my story; my solution

Folks, I've suffered from this disease since I was a teenager. I've been on drugs, I've had surgery, and then about a year ago it got even worse, targeting one particular area of my body like wildfire. I changed my diet in many different ways, because it seemed like there was definitely some sort of link to what I was eating -- nightshades triggered me, as did fructose, dairy and gluten. But I could never get fully clear of the sores, and it seemed like the more refined my diet became, the more furious the eruptions happened when I strayed a bit. I began to lose hope.

Then I started doing intermittent fasting, where I would eat a late breakfast and an early supper and fast completely in between. I went from eating for 18 hours and fasting for 6, to the reverse. This was not a trivial change to make. I had always eaten mostly in the evenings. But in addition to losing weight and feeling better about my relationship with food, I also found that my HS just -- stopped. Like a switch was flipped, my existing sores healed (or formed scar tissue which doesn't hurt) and nothing new would arise, day after day, week after week. 

Of course, I am incredibly relieved and grateful and I want to see if I can help others with my experience. I think we share a susceptibility to derangement of the functioning of our sebaceous glands in the presence of too much androgen, which I think is controlled by the amount of insulin in our system, which is itself linked to our circadian rhythms. I went home last month to visit my Mom and she is three timezones away from me. I lost my remission by the end of the trip as my eating times got scrambled. In particular I had a terrible flare-up hours after eating in the late hours of the night, because I wanted to try to adjust to an upcoming six-hour airplane flight. This experience convinces me that it doesn't matter what I eat, it matters when I eat. When I eat within my window I haven't had any trigger foods bump me out of remission so far. It's been an enormous relief to regain a somewhat normal relationship with food.

So, please, if anyone would like to try this out and see what happens I'd be so happy to know that my results are reproducible, and that this affliction can be managed effectively. It is no small thing to change one's eating habits, especially in a culture which normalizes eating around the clock, but for me this intervention has actually seemed to bring me closer to health and wellness, in addition to stopping the sores. I know how awful and demoralizing and terrorizing it can be to be at the mercy of these invisible wounds. May we all be well, no matter where we are or what we do.

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