018. What is Topical Steroid Withdrawal? Let's Break it Down.

If you're new to the show, or have been tuning in every week for new episodes, I wanted to take a minute to pause and actually define TSW and answer the question to What is Topical Steroid Withdrawal.

To read more about this, visit the What is Topical Steroid Withdrawal blog post here.

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What is Topical Steroid Withdrawal?

Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW) Syndrome is an iatrogenic condition that is caused from the use of topical steroids to treat a skin problem, such as eczema. But someone without prior skin problems can also be affected by Topical Steroid Withdrawal. Cosmetic use of topical steroids used to treat things like acne or hyperpigmentation can also suffer the consequences and experience TSW. And how about mothers who put medicated ointments on their babies? Or Put OTC creams like cortisone on for bug bite relief? Yep. That can get you into Topical Steroid Withdrawal too.

Topical Steroid Withdrawal is sometimes also referred to as Topical Steroid Addiction (TSA) or Red Skin Syndrome (RSS), and although these terms are often used interchangeably, they do have slightly different meanings.

This article is going to focus on What is Topical Steroid Withdrawal, but for your reference and education, I’ll explain what the other two can be defined as.

Simply put, Topical Steroid Addiction (TSA) is when you know you’re in trouble, as it’s when your TSW journey to healing will begin. Your skin builds up a high tolerance to the topical steroid, starts wanting more of the drug to achieve the same results and benefit, and when you deprive the skin of the drug, it rebounds and goes into withdrawal.

The “flare up” that occurs once you lessen the dosage or stop the drug all together gives you the symptoms you had experienced before taking the steroid, and often times, as is with mostly all Topical Steroid Withdrawal sufferers, the symptoms have worsened by a lot (and that’s a huge understatement).

RSS, or Red Skin Syndrome is something that can happen as a steroid withdrawal symptom. As the name states, your skin becomes inflamed and turns red because of the vasodilation of capillaries. The red color of the skin is accompanied by a very painful burning sensation.

There are MANY symptoms of TSW, the most common being relentless itching, burning, weeping, flaking, shedding, peeling, spreading, swelling, redness, wrinkling, thin skin, pus-filled bumps, cracking, itching, nodules, swollen lymph nodes, pain, insomnia, hair loss, shivering thermoregulation, fatigue, depression and more.

After a while (and sometimes a very short while) the application of steroids begins to work less and less and the original problem comes back and spreads to other areas of the body. For me, when this happened, I got the misdiagnosis (from multiple docs) that what I was experiencing was worsening eczema.

Topical Steroid Withdrawal is debilitating physically, mentally and emotionally. It can leave you bedridden, jobless, hopeless and depressed.

The good news? You now know the answer to the question, What is Topical Steroid Withdrawal! And you can now begin educating others and getting the help you need to heal.

While there are currently no proven treatments to speed up the Topical Steroid Withdrawal recovery, there are things you can do to help comfort yourself and lessen some of the severity of the symptoms. Check out the Body & Skin products (https://bit.ly/tswbod) and the Health & Wellness products (https://bit.ly/tswwellness) for some of my top suggestions that have helped me and many others.

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