Try quitting dairy and baked potatoes. really worked for me

Thanks for the tip. I don't eat dairy, but I have an occasional baked potato. Ill try giving that up and see what happens. Thanks again!

I use a tumeric cream called Vicco that I found on Amazon. I use it when i notice a flare coming on. I put on the Vicco and cover it with a bandage before i go to bed. The flares shrink waaay down over night. I love this stuff! Its been a Godsend for me. I repeat in the morning. Also when i shower i use hibicleanse on the area every day wether i have a flare or not. You can find that at any pharmacy. Tumeric is natural and has anti inflammatory and anti biotic properties. I take a 500mg tumeric supplement twice a day. I hope this helps. Oh and the Vicco is super affordable!

Read Tara Grant's book "the hidden plague" then give the auto immune protocol diet a try to see if certain foods are a trigger for your HS. That's where a previous poster was going with cutting out dairy and potatoes. Night shades (potatoes, tomatoes peppers,etc), wheat, dairy, & nuts are the most commonly reported triggers for HS. Once you figure out if a food is your trigger, you avoid it and things are in remission unless you consume the trigger food again. If you try The auto immune protocol diet and find that no foods are your trigger you may need to see about humira from your dr. Good luck to you!

Wow, thanks for some good tips, I will try it all. I do normally bathe with Hibiclens. And I didn't realize foods triggered HS too. Thanks to you all I will take the great advice and let you'll know

my biggest flares come when I eat chocolate and peanut butter...if I do, I have a flare the next day!! I take turmeric 2x a day also, and I am going to order the Vicco that mgennetti mentioned to have on hand...I am 63 and have had HS since 13..such a depressing thing to deal with but 1 day at a time I say...gl to you!!

I think a lot of the suggestions here are worth trying, although not all of us have these food sensitivities and not all of us respond to the same things in the same way. To the best of my knowledge, I don't have food issues like the nightshade issues that seem common in HS, and didn't get benefits from using turmeric but ended up with my stomach bleeding from taking turmeric capsules so I quickly had to give that up.

I think what's given me the most relief and the longest lasting is probably that my doctor seems to have managed to kill off the specialized Staph species Staphylococcus lugdunensis) that may be the biggest thing most of us all have in common, whereas a lot of other doctors may panic and assume it's MRSA (which it's probably too easily mistaken for) or automatically assume that older antibiotics don't still have value.

Thus my doctor probably managed to accomplish with a short course of one antibiotic like probably erythromycin, what the best and brightest HS researchers still don't seem to be able to do with longer courses of 3 newer antibiotics at a time. It may have even been accidentally - if they'd known it was HS at the time, they might have tried other recommendations that wouldn't have worked as well - but that may well be the biggest Godsend I've had with my HS.

Sadly, while doctors may have some very smart and well-developed protocols for infections in urgent care settings, their protocols and knowledge level for other situations may still be sadly lacking. My doctor is becoming aware of biofilm infections for example (these may feature in HS) and recommended Hibiclens to help prevent them, but still doesn't seem to know how to diagnose or treat one, and neither did the specialist that they referred me to.

I am really stating to think we need both pharmaceutical companies and health organizations like the Mayo Clinic where my doctors often seem to look for guidance, to come up with better guidance on both HS treatment and especially antibiotic use in general. Possibly insurance companies also need to participate in seeing that we can get the microbiological testing we may need for doctors to make the right antibiotic choices.

Other than that, inflammation is another of the things most of us seem to have in common, hence many of us might expect benefits from anti-inflammatories like Humira, although there may be a number of drawbacks with Humira including that it may not be something we can expect to be given in perpetuity and it may be much better to kill of the infections that may causing much of the inflammation.

Literature does at least hint that there may be a number of natural anti-inflammatories that have similar if sometimes weaker activity to Humira - both turmeric and the zinc supplements that some people have used may have these properties, but there are likely more things out there in this "anti-TNF-a" category that might give us better choices if a particular one doesn't turn out to be suitable for our long-term use.

The zinc regimen for HS originally used by researchers Dreno (et al) involves a high dose just within the margin of safety, but I've seen warnings that zinc toxicity can be cumulative, so I don't know if it's a good idea to be taking 90% of the daily dose considered safe like that for extended periods of time.

As an aside, I'm increasingly suspicious that some people's triggers may have been acquired along with infection, either cross-reactivity between antibodies against microbes and the host or various foods, or possibly because infections may be able to poison the process that selects the right thing to make antibodies against (picture a pocket calculator that's low on batteries that can't do math right any more although it still tries, God bless it), or both. Some of us seem a little old to just now be discovering that french fries or other triggers can cause us rampant inflammation - that tends to sound like allergies we may not have been born with.

BTW, I don't think there's anything on my current list of triggers (mainly "immune-boosting" supplements) that triggered anything for me when I was younger. I used to a great boost to my sense of well being from taking ginseng supplements earlier in life - now they're become a terrible HS trigger that are likely to land me in urgent care the next morning.