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Grover's Disease: What works to help find relief?
Skin Health | Last Active: Nov 4 2:57pm | Replies (2012)Comment receiving replies
To all who are experimenting with cilantro and other products to try to find a cure for GD: I'm 73 and was diagnosed in my early 40's. Thus, I have had quite a few dermatologists over the year look at and treat my GD. They all agree from their training GD is uncurable. With that is out of the way, you have convinced me to try either the cilantro smoothies or the cilantro oil. I will talk to my doctor about it on Friday to see if he's heard anything about it. There may not be much current clinical interest in GD right now but he seems to be as up to date as he can be on it. To repeat an earlier post from me, six UVA light TX did not work for me. It made it worse. The GD spread to my legs and started to spread to my back. I've only had it on my chest and trunk previously. I'm unhappy I have more of it now to deal with. Prednisone for 15 days dried up the blisters and stopped the itching completely--but it is not a drug I can stay on long-term. I was happy at how the GD responded to it, however; it was really just an experiment by my dermatologist. I'm happy to be a part of the support group and very much appreciate the new information I've gotten from all of you.
Replies to "To all who are experimenting with cilantro and other products to try to find a cure..."
You have nothing to loose trying cilantro. I have a cabinet full of expensive and useless products which were recommended by multiple dermatologists but they never suggested they would put me into remission, only help perhaps. There is no recognized treatment to put GD into remission. Not once was a tie in to heavy metals suggested or the benefit of naturally chelating your blood of metals by ingesting cilantro.
I believe all of us on this site would appreciate your feedback after talking to your derm about cilantro as a treatment for GD. Also mention the information on the internet about heavy metals as a precursor for diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and GD.
When GD was active I tried natural light exposure as I have a private place to sunbathe and it just plain hurt. I did it for a week and it always hurt and seemed to make it worse. Heat, pressure, friction, sweat and sunlight always hurt or made it worse when active. I would think the sunlight would be anti-bacterial for the papules, yet in my case my papuales never became pustules. They never got infected yet an antibacterial watery topical was prescribed and I applied that after every shower.
You have a severe outbreak with it going to your legs, in my case it was limited to front and back torso from hairline to the waist, yet it never appeared on other places, still I have read from others that it can happen.
You have been dealing with this for 30 years. Does it go into remission like it does for many of us? My first outbreak was a full year and the most extreme and then my pattern was 6 months of dormancy and then 6 months of activity.
Take heart with the cilantro. Kimass1 first read about cilantro on the earthclinic GD site. One man who went into remission had been dealing with a continually outbreak, never going into remission for 30 years like you. The fresh cilantro smoothies put it into remission. If you check out that site you might feel more comfortable with the cilantro experiment.
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Yes, @stpchair, I think most of us on here who have had the disease for quite awhile realize there is no cure for Grover's, but we have found a few ways to make the symptoms less severe, or in some cases, go away completely.
I have been taking this product https://www.herb-pharm.com/product/cilantro/ (which I get on Amazon) since early June and the number of my sore and itchy spots has been greatly reduced and most of the old sores have faded to a light pink in color as opposed to them being red before.By no means has my disease gone away completely, but it has dramatically improved.
@cindytxrunner is taking the exact same drops, but so far as I know, we two are the only ones on this forum to currently be trying the drops route instead of the cilantro smoothies. I am definitely NOT trying to influence you to try the drops instead of the smoothies, but if you do decide to go this route, it would be a little bit more like a tiny scientific study if you were to use the same drops as @cindytxrunner and me. Far more people have gone the smoothie route, and @gardeningjunkie estimates that about 50% of those people have found some level of success with them. She in particular has had her Grover's go into complete remission!
Best of luck and please keep us posted on your situation.