Trying low dose steroids while in the city

I thought I should add a update to the blog here since it has been a while, and came across some people that actually read it in real life! So let me give you guys a quick synopsis of the last 2 years of topical steroid withdraw I have endured.

 For the most part, I have been doing pretty good. Basically, for the last 2 years I have been off of all steroids and chasing the sun ;) Once it starts getting cold here in Seattle, Wa in the fall, my eczema starts getting worse. So this year (2017) and last year (2016) I moved to South America to go back to the sun for the winter. Sun and clean fresh air is what seems to keep my skin clear. As long as I have that I am fine. Also entering a new environment in Colombia helped my allergies immensely as well. The food and air is much cleaner and healthier down there, plus the humidity keeps my skin moist and not dry.

I was actually living in South America for the good part of 6 months (from December 2016 to July 2017). I found a nice place in Medellin Colombia that I only had to pay $500 rent for and was on the 10th floor of a nice apartment building. While in Colombia, my skin was completely clear, no issues what so ever. I actually felt like a completely different person! And when I returned, my family said I seem completely different too. I looked way better and was way more relaxed.

But then I had to return to Seattle... Partly because of the Visa restrictions and my work. I run an indie computer game company called 5D Realities. Most the time I can take my computer abroad and do programming but now that the company is growing rapidly I needed to return back to the states to manage things. So I returned in July 2017, got an office in Seattle and for the most part things were fine during the Summer. I noticed I did flare more here in Seattle... but as long as I got summer sunlight and got fresh air out in the mountains on the weekends, I was fine. But now that fall is here and I am under a lot of stress from work I started to break out pretty bad...

On top of that in early October I got a really bad cold. And my skin was flaring and my asthma was horrible. Then the cold moved to my chest and there was a day where I literally could not breath... I even took multiple sessions of the nebulizer for asthma and still couldn't breath. So I went to an emergency walk in clinic. The doctor basically said, you need to take some sort of cortisone/ steroid or your going to pass out and maybe die... So she gave me 5 days of 60mg prednisone.

Talk about a dilemma I was in. The doctor basically wanted to put be on the Devil again! This was a huge decision I had to make. Go back to the steroids or try and wait out the cold.... So I came to a compromise, instead of doing the whole 60 mg dose a day, I took one 20mg pill and split in half and tried that. So 10mg. Of coarse the steroid helped like magic and I felt way better... I stayed on 10mg a day for like a week. Then I switched to 5mg a day for another week, and now I am taking 5mg every other day. My cold is completely gone and my athema and skin has stayed clear for the most part.

I just had an appointment with a dermatologist and asked her, what if I was to stay on 5mg every other day of prednisone? Is this going to be unhealthy? And have long term side effects? Her response was basically she was surprised this was helping at all because that is a small dose. She said an average body naturally produces 10mg to 15mg or natural cortisone a day. And she said perhaps my body is lower and that 5mg might be helping give a small boost to my natural amount. I also found some reports on the long term use of really low doses of prednisone. Basically the conclusion is, the side effects are minimal as found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11642646

So after weighing the ups and downs I am thinking I might stay on this low dose prednisone. At least while here in the city during the winter. I have to say it does feel strange having the hormone in my system. Even at this low doses. Life almost seem too easy, or trivial. And kind of has this wierd sensation like I am in movie or something? Hard to explain.

But this is basically a quick update I where I am at. My basic conclusion is I think my body produces small amounts of natural cortisone. Probably because I was on so much synthetic steroids as a kid that my body just never learned to produce it... So supplementing with small amounts of predinsone seems to help and keep my skin and asthma in check here in the city, during high stress periods, and during the winter.

Will keep you guys updated here but that is where I am at.

Keep going! Its totally worth the freedom!

Topical Steroid Withdraw has been the worst thing and the best thing I have ever done in my life. If you haven't heard of TSW go to itsan.org. They well tell you all about it. Now 2 Years, 4 Months. Practically back to normal. No meds, no lotion, no diet change, no nothing... nothing but freedom. I still experience minor patches of eczema that flair in the same spots. Like my arm, and behind my legs, and my face. But this is nothing compared to a couple years ago after stoping the steroids. I don't experience red burning skin or oozing anymore. Just minor "regular" ezcema that seems to flare when entering dusty places, or eating a ton of suger, alcohol or junk food.

Best advise I have is don't stress out over what you think is causing it, because that will only make it worse in the long run. My therory is you just have to wait patiently for your immune system to naturally slowly burn the ezcema and inflamation out. So you will go through good periods, and then flare hard again, only to repeat the process over and over, but each time getting less intense. It's best to get away from your old ways of living because your immune system is used to functioning in a life where you had artificial cortisone, so any place or situation that reminds you of needing the cortisone in your subconscious will trigger your skin to flare. You are a new person off the cream and you must train your brain to reverse negative thinking and old ways of living. I still go through rounds of anxiety where I can tell my body is craving the steroids and I start to flare. But when this happens Marijuana once in a while along with silent meditation can help overcome this. Also explains why all the people who are healed disappear, because once you are healed you want nothing to do with anything that reminds you of TSW. Also, in the later stages of healing, don't take anything that messes with your immune system because this just confuses your natural inmune system and will tak longer to heal. This including basic Advil or Anti Histamines. I found they do help short term but I rebound hard from them, and can send me into a vicious loop if I keep popping them. All meds in my opinion will only make you worse if you depend on them too much and disrupt your own natural energy flow. Once in a while yes, like in the early stages, but try to stay clear of drugs later on in the withdraw. Like I say, I found Marijuana to be the most helpful tool, because it calms the anxiety and does't mess with your immune system like most other drugs do. Anyways, best of luck for anyone tring to stop steroids, its a brutal process but you will learn more about yourself and your body and eventually get your life back! 

Rebuilding my core

I have gone through a large spiritual journey in this past year and I want people to understand it. For I think it can help other people get better.

Here is the main point I want to get across. Our spirit is what holds our body together. I believe spirit/ soul is the energy we were born with and is what drives life, without it we would be dead and would fall apart. Have you ever felt hurt emotionally? Like a break up, or people saying bad things about you? Well if you believe the lies, and are not grounded in your true self, your spirit will be damaged. And a damaged spirit is the cause of all illness and depression. 

Now, here is the sad part. Our spirit has been extremely damaged unknowingly by these immunosuppressants/ steroids. Our symptoms have been covered up and masked by a false medical power.

Imagine our spirit as an apple seed. It has a set of instructions, almost supernatural instructions for it to grow into a tree. The plant starts growing naturally at a young age, then a doctor comes along and says, hum this tree has some issues and should be growing stronger. So they give it a support beam to help it grow. The support beam helps for a little while until the tree starts wilting again under its own weight again. Doctor says, we need another support beam. This keeps continuing until the apple tree reaches full maturity.  

We are the apple tree that has been given too many unnatural support beams (steroids) and can no longer stand on our own. We are no doubt going to fall and break when we take the beams off. And sadly the creams and doctors are not going to be there to help us. Their interests lie elsewhere. Short term fixes and the need for money has blinded them. But the cool part about nature is we may break at the core/ trunk, but over time we can grow back to the image that God has created us to be. Although for this to occur it takes forgiveness. We have been damaged badly, we are angry and we want to hold someone responsible. Sadly we beat ourselves up over this. You can learn to let go though. It takes faith not in someone else, not in another drug, but someone who has been there the whole time. You, and the power of your heart. Don't let the past hold you down, for it is over and done with. Let go and rebuild your natural core again.

For myself, I still have a lot of growing to do, for I have been broken at the trunk and stripped of everything I had and the fruit I used to bear. But my spirit is growing stronger everyday, and cannot be shaken or disrupted by others or physical obstacles. I am growing into a more beautiful tree in the image God has created me to be. One that I feel will produce some of the best fruit on this planet given time to heal.

Tomorrow marks my 1 year. I will be putting a bunch of images together to show the amazing progress I have made :)

I also want to note, the Bible is a powerful book if you read it with the correct context in mind. I am not really religious but while I was down in the gutter I just gave it a read. You almost have to go through suffering for it to really speak to you. Jesus was an amazing teacher and understood people in the image of God perfectly. His messages helped.

Coming back from hell :) yeah

Almost 11 months in and hitting a major healing period, to where there is almost no red skin! And I haven’t used any moisturizer or cream what so ever on my skin for the last 2 months. It is still a little dry and red in places but nothing compared to 2 months in. I still think I might get another flare, but I am hoping for the best!

Things that seem to have helped in order:
1. Time.
2. Stopping all work and stress related activities to take time and let the body heal.
3. Time
4. Realization that my spirit has been badly damaged and there is a greater God that can guide you through this.
5. Time
6. Marijuana - especially heavy doses of editable once a week (100mg THC). Gives a knew perception on the damage done and how to heal. 
7.Time
8.No other Drugs - The last couple months I have not use any drug or cream or pill whatsoever. I believed this helped greatly, even though at times I suffered greatly. I would use only Marijuana to calm me down.
9. Acupuncture: I have been smoking Marijuana and going to get acupuncture every other day. For some reason this seems to be really helpful. It feels like the inflammation just drains from the body after a 1hr acupuncture session. And my sleep has returned greatly which is the biggest help of all.

10. Support and great understanding from loves one. The trip through hell is not easy to say the least…

Quick update

Things have been pretty consistant for the past 3 to 4 months. I still constantly flare and shed every 3 days. The trouble spots are the spots that constantly flare. They are my stomach, back, between my knees and arms. Although the inflamation is definitly reducing, its still there In the same location but less red as the months progress. Some people cant even notice the redness in my skin lately, which is great. Its been a bit painful because the nerves are returning. But the marijuna does a great job reducing that pain! Which is a godsent. I will take a puff and I am so much more relaxed. Anyways, I have a million pictures of my progress but I want to wait till I am near healed to post them. I think I will be fully healed in 1 year and 6 months. I am 10 months in now ;) More the half way :)

Medical Marijuana

This is a sketchy topic to discuss but I feel the need to share my experience so far. Please don’t view me as a "pot head" because I am far from it.  I personally think there is something amazing about marijuana. I believe it truly is a miracle plant. And here is why. 

First of all, do a YouTube search, "Marijuana cures" and you will be bombarded with people stories of how cannabis has cured all sorts of diseases, especially cancer. It’s a tragedy that or government is making research so hard because it is illegal. I think the drug companies in power are stopping research from being done because the legalization of marijuana would cripple their business. For sure. 

Anyways, let’s talk about my experience. I was introduced to cannabis when my younger brother offered me a pot cookie he got from his friend. With my knowlege of canabis now, there was probably around 50 to 100 mg of THC in that cookie. A normal dose is 10mg. This was 4 months ago and I would try anything to relive the pain. So I ate it. Not much happened in the first 30 min - so with the limited knowledge about editable I decided to eat more... and 15 min later I was stoned! I mean really stoned. I was not expecting the body high that I got. I couldn't talk or even think clearly. And to be honest I was freaking out. I was Paranoid! And now looking back I know exactly why I felt Paranoid. 

Here is what I thing marijuana does. When ingesting marijuana your body processes it way different then smoking it. It converts the THC to other compounds that induce a stronger high, and the high can be 4 times stronger the smoking it. But it is this high where the healing can begin. Let me explain...

Besides taking pain away (which it does greatly), I think marijuana is literally a time machine for your mind. Yeah now I sound crazy haha. For me personally (each person is different) when I eat a pot cookie alone (alone is different than with people around, trust me) I start analyzing my life. I go back and look at my childhood experiences and memories and see how they made me the person I am today. It’s like the marijuana slows down your brain frequency and like tuning into a different channel, you tune into a different perspectives on your life. You can make connections you wouldn’t normally notice. Things like houses, people, places all have a history and feeling associated with them. When I had the cookie at my parents house I could literally hear voices from the past and memories would flash before my eyes. At certain times I wanted to cry. Not until you eat the marijuana you can start picking up those frequencies. For me, the first couple times eating the cookies I felt anxious and afraid. This is because my subconcious was opening up and exposing so much information to me that I didn’t know how to handle it. My brain and emotions were overloaded.

It is meditation on these profound thoughts and truths that enable the healing. You can clearly see where and why the sickness is occurring. Where you went wrong. I can tell that my body will take a long time to recover but I can also see the path. I can see how bad I screwed by body up :( I wrote the other day while high this: "The creams made my skin look healthy but my truth was burried. The sickness and longing my spirit would weep through the skin. When I was two months in and looked like hell. That what my spirit looked like underneath my skin-- puke, that is so disgusting, why i would do that too myself."

It is a clear understanding like this that you begin to fully understand. You begin to understand who you are and how we are so tightly intertwined with nature and the energies around us. The artificial creams blocked that perspective and made me sick.

I feel the inflamed skin cells moving up and out of my body now. It is a very very slow process. But I see it and understand it now. Give me another year and I will be a totally renewed person.

 Let me note I sometimes smoke it now but it gives me bad asthma sometimes, so I will continue to eat it. Smoking it is way lighter on a high. Every person experienced eating marijuana/ editable different. And if the edible has butter in it, the high will be stronger because of the way it fuses with the fat proteins. But for me it seems to be helping. What I have been doing is like have 2 days out of the week to "medicate” myself, then take a couple days to analyze my experience and how my body is changing. 

Marijana also exposed to me how f'd up our society is. Living in corporate America you can see how businesses and cooperations choose profits over the well being of others. Not all businesses are bad but there is a lot of greed going around these days. It will be this greed that tests America to its limit, and if the people are not carfull and fight for their freedoms it could overtake the world. 

Anyways, leave any comments or questions below!

Also watch this video (ignore the first min or so where they talk about the bodies haha), there is a place in this video where Joe Rogan perfectly describes the power of editable!  http://youtu.be/TuH5We_WEQo

Amost 5 months!!

So I havent updated my blog in a while mostly because I just wanted to unplug myself and really focus on healing. And healing is what I have done :) I would say I am a little more the 50% through this and the worst has passed!! I am starting to see large improvments even though I still flare a little every other day. I can tell about 50% of my body still has the inflamation in the cells. But that is much better then 95% of my cells being enflammed. And more then 75% of the day the cells show no inflamation, not untill I disturb my skin with a shower or excercise is when I see it. 

I want to re-enforce that getting here was a nightmare that I had to settle with. I lost a lot and my life took a 180 down hill. I lost my job, I lost friends, I lost my girlfriend, I lost money and probably my ego too haha. But what I have gained??!!! Alot! Extreme enlightment is what I have gained. I feel I am closer to my family. I have got to spend a lot of time with my mom, and dad which I am greatful for! I have gained gratitude toward those willing to help me :) I feel loved, and see how important this is in life. Before I felt I was blind, living a fake and somewhat materialistic life that the cortisones provided. I was not facing reality. Now I know why I had to go through this journy. Who knows what I would have become without this experience. 

I still have a long way to go. I feel the 1 year mark I will be near completly healed. But I am healing fast now! I have been able to play soccer and tennis! I have been going to the gym! I am regaing strength and getting intouch with who I really am and the real person under all the false medications I had lived under. 

I have been taking photos of myself. I will post them all when I am healed... But here is a before and after. 

Before (2 month in): 

After: (4 and 1/2 months in)