About 20 years now

Hi Barb,

I am 72 and going on 4 years with GA. While it started on the inside of my leg next to my knee and spread from there, mostly down my legs, it also popped out on my hands & lower arms.  For the past 2 years, my feet have been worse than any other area and my legs are next but definitely improving.  

About 1 year ago I found this site and read posts from some who had greatly improved their GA of many years by elimination diets finding that they are intolerant of wheat (maybe gluten), dairy or other.  Their results were not fast but they said that after 6 months to a year they were dramatically improved.  This made sense to me so I tried a couple of elimination diets with no positive results.  I then found a lab in UK that does Intolerance Testing using a hair sample & sent mine off.  May 1 of 2014 is when I got my results and none of the items on my list were things that I would have found on my own with only a couple of exceptions.  Anyway, here we are at one year later and the GA is greatly improved by eliminating all items from the list, many of which were almost daily parts of my diet.

I am not cured but have not broken out with new GA spots except for one time that I ate omlettes & salsa a couple of times.  Egg whites, tomatoes & cilantro are on my list along with several other things so basically stupid of me.  Try ordering an egg yolk omlette and you'll see some pretty strange looks and so far, I've never been able to get one.  Anyway, these items are back out of my diet and I'm again not getting any new spots and slow improvement continues.

It makes sense to me that food or other allergies or intolerances would cause our bodies to react like this.  You might want to query the web for "elimination diets" and try that for 30 days or more to see if you get help because from what I read, they have you avoid gluten grains, dairy, soy, and several other things - all similar but most have variations.

Good luck to you with this.

Patty

 

I think that what you might be looking for someone who is a Functional Medicine specialist.  As I understand it, they work more on preventing problems and fixing things from the cause rather than prescribing things to patch over the problem.  I looked for someone like that but we live out here in what I like to call "no where, Texas" and it's hard to find these specialists (or just about any other kind of specialist) out here.

Our daughter went to a Naturopath because of allergy type symptoms about 10 years ago & he did a blood test that was sent to Alcat (don't know if they'll allow me to say this).  Anyway, it came back that she was allergic to fresh dairy and once she removed it from her diet, it was like a miracle.  At that time, the test cost her over $300 and was not covered by insurance.  The ND's advice was, of course, eliminate fresh dairy.  

This is why I would recommend doing some research online about elimination diets, pick one and do it yourself for a few weeks (at least 30 days is recommended and perhaps longer with GA).  You can't get any cheaper than just not eating things that are most likely to be causing the problem.  I found that within about 2-3 weeks of giving up the foods that i was intolerant of, I quit breaking out with new spots but it was a pretty slow process for them to start receeding..

The hair test that I had a year ago was about 1/3 of that cost and I think that the one I mentioned has doubled the cost of theirs since then.  From the day I sent the hair sample until I got the results in email was just one week.

Hope you find what you are looking for in a doctor.

Patty

 

I am managing mine with the chinese herbs and it keeps it at bay like i don't even have it, so i am happy

Wondering if anyone has had positive results with Niacin or with blue light?

Did tjhe Niacin and Vit E for awhile and no change. The chinese herbs keep it away.

Could someone please tell me what Chinese herbs?