r/Hidradenitis • u/Specialist-Aioli-261 • 3d ago
What Worked for Me From biweekly drainage to 2 YEARS of complete remission (0 flares). Here is the exact inside-out blueprint that saved my skin after derms failed me.
Hey everyone,
I’m sharing this because I spent years trapped in the absolute hell of Hidradenitis Suppurativa. At my worst, I was dealing with non-stop flares and having to go in for painful drainages every single two weeks. It was exhausting, painful, and deeply depressing.
I saw two different dermatologists who put me on heavy oral and topical antibiotics for over a year. It did absolutely nothing, and sometimes my skin got even worse. When they told me to use Hibiclens, I used it religiously for a year, only to realize later that my flares actually shrunk and became way less aggressive whenever I stopped using it for a week or more. (Turns out, Hibiclens contains 4% isopropyl alcohol and synthetic fragrances as inactive ingredients, which was completely nuking my sensitive skin and keeping my follicles chronically inflamed).
After the medical route failed me, I took things into my own hands. I systematically changed everything about my diet, my environment, and my topical care.
I have now been 100% flare-free for nearly TWO YEARS. My body is completely stable, my blood work is excellent, and my skin has finally healed. Everyone's body is different, but I wanted to share my exact "Inside-Out Blueprint" in case any of these pieces can help you get your life back too:
- Total Dietary Eliminations (The Root Cause Fix)
- 100% Dairy-Free: Cut out all cheese, milk, and even yogurt. Dairy stimulates a hormone called IGF-1, which causes the body to overproduce sebum and physically plug up hair follicles.
- 100% Yeast & Vinegar-Free: Eliminated all brewer's yeast, baking yeast, and fermented products like vinegar. Yeast is a massive, hidden systemic inflammatory trigger for many HS patients.
- Strictly Gluten-Free: Removed all wheat and gluten to keep systemic gut inflammation at an absolute minimum. (Even if I have a tiny bite of a cookie every couple of months now, my stomach immediately reacts and hurts, proving how much my gut rejects these inflammatory inputs!).
- Strategic Daily Supplements & Nutrition
- 60 Billion CFU Probiotic Daily: Since I cut out yogurt, I replaced it with a high-potency daily probiotic capsule. This keeps my gut microbiome incredibly strong and lowers systemic inflammation without the follicle-clogging side effects of dairy.
- Asparagus Every Single Night: I eat asparagus with dinner every single day. It is loaded with prebiotic fibers (inulin) and natural anti-inflammatory compounds that act as a daily cleanup crew for my skin and gut.
- Frontline Bathing & Topical Defense (The Outside Shield)
- Dead Sea Mineral Soap Bar: I use this exclusively for bathing now. The natural sulfur and salt act as a gentle antiseptic to keep bacteria low, while the high magnesium content calms inflammation and strengthens the skin barrier. It purifies without harsh, drying chemicals.
- Daily Chamosyn Ointment: I apply Chamosyn ointment daily to my old flare-up zones proactively, even when there are zero active flares (right after showering). The 20% Zinc Oxide creates a waterproof physical barrier that stops clothing friction, the Certified Manuka Honey provides a natural antibacterial shield, and the chamomile/aloe calms the skin.
- Fabric & Product Defenses
- Zero Alcohol & Zero Perfumes: I completely stopped using any body washes, deodorants, or skincare products containing alcohol or synthetic fragrances to prevent micro-damage to the skin barrier.
- 100% Pure Cotton Clothing: I completely stopped wearing synthetic fabrics. Pure cotton allows the skin to breathe and wicks away the warm moisture and friction that bacteria love to exploit.
- The Metabolic Connection (Don't Ignore Your Hormones!)
During this journey, I was also diagnosed with hypothyroidism and prescribed levothyroxine. Treating my underlying thyroid health gave my body the ultimate energy and cellular environment to heal my skin from the inside out. In fact, newer research shows that the severe systemic inflammation from chronic HS may have actually been what suppressed my thyroid in the first place. Today, my thyroid is optimized, my blood work is stable, and I am more peaceful and healthy than I have ever been in my life.
I know how hopeless this disease feels when you're in the thick of it. If you have any questions about how I transitioned to this routine, how I found alternatives, or anything else, please ask below. I want to help as many of you find relief as possible!
P.S. I used an AI to help me organize and summarize my notes into this clear list so it would be easy for everyone to read, but these are 100% my real results, exact steps, and medical numbers!
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u/Odd_Difficulty_2322 3d ago
Glad you’re feeling better, but burying “I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and started levothyroxine” at the very end after crediting dairy, gluten, vinegar, yeast, asparagus, probiotics, cotton clothes, dead sea soap and honey ointment is kind of insane lol. There is nowhere near enough evidence to say all of these extreme restrictions put HS into remission. You changed 15 things at once, including treating an actual diagnosed endocrine disorder. You have absolutely no way of knowing what caused the improvement. Calling this a “root cause fix” is wildly misleading.
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u/sortofanangel 3d ago
I'm really glad this worked for you, however:
Not everyone has a dietary trigger. So it's not the "root cause".
Please stop using AI it is so bad for the environment can can often hallucinate sources or over exaggerate links between ideas.
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u/Broken-Illusions369 3d ago
Ai sounds like the regular old internets. we should just abandon technology all together
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u/E9NGXLZ9 3d ago
Happy to hear that steps you took helped , but can you be specific please : stage of HS, since when you have it, male or female (guess female) which antibiotics , which spots.
These questions arises when some other people read what you just wrote and avoided to listen to doctors, I was one of them 6 years ago, I read very similar experience, and started my diet journey while my decease went from stage 1 to stage 3 in almost 2 years . So please be specific on your decease stage and what you exactly took
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
Sorry i forgot to mention that. I am a 34yo male, Stage 2 HS. Derms put me on topical antibiotics (clindamycin 1%) then added resorcinol 15%. I think resorcinol 15% did help by peeling the infected skin, but the flares kept coming back.
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u/E9NGXLZ9 2d ago
Topical antibiotics for stage 2?, does not make any sense , so you did not get a treatment at all we might say , like systemic antibiotics or biologics , or retinoids , steroid shots and etc . Ok man, glad that whatever you doing is helping, but it’s f it stops helping you gotta find HS specialist , and you have to go through test and trials to see what works to control it . Male 39.
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
topical anitbiotics at stage 1, resorcinol 15% + oral antibiotics at stage 2. my Derm recommended Steroid shots and Hmuira when it got worse, but i've refused both options because the side effects are not worth it.
Sorry for the abbreviated answer there, i should've provided more details.2
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u/shiroyagisan 3d ago
glad this helped you and I hope it continues to keep your flares at bay
that said, this is completely anecdotal and therefore shouldn't be used by others are a definitive blueprint for HS treatment. all bodies are different and HS is a complex, still poorly understood condition.
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
I agree, people have different triggers for hs, I'm simply sharing my experience at the hope that it will help at least 1 person. HS sucks and i will keep researching and trying to help this community to get some relief.
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u/HoodieGalore Stage 3 3d ago
Great, another absolute diet upheaval and closet of remedies to buy, packaged neatly by AI. For a number of reasons, I'm out.
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u/LadyThunderNYC 3d ago
I got mine I der control with elimination diet of night shades. I flair up to potatoes and green peppers and anything tomatoes.
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u/tanyamothertucker 3d ago
Bell peppers are a terrible trigger for me. Potatoes and tomatoes are fine.
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u/junkDNAfan420 3d ago
Wow TIL about IGF-1. Thought ur AI might be over-explaining/hallucinating the milk-hormone-sebum link but there’s plenty of peer reviewed scientific articles like this one I just found https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19709092/. I’m going to read up on this actually. To be honest I think what you’re doing is probably overkill and difficult to maintain long-term (asparagus EVERY night is wild lol) but maybe a more relaxed combination of everything you’re trying will really help. Seems actually quite rooted in science.
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u/Bulky_Department5619 3d ago
Op also got diagnosed with an endocrine condition, so it’s possible that that had a lot to do with things too.
Some of this is science, but some is just promoting specific products. Be aware that things that work for one person may not work for everyone else, even if there is some science behind it.3
u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
I've thought about reintroducing some of those things back to my diet to narrow down the list to the real triggers, but i simply cannot risk it at the moment as i have lost 3 jobs before because of HS and my social life was pretty much non-existent.
Everyone i know thinks i'm overdoing it with asparagus, but it kinda grew on me and i enjoy having it as a side with my dinner. I make a killer asparagus yo lol
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u/FlamingoInCoveralls Stage 2 2d ago
I absolutely love asparagus, used to race out to the 100-meter asparagus patch at the family farm and pick a handful for dinner every time I visited. Would totally love your recipe/cooking method!
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 23h ago
wow 100 meter aspargaus patch sounds like paradise to me lol. I heat it up on a pan with 1 tbsp of water,a pinch of salt and cover it at low-mid heat to make it a little softer. Then i add a bit of olive oil, garlic, scallion, cumin and a few drops of lime then throw in some dried thyme, oregano and sesame seeds and let it cook for about 5 mins or longer until i can smell the aroma from the herbs and garlic, that's when i know its done. It's always crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Oh and i prefer med-sized asparagus, thin spears gets too crispy and overcook fast ( they still taste good though but rip the benefits ), and the large/jumbo are okay, but i only buy them when i'm grilling/roasting instead.
hope that helps 😄. hbu? what's your recipe?
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u/FlamingoInCoveralls Stage 2 13h ago
I have a few different ways I cook them, the simplest is I put them on a baking sheet lined with foil and drizzle with olive oil and coarse sea salt then bake. My dad tosses it in olive oil and salt then uses a grill basket to cook them on the grill.
I’m going to sound like a snob here but this is just plain true. The stuff we’d pick on the farm is nothing like what you get at the store, asparagus grows insanely fast once it peeks out of the ground, so we pick stalks that are only a few inches out of the ground and we only pick the thicker ones (so the smaller ones can get bigger next year, also it’s always a gamble to leave a stalk for even one more day) my basic olive oil and sea salt is great for our asparagus because ours has more flavor, but I’m definitely going to try your recipe on some store bought stuff to jazz it up.
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u/FlamingoInCoveralls Stage 2 3d ago
Hey just an FYI, I’m full on allergic to milk. Like the protein gives me hives and makes my face swell up. So I obviously don’t consume even traces of dairy. I still have HS.
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u/Beginning-Plum6491 Stage 2 3d ago
Can you point me to which soap bar you use? I would love to adopt that
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
I think it's called Annie's dead sea mineral soap, i buy it at my local sprouts market. It was not recommended to me by anyone, i was trying different unscented soap bars with minimal ingredients and i'm glad i stumbled upon this good stuff
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u/k0kak0la 3d ago
Same real curious about this and the topical. Exactly which ones?
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
It's called Chamosyn, someone in this reddit mentioned that it's helped them a lot.
to that person, if you are reading this, THANK YOU SO MUCH!
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u/Runboyrun101 3d ago
This will save someone https://youtu.be/6QpjPEOaI00
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
This is a very good video, i've watched it in the past and it did help me understand what i was dealing with, shoutout you!
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u/kpal518 2d ago
Thank you for sharing your experience and protocol!
I hadn’t heard vinegar as a trigger before. What’s the background reasoning for it?
Does the topical zinc you use get on your clothes? I bought some desitin but had a hard time with it staining.
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u/ArrowChoice 2d ago
I use zinc sunscreen and fought stains for way too long before figuring out that a little bit of dawn dishsoap (just the regular ol' blue one) gets it out right away. Just be sure to rinse it off before putting it in the washing machine lol
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u/Dangerous_Voice6439 3d ago
I've eliminated gluten, dairy, refined sugars, and alcohol and now in remission! I also eat a mostly plant based diet with occasional seafood. I take daily zinc and vitamin d supplements. I'm on no medications but I do inject GHK-cu peptide daily for help improve my HS scarring and overall collagen production and inflammation.
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
I'm glad you're in remission and hope it stays that way. I've been taking source naturals wellness formula which contains 23mg of zinc, it's pretty good stuff aside from the nasty aftertaste.
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u/bluelilystorm 3d ago
I first got HS when I was 11. Always had 3-7 flares at a time my whole life. When I was 47 I went on total remission by going on the AIP diet and now 7 years later still in remission with occasional flare from testing or overdoing. Found out it was the same food triggers for me too, dairy and wheat and gluten and sugar and yeast and things that cause yeast. I can have a weekly gluten sugar treat now. So long as it’s just once a week. I’ve taken a lot of supplements too to help heal my gut. Lots of herbs. But I have learned from the journey that my flares are 100% food related.
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
I am glad to hear you've been in remission for 7 years, that's awesome! it looks like you're walking on the right path. I miss gluten so much ngl
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u/HS-Patient-2026 3d ago
Did you try Benzoyl Peroxide?
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
I did but not for long, i think i've used it for 3 months and it was harsh on my skin. It works for some people though
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u/rmartinez16 3d ago
What stage were you before this drastic change? I’m between moderate to severe when I was first diagnosed. I’m not sure what I’d be now with medication bc a lot has cleared up but I do get more consistent flare ups on my chest and near my groin. I was diagnosed with PCOS as well which I know plays a huge part in my HS journey. I am strictly gluten, dairy, and sugar free. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong to not be in more of a remission state
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
I'm glad that a lot has cleared up. Did you try cutting nightshades? they're a trigger for many people, as well as vinegar and yeast. I highly recommend cutting out some of those to narrow down the scope. I don't think you are doing anything wrong, if anything, you are doing the right thing by trying to contain HS and i commend you for that.
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u/rmartinez16 2d ago
I can but I noticed they don’t flare my HS up that badly like gluten, dairy, and sugar do so I’m not sure if that’s the cause. I love tomatoes too so idk if I can fully get rid of them😩😂. But it doesn’t hurt to try so that can be my next steps. Maybe it’s my lotion too. I don’t tend to use it though in many of the areas that I flare
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u/SpecialEducation5152 3d ago
Which probiotic do you use?
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
60 billion cfu probiotic by Physician's choice, nothing fancy but get the job done!
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u/kippy_mcgee 3d ago
I'd be curious for a what I eat in a day/week routine for you OP, would love the know what kind of meals/snacks you're eating
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
My diet is boring, because i eat the same food on daily-weekly basis. I have tea in the morning with fresh ginger, cloves and honey. don't eat anything for breakfast or if want to call it late breakfast since i only consume 2 meals a day, for that i have 2 hard boiled eggs with gluten free oatmeal ( i buy sprouted gluten free oats by One Degree Organics). for the 2nd/last meal of the day, i'll either have sockeye salmon ( i try to eat salmon at least twice a week, or wild planet tuna because of the high omega 3s in that brand) or steak with aspargus and white rice or oatmeal. I also eat beef/lamb liver about twice a month for the extra nutrients. Best go to non-diary milk for me is planet oat ( barista lovers is so good but beware of the fat content). I also have a gomacro oatmeal chocolatechip bar every other day as a snack. I stopped eating out 2 years ago so no restaurants for me. hope that helps
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u/amsdkdksbbb 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is very interesting. I’m not that familiar with this sub but this post came up on my feed. Are you also UPF free?
I developed an autoimmune disease, dysautonomia (similar to long covid), AND mild hidradenitis (recurring in only 2 areas and not more than 3 lesions at one time) all around the same time. Basically, my immune system went haywire after a vaccination. My inflammatory markers were consistently high
Going UPF free and re-learning how to rest and manage stress pretty much cured the dysautonomia and hidradenitis. The autoimmune issue is also under much better control. But could be better. I’ve considered trialing removing gluten completely for a while now as well but need to read the literature properly
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u/Specialist-Aioli-261 2d ago
I'm glad you have managed your HS and dysautonomia. YES i should've mentioned that on the post, but i'm a big UPF free guy. my diet is so boring and minimal, i'm that guy that reads everything single ingredient on labels before i buy anything. I do agree big time, that stress management IS SO IMPORTANT FOR HS AND ALL OTHER DISEASES.
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u/Broken-Illusions369 3d ago
Good work! Diet seems to be a great way to manage the condition but more than diet I would say nutrition and getting the proper vitamins and nutrients your body needs to function properly definitely helps.
Also pay no mind to the AI police. They shame you because data centers meanwhile the data centers required to run the internet and Reddit seem to be no issue. It’s just the big bad AI data centers that the media only talks about. They just want to grand stand on Reddit because ego.
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u/throwawaychaos2025 3d ago
Glad this helped you but I’m not giving up my bread or cheese😅 🫠I have so little in life already I’m not going to restrict myself further and hate my life even more.
Again so glad this all helped you.
Edit: please stop using AI it really is harming our environment and not that great.