Lichen sclerosis is a dermatological condition which may affect any body part but it usually manifests in sensitive areas such as the vulva, the foreskin of the penis and the skin around the anus. It can affect any age group, but it mainly occurs in postmenopausal women. Sometimes it may resolve without any intervention if it’s present on the arms or upper body, but genital involvement usually requires medical care due to the delicate mucus membranes in the area.
The causes are unknown but we do know that it is not sexually transmitted. Possible causes may be from hormonal imbalances or an autoimmune response.
White spots on the skin are usually an early sign, and they tend to enlarge into more prominent patches as time goes by. The affected skin may become delicate and wrinkled, increasing the likelihood of tearing and bright red or purple bruising, itching, discomfort and pain. In severe cases the skin may blister or become ulcerated which can cause scarring to occur.
Modern medicine gives high doses of steroids, which may or may not work. Plus steroids come with severe side effects.
In my practice before any treatment is given, we identify all the underlying causes in each specific patient. We have to look at all factors which may have affected the immune system located not only in the whole body but also in the area of the genital areas as well, where most of its influence is located.
Both Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, as well as the ancient doctors of India who cognized Ayurveda stated that “all diseases begin in the gut.” And this is where we start with all of our patients.
The gut is home to the friendly bacteria which prevent infection. Many medications such as antibiotics, immunizations, acid reflux medicines and steroids wipe out these delicate strains. Once the strains are gone, infections begin to grow. Especially chronic candida albicans yeast. We all have a little bit of yeast which lives in our gut, but our friendly bacteria prevent it from overgrowing. Once you take any of these pharmaceuticals yeast immediately begins to overgrow. And wherever there is infection, inflammation is never far behind since the immune system creates inflammation when it is launching its attacks.
If the person has ever taken birth control pills, fertility drugs or hormone replacement therapy, then these medications deplete the specific friendly bacteria growing in the genital organs since that is the area they normally target.
So our first step here is to focus on regrowing the friendly bacteria both in the gut and then the vaginal tract as well. It’s like planting seeds in a garden — you have to give either probiotics or homemade yogurt/buttermilk/lassi using fresh strains of yogurt and not the depleted store-bought brands. Everyone is different: some people do better on probiotics, others do better on the yogurt and buttermilk drinks. The friendly bacteria in the yogurt and probiotics are like the seeds you are planting into the garden.
The second step entails bringing new topsoil into the garden. The gut and vaginal tract lining is basically two layers — a mucus layer with friendly bacteria growing in it. You have to then build up the mucus layer using various herbs and favoring certain foods and avoiding others which might break it down. By doing so, the friendly bacteria will have a substrate to grow in. Our goal here is to get robust growth of the microbiomes in these areas. Once the friendly bacteria grow they will take care of the chronic infection in the area, which is creating the chronic inflammation.
The third step in regrowing the friendly bacteria involves giving food, known as prebiotics, which the friendly bacteria love to eat.
We recommend specific foods, herbs and treatments to bring down the inflammation caused by the chronic infection which is caused by lack of friendly bacteria. But, if you take remedies to kill infection it will backfire on you because they will also destroy the friendly bacteria at the same time they are killing any other infection. Which is why we don’t recommend antibiotics, Pau darco tea, grapefruit seed extract, oregano oil, garlic, neem and other antimicrobials, even if they are herbal.
We then take the patient down a very narrow path where we recalibrate their immune system. The immune system is the gut microbiome, the liver and the bone marrow. Many medications, such as immunizations affect all three. If there is a history of the use of these medications then we have to address all three areas.
We have to be very careful in treating the liver because it got very hot from a lifetime of improper diet combined with the overuse of medications. If the liver becomes overheated it can thrust you into autoimmune reactions. So then whatever you use to fix the liver has to be cooling.
Which means we end up taking most patients off all their synthetic vitamins and liver cleanses since synthetic vitamins are the toxic version of the real thing and make the liver even hotter and angrier as the patient takes more and more of them in their attempts to get well. Herbs like milk thistle, garlic capsules, kombucha, drinking sauerkraut juice and vinegar and fermenting vegetables all backfire on people as all of these approaches heat the liver — just like taking turmeric or even worse, curcumin, the active ingredient in the turmeric. Intermittent fasting heats the liver because the liver has 5 digestive fires and it’s always looking for food to keep the flames cool. If you continually skip or delay meals the liver will get hot, creating a worsening of the rash.
Any rash on the skin is a sign that the liver is hot and angry so it’s important you learn the correct way to treat these problems otherwise you could dig yourself deeper into the ditch you are trying to dig yourself out of. We have to give herbs to regenerate liver cells, clean the liver and cool it down, all at the same time.
Then we have to clean the bone marrow — but always keeping in mind that we can’t heat the liver as we attempt to exert our influence here. The bone marrow is where the immune system cells are born, so toxins which reach this deep tissue trigger autoimmune diseases. Which is why autoimmune diseases are not only on the rise, but are at epidemic levels as we as a society take more and more pharmaceuticals without understanding their consequences and how to repair our immune systems once we take them.
Doctors themselves don’t fully understand the ramifications of their medicines on our delicately balanced immune systems, so after years of taking these medicines we are then left on our own to try and figure out how to fix our immune systems which are raging out of control, causing food allergies, autoimmune diseases and cancer.
Many doctors feel that since lichen sclerosis happens frequently in postmenopausal women then there may be a hormonal component which is why they usually recommend estrogen creams in addition to their high dose steroid treatments.
The research has not proven this out yet, but we give our more gentle herbs which are grown in nature, full of prana, or life energy, which means that they are intelligent and will therefore have an intelligent effect on the body. The synthetic estrogens made in a lab are devoid of this vital life force and are therefore unintelligent which means they could have an effect, but then at the same time give an unintelligent side effect, such as cancer.
I know this protocol for treating lichen sclerosis may sound complicated and it is difficult for you to try to figure out how to treat this on your own. I only mention this approach here to show you that there is another way to treat this problem using safer remedies than high dose steroids and synthetic estrogen. And using these remedies, along with diet, daily routine and cleansing get to the root of the problem, which these pharmaceuticals don’t. In fact, because these don’t address the underlying root causes modern medicine says that there is no cure for lichen sclerosis, but we find much more favorable outcomes in our Ayurvedic approaches, especially if you treat it as early as you can and are willing to change your diet, take some herbs, change your bedtime and learn some gentle cleanses.
I hope this video helps you as you try to find a more natural way to treat lichen sclerosis.
Thank you