How quickly should Clob help?

Hannah, I am a male who has been successfully managing my LS for over 8 years now with Clobetasol. There are many wonderful Ladies on this Forum and I am sure you will get some really good specific advice from them.

Here is what you need to get right: You are using Clobetasol Ointment, not the cream version? It is ointment only version for genital skin. You need to apply the ointment to all the potentially infected skin and in case you are not sure which skin gets infected with LS, it is all the external genital skin where hair is not present. You then need to ensure the Clobetasol is sufficiently rubbed into the skin for the skin to obtain any benefit from it.

The essential I highlight to all males with ANY genital skin problems is that you need to minimise contact with anything that is chemical based with the entire genital region. This most often means soap, shower gel and other forms of body cleanser can act as a severe irritant to the very sensitive genital skin. So, for example, if you wash your hair in the shower it is inevitable that the shampoo will get onto your genital skin.

My suggestion would be to try to exclude as far as possible any form of body cleanser from getting onto your entire groin region. If you apply anything else down there on a daily or regular basis try to exclude these until your situation stabilizes.

In terms of how long the Clobetasol takes to work, this is a very individual thing, and as I have suggested, if you exclude all the things that don't need to be there you should gain some relief from the itching.

To confirm whether you have LS or not you would need to have a biopsy done to determine whether you need to use the Clobetasol on an ongoing basis. The unfortunate thing with LS and the use of topical steroids such as Clobetasol is that it can take several months or more to learn how to get everything right: correct application, to ALL the infected areas, and for application to be sufficiently frequent.

Thanks for your response!

So, she gave me cream - she's supposedly the queen of Vagina's in Los Angeles, and I'm just so beyond dissapointed in the lack of knowledge she's given me. If what you say is true, she should have known not to give me cream! It's clearly too strong for that area, I didn't use it last night and used mometasone last night and feel so much better. I think the Clob is too strong for me at this time. I have no white patching, just itching.

She said she can't do a biopsy on me yet bc I have no visible signs of LS and it would be a shot in the dark on where to biopsy. So i've been living in this weird in-between for a while now. I'm starting to come around and not be in denial about this. I need to take application of the Mometasone seriously and consistently to see if any of it helps my itching. I didn't follow directions the last few months bc I just didn't want to accept that this might be LS.

Still waiting to hear back from her on if the switch back to mometasone is ok and sufficent enough to keep this at bay.

I've also already excluded all other allergins, detergents, etc over the last two years trying to figure this out, so I'm good there!

I hope I start having a more clear understanding of what's going on with me soon

Hi Debbz -

Yea, I've heard you all mention Borax here quite a bit, i need to find some in store and try it out. The clob itself seems to burn my skin and basically make everything worse and unbearable. I used mometasone last night and today and feel amazing so far, this might be the strength I need for now!

Also, here was my own "reply" to my intial post here, some addiitonal information and questions -- after I wrote this I messaged my doctor and made my own decision to use mometasone last night and this morning instead of Clob:

"last night was awful and i barely slept. the clob seems to be making my itching worse!?? I had put it on a few hours before bed. How long is this worse before it gets better? With all the itching ive had for TWO years straight i never had the urge to physically scratch as i did last night. Maybe i put too much? The cream is very watery also so the wet feeling is not great. Possible I'm not applying it correctly??"

I'm glad Mometasone is working better for you! 😃 finding what works for you - is whats important. 😃

Yea, I couldn't tolerate the Clob - I'm going to try Mometasone religously the next two months and see if I can get it under control - if not, I might have to try the Clob again, but I think its just too strong for me since my condition is in such baby stage? This is all so confusing lol

There is an equally potent steroid called halobetasol. My derm says it has much less propylene Glycol, which is a common irritant in ointments and creams

Thanks Susan - I had never heard of Emuaid until this forum, I'll look for that - as for the Aloe, is there aloe cream? Or the aloe gel?

Do you get the red or blue Emuaid?

I have Aloe gel. I also have the Emuaid red.

Thanks Susan! I'll get both ❤️