Re: Day 4 - Crustiness for sale?

I'm not convinced Daniel Miller wasn't a one off. Who is to say his lips wouldn't have healed eventually anyway, we know in his case it was caused from accutane use. If you search for accutane and chronically dry lips there are many examples of people that have suffered it as a symptom, very few develop it so chronically and for so long though.

The trouble is in not knowing it's causality, it's impossible to come up with any kind of plan. From experience I've juggled the social occasions to fit in with peeling cycles but it always finds a way not to work out like that.

I know this isn't particularly helpful but, honestly? I would manage your lips now and get back into socialising as best you can and just deal with the minimal restriction instead of chronic restriction and robbing yourself from not going out. It's a dice roll. You are betting on a long term plan working out where you've little evidence it will, it's a complete gamble.

Let's say this is chronic inflammation or dehydration, which what jsl sees it as. If it is this there are lifestyle changes we can make to minimise the severity of the peeling, even if we can't cure it.

I've seen some hopeful changes recently from getting my circadian rhyme right, getting to bed before 10 and awake before 6am. It might sound daft, but I've read that an unstable body clock can cause all sorts of weird hormonal imbalances/changes, as the body tries to adapt to light/dark which it doesn't know when to expect. The glands in our body are dependant on the dark/light cycle, and these glands send out all sorts of hormones which influence the building of cells and fighting of disease.

The most interesting thing I read recently is that stress increases drastically due to even short term sleep depriavation/disruption.The release of melatonin is disrupted and the body cannot repair/regulate itself properly.

When stressed the body has a tendency to release more cortisol into the blood and the sympatheic immune system can become hyperactive, this can proliferate
skin flares, dermatitis/eczema, for example. Melatonin is incredibly important to regulate the bodies healing and repair processes, but it is down regulated if the adrenals are hyperactive and heavily influenced by stress (cortisol levels).

It's by no coincidence that those who sleep during the day and are awake at night are more likely to develop chronic Depression and other mood related disorders, than people that sleep during the night. This might sound silly and irrelevant, but perhaps some of us have a stress sensitivity which started early on in our development, and continues to this day. I suffer from chronic fatigue during the day, always have.. I don't think I've been to bed before 10pm for longer than a week in my life.

If the glands responsible for cell regulation like keratin turn over are sending out all sorts of bizzare stress signals then perhaps EC is a byproduct. If what they say that the apperance of the lips are a direct indication of what is happening to our large and small intestine it may be worth trying to get our digestive system in tip top shape, and one of the most important factors in gut health and regulation is stress levels, or so I read, more so than what we eat.

What I'm trying to establish is where I'm getting things wrong which may be a co-factor in my lip peeling. Certainly one thing I relate to never having proper discipline with is my sleeping. Ever since I was a child I would stay up late watching television and being exhausted the next day, my mum could never get me up for school. I was chronically tired, CHRONICALLY. This is the reason why I want to check my thyroid and HPA axis, because there may be a more underlying reason for this and my other skin problems. Something bizzare yet simple that just needs to click into place.

One thing I've never seen anyone ask Daniel Miller; during the onset of his EC, how was his sleeping? I noticed in some of his videos he may have gone through a period of his life during the start of his EC where he was a night owl, sleeping during the day. Wherever you get chronic and longterm stress in the body it's been proven to be a catalyst and speed up the rates of cancer in people, for example.

Sorry for going on a tangent. Keep me updated whatever you choose to do.