life. It started with massive restriction, setting goals for myself to eat 2 meals a day (each about 400 cals) and nothing else. To walk 16000 steps a day and just burn as many calories as I could. I would say that in about 1 month I probably lost 1/2 a stone. The bad eating properly started after Christmas (where i had been at home for a month, had been super happy and so had eaten normally and probably gained a little bit..., but who the fuck doesn't over Christmas!!??). Anyway after going back, i know it was my ex's bday in Feb and we were all going out and so I wanted to loose the weight for that. So I dieted, and at around the end of jan/beginning of Feb i started being sick again. I literally remember on the weekend of his bday going out for dinner w his family, and I thought I'd eaten too much and so making myself sick in the toilets of the restaurant. It sounds so weird talking about it now. Now, the reason that I think my ex was part of the problem (but in no means his fault), I had started realising that he probably wasn't the right person for me. We had had a really intense relationship, he was deeply in love with me, and had spoken about marriage and the rest of our lives. I was 18, and knew it wasn't the right thing for me, and so I think I used the eating as a means of control because emotionally i felt totally out of control. It's the hardest thing being with someone who is so in love with you, and although you love too, its just not the same but the worst thing in the world is hurting them. So instead of facing the problem, I obsessed over food and my weight instead.

Now, 2 years on from all of this, a lot has changed. We broke up and since then I haven't had any properly bad eating times since. Having said that, I have been going through a different health problem (Which i will write another post about) since then (summer 2016), which has pretty much taken over any fears about weight etc. I am now a lot more interested in my HEALTH and not my physicality, but it still very hard. I have been vegetarian for about 2 years, and vegan for amounts of time within those 2 years. My weight has probably fluctuated by about 7lbs up and down since then, and it I still struggle with my body. I always find myself comparing myself to old pictures, where i am convinced i was smaller and skinnier etc. I am still trying to pin-point my eating, and work out what works for me and how I can be totally happy in my body. My current boyfriend is very encouraging of me, and we have both found that going to the gym really helps me. 

As I'm writing this now, I feel OK about how I look. I don't love it, I don't hate it. I am constantly striving to be happier in my appearance, which is hard but I'm not sure is always a negative. Provided I can do it healthily. Since moving to California, I have been and am hoping to continue with my diet of almost totally vegan, with 1 cooked meal a day and lots of fruit and veg for the rest of the time. Having been diagnosed with PCOS in January, the weight-gaining aspect has really become apparent to me, and I definitely find it harder to lose wight then I used to. Which is why I'm even more set of doing this super healthily, to try and get my entire body in good shape instead of jut being the lowest weight possible. I still have major insecurities and body image problems to work through. I feel like I still place so much of my worth in my appearance, and although i no longer seek as much validation from males and other people, I still obsess over my looks all the time. I'm sure it'll come with time, and i'll learn to love my outward appearance as much as i love who I am as a person!! If I could give any advice to anyone who is struggling with food/eating, don't try and unpick the eating problem. It is just a symptom! Look at WHY you are doing what you are doing, why you feel the need to be in so much control of the food. Work on your inside first, and the outside will come with time.

I hope if you read this you enjoyed it & helps you to not make the same mistakes I did with my eating!!

Zoe xx

New start...

SO -

It has been over two years since I last wrote a post on here. SO much has changed... I can't quite believe it. Rewinding to my last couple of posts... 1. I'm no longer at uni, 2. I enjoyed uni WAY more into my second half of first year/second year & third year, 3. I'm no longer with the boyfriend I spoke about, 4. I now live in Los Angeles.
So much has gone on, I'm going to have to write a couple of blog posts explaining exactly what has happened since January 2016!!

I'm not sure why I always turn to blogging when I feel lonely, but I started this thing during a really rough patch at the beginning of university, when I was feeling super lonely and I think it gives me a sense of familiarity. It's like although I know nobody is actually going to read this, its quite comforting that they might (and allows me to get stuff off my chest!). The last two and a half years have been crazy, I graduated from uni with a 2:1, have fallen in love all over again, been through a pretty traumatic health condition, my parents have uprooted to California and about a month ago I moved here too. It's been pretty insane thinking back, and so the next few posts will be explaining all of those things. I think I want to start blogging again because i'm not very good at discussing how I feel with people, and so writing it down is a release for me. There are also a lot of things that I want to talk about that I really hope help others, especially with regards to my health problems, and I really wana make the most of my time here and document exactly what happens to me whilst I'm living state-side.

I'm intrigued to see where this goes!

Zoe x