Are steroids safe for topical use?

I believe everybody needs to make their own *educated* decisions when it comes to treating their body. 



Unlike most medical doctors, I *will* educate you on the risks and actions of steroid treatment.



Sadly, the information about side effects is being less and less accesible (much is being omitted in the drug inserts), and many of them aren’t even reported. Especially, when it comes to long-term effects, there is much to be desired in official medical research.

However, holistic modalities, and homeopathy especially, have a very good way of tracking down those effects by simply following the history of individual symptoms back to their onset. Homeopathy is a wide spread therapy with millions of practitioners worldwide, so there is a huge body of clinical experience to compound this knowledge. 



We now know that the side effects can be felt for decades after using those drugs and their action can be found deep in the vital systems.

The main effect of steroid treatment is the suppression of the immune system. The immune system is front and center of what protects us from disease.


Corticosteroid Drugs, or glucocorticoids, are often just called ‘steroid’ drugs. They are produced to mimic cortisol, a hormone naturally produced within the body by the adrenal gland.

 Our body operates within a very precise and very delicate hormone balance which governs *all* the functions within the body. Any extra hormonal load that we might add to it disturbs this balance, sometimes irreversibly.



Traces of synthetic hormones are found everywhere

Traces of synthetic hormones are found everywhere nowadays due to environmental pollution of the water systems. People with particularly sensitive organisms can be affected without even ever have taken any hormonal drugs. Women are much more likely to be treated with such drugs. Is it then any surprise that we suffer so much more with hormonal imbalances and associated conditions?

What we see in clinical practice is that steroids cause a suppression. The immune system is repressed to express a disturbance on an outer layer, and so it just moves deeper into the body causing more inflammation.



This can be seen on the example of babies who develop eczema. The eczema is a detoxification response when there are excess toxins in the body. The skin is the main detoxification organ, and the least important in the hierarchy. Thus, the vital force attempts to clear the body of those toxins through the skin while producing eczema. When that is suppressed by medication, it attempts to clear the toxicity through the next route which is the lungs. So now we might don’t have eczema anymore, but instead asthma or allergies develop, which are much more dangerous than a mere rash. When this is suppressed by further use of steroids, which is usually what’s done, then the pathology moves even deeper and it continues until very serious pathologies develop, the latest of which can be cancer with very high levels of suppression.



WHAT ARE THE SIDE EFFECTS OF STEROID TREATMENT

Just to name a few Clobetasol related side effects reported by patients (source – a study from FDA data):

• Pruritus (severe itching of the skin)
• Skin burning sensation
• Lichen planus
• Neuropathy peripheral (surface nerve damage)
• Breast cancer
• Renal colic (renal pain)
• Cellulitis (infection under the skin)
• Squamous cell carcinoma (a cancer of a kind of epithelial cell)
• Skin atrophy (wasting of skin)

In addition to those ‘official’ side effects, holistic practitioners and researchers have typically observed a group of other, much subtler effects which are nevertheless equally damaging in the long term. Those include:

• Suppressed self-expression
• Inability to set healthy boundaries

In summary, it’s often the same as what it attempts to treat (in case where the attempt at suppression wasn’t effective), just worse or developing somewhere else in the body in a different form.



I haven’t written this to discourage you from using steroids. I believe when there is an acute and very painful situation, we need to do what we can to calm it down and use whatever works. There’s no virtue in suffering. If natural remedies fail, and there’s a steroid cream at hand that you know will help, by all means, make your choice. But once the fire has been extinguished, consider options that won’t have a negative long-term effect on your overall health.

To discover safe alternatives to steroids, and to detox the side effects they may have left behind schedule a session with me here.