Question about inner vaginal outbreaks and autoimmune disorders/please help!!

I'm currently using prunella vulgaris tincture on my sores and holding it there and have put prunella on my predominal sore spots multiple times as day as well as about to take 1000mg more of Lysine today making it 3000mg in total, but I'm also not eating any food anymore with sugar, meat, dairy, gluten (including quinoa corn oats or soy but was gluten free before because of celiac disease), or chocolate obviously. I still drink red wine here and there but I also consume the prunella in my water. I've put some in my body and hand washes as well as any lotions. I seem to be getting constant outbreaks regardless how hard I try however, and honestly I've tried going on valacyclovir but with my weak a$$ immune system being over or underactive, with celiac endometriosis and psoriasis, I honestly had no success whatsoever. Spent so much money on this medication and tried doubling up on the meds but if anything that just pissed the virus off. I'm so afraid to pass it on to my boyfriend but I have more outbreak days than non outbreak days.. so it's definitely going to happen. He seems unphased but he has a stressful job and drinks a lot of coffee :(.. He also has scoliosis. Will the virus affect that? What can I use for inner vaginal lesions? Anyone ever put stuff on a tampon for the inner outbreak? Honestly this is such a mess.. and I'm only on a disability income so I'm running out of patience and money. Please please please help.

To add to this I really do feel like i have to dramatically change my diet but the thing is I did and I an STILL getting the predominal pain so I guess I'm about to get another outbreak. Yay! I am on my period but still.. what gives..

Coming from someone with an autoimmune disease and a family with autoimmune issues, I can understand the issue with an immune system that has gone berserk. It does seem that your problems with your immune system are contributing to your herpes outbreaks. The constant body inflammation puts your immune system into overdrive by attacking your tissues. Herpes is a constant threat, so will your immune system on alert. With an auto-immune disease, the immune system is confused and in turn will not do an efficient job at fighting HSV. Again, immune modulation is key.

Things to consider: Vitamin D3 levels.. how are they? Within range? This is important for immune modulation. How is your sleep? This is also important for immune modulation. Are you exercising? Are obese? Inactivity and obesity contributes to inflammation in the body, and this can be checked with a C-reactive protein test as well as sedimentation rate test. You might have heard of these with your conditions.

Diet wise, that is a lot to cut out. You need some of the proteins in some of the foods you are cutting out. You need essential and complete proteins to help you fight this virus. I understand the allergy concern, but unless you have had an allergy test (gluten exception), there is no point cutting all the others out. Genova diagnostics gives an IGG food allergy test. This is different from an anaphalaxis allergy test. The IGG test is given to people with auto-immune disease because as you might already know, the IGG will reveal the more "chronic" type of allergic reaction as it is found in most auto-immune diseases. You might not have an allergy to meat or dairy. I had this test done, and the test showed that I was not allergic to dairy or meat, but I was reacting to asparagaus! Weird huh? I had a moderate reaction to gluten.

That is great your partner does not think twice about your HSV. You do not have to worry about HSV affecting his scoliosis. It will not change a thing about it. Scoliosis is not involved with the immune system.

I have had prodromal sensations inside vagina, but I am not sure that I have had a lesion inside. I do not recommend putting anything inside while having a lesion since skin integrity is compromised. Putting anything inside that is not sterile during this time can contribute to a secondary infection like bacterial vaginosis. The goal would be to prevent a secondary infection, and let the sores heal. Keep vulva dry after shower, wear cotton underwear, no harsh fragranced soap, and take probiotics. Oral probiotcs that can help for vaginal health are Rephresh Pro-b since the strains are specific to keeping bad vaginal bacteria down.

@Vin3 Holy shit I just have to say I really appreciate your detailed amazing response. I don't think you understand how helpful that actually was for me. Thank you! I am actually not overweight and am in the healthy range 5'10" and 150 pounds (give or take a pound). I got a vitamin test but my doctor is also testing me for diabetes and thyroid conditions as well just to rule everything out. I recently got my period this Friday and the pain is definitely much worse. I passed out from the pain and was screaming leading up to that it was that bad. It's definitely upgraded but all my moronic doctor can do is try to put me on hormones when I can't take them due to the many medical issues I have, mainly in this instance panic disorder, generalized anxiety, and mostly my complete heart block. Which sucks because birth control was bomb at controlling the pain. I am going to get the IGG food test as soon as I can afford to because it's quite expensive here and I don't think odsp covers it unfortunately.. but you're absolutely right when you say me cutting food out when I honestly don't know what my body can and can't tolerate is bad. I'm just honestly so terrified of doing even one bad thing to my body to make it worse. I didn't know I could get probiotics that actually strengthen my vaginal bacteria specifically, though while that's amazing I also need a probiotics that will help my stomach as it's not doing so hot these days. I find I'm basically just making my life more difficult essentially without knowing really wtf I'm even doing. So the IGG test is the most important test I could ever get at this point. As I said though it's almost $500 here. Any idea how to get this covered? I hope you're able to respond to this.

I am so relieved my boyfriend's scoliosis won't get worse! He's the love of my life and just the thought of hurting him is enough to destroy me so I don't ever want to actually do so. He's been so supportive every step of the way and not stigmatizing in ANY way. I am honestly the luckiest woman in the world to have him. I just want to get better so this isn't such an issue and I can grow old with him. I can deal with 1 or 2 outbreaks a year but not 1 to 2 a month; that's what's really driving me insane. I sort of rage quit on one of the discussions and was about to honestly delete this account because I didn't feel like I was being heard but also because most have to wait 7 to 10 days before they're good to have sex but for me it seems like in that time I develop another one and I'm on lysine and all this other crap to help. That is also why I was scared to eat basically anything. I find a lot of sites are extremely contradicting to eachother when it comes to what foods are safe and what ones aren't. I don't really eat soy or meat anyway but corn and dairy here and there is what really screwed me when learning I would have to cut them out. That was basically most of what I was surviving on. I'll take it easy and not eat too much junk food but I'll find out what foods I do react to with these tests. Thankfully I have a very patient amazing boyfriend who loves me no matter what so I can at least try to relax. It's just after cutting myself off of acyclovir and then valacyclovir because neither of them worked; they made the outbreak worse actually, the outbreak pain or predom symptoms are so much worse and painkillers just aren't working at all for me. So frustrating.. but seriously again thank you. Anymore information you or anyone has for me will be greatly appreciated.

It's fair to note that I was told I could get the more serious complications of having hsv1 oral and hsv2 genital like encephalitis or liver issues later on because I'm so immunocompromised but how true is that? Is that him being overly cautious? It's freaking terrifying......

Endometriosis and possibly ovulation is what seems to trigger my outbreaks the most.. even my psoriasis is flared up after being under control for the most part for a year. It's gotta be the winter skin thing because nothing seems to moisturize my skin at all.

@MissLamentful Glad I can help! How long have you had HSV1 and 2? Unfortunately the Food allergy test is an out of pocket test. Set up a Gofundme page and see what happens, while you save for it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Yes unfortunately, periods do bring on the symptoms. So a few months ago, I was exercising pretty frequently, and I went asymptomatic. The inner vaginal symptoms returned when I stopped exercising. I am having these annoying stinging burning stabbing pains as I type. They also come around my period as well. I am not overweight, but the exercise seems to control the symptoms or keep the virus away. I have also been very stressed with the holidays so that also didn't help. Remember higher stress levels can also bring this virus out.

Remember that auto-immunity is not immunocompromised. They are different. I responded on a different post that encephalitis and meningitis are most likely to happen to women during their first outbreak, if at all. It is rare. Yes immuno compromised people are more likely to get this complication, but you are not immunocompromised. Immunocompromised would be someone with AIDS or cancer.

Bacteria probiotics for vagina will also help the gut. I take all kinds, but I also include one for vaginal health. I had to start taking them because I was getting discharge which I suspect was from the internal herpes activity. My doctor also gave the thumbs up on those probiotics. There is a journal article that did a study on these 2 strains for vaginal health L.reuteri and L. rhamnosus are the two strains. I will link it in a subsequent post.

Going through this pain is anxiety producing. Try to bring the herpes fire down by:

-Getting optimal vitamin D levels in body because it is an immune modulator

-Taking probiotics. Probiotics helps immune system too

-Going to sleep at a decent time to allow melatonin to go to work. Melatonin is an immune modulator. Doc told me this.

-Drink plenty of water to help lymphatic system flush waste and debris that is left over from inflammation.

-Exercising! Go swimming. Find an indoor pool if the weather is cold out. Swimming is a good non impact exercise if you have painful joints. It will make your body feel better and sleep better in addition to helping your immune system. Being in water might also help you feel less pain. Do yoga and don't forget weights for strength.

-You have an amazing understanding partner and I'm sure he would want to do anything that would help you feel better. Have him give you a massage with lavendar oils to help bring down the stress and anxiety. Oxytocin is released when being touched even during massage and helps bring down blood pressure and stress hormones. In hospitals, patients deal with pain better and get better with their condition when they get massage.

-Listening to relaxing music

-Instead of treating yourself to wine, treat yourself to a pressed green juice. You'll feel the nutrients working their magic and make you feel alive. The greens help auto-immunity problems immensely!!

Not being able to control this condition is what makes it unbearable. If you shift your thinking away from trying to control "it", and instead help your immune system and nurture your body and mind, the fire can come down. Your body will take care of you.

@MissLamentful I also forgot, open up a pinterest account to get recipes for auto-immune disease. If you type "recipes for auto-immune diseases" you will get LOTS of information on recipes, diet, tips, positive affirmations. OMG it is great. Try it!

@MissLamentful Ok this is the link for the study about probiotic strains that help keep vaginal yeast infections away. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19703242

AND here is this one too about the healthy types of bacteria for vaginal health https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2662373/

@Vin3 sorry for the late reply but honestly I got super drunk and had a complete mental breakdown last night about all of this. I got ginger supplements, expensive feminine probiotics that are 50 billion per capsule and I got more lysine even though they're hard af to swallow. The skin pain for the outbreak which is only 3 lesions at best that I can see is the worst part. It feels like my skin has been burned which makes me feel like maybe I do have fibromyalgia and the virus is just bringing it out more.

It's mostly just that I love my boyfriend so much and I can't live with the guilt of me possibly passing this to him just to have us maybe one day not work out and then he's stuck with me. He says he wants to marry me and I want to marry him as well dearly, but I am a lot to handle.. like I'm a complete wreck of a person. I don't even know how he can stand to be around me especially because we aren't having sex.. he deserves so much better than me and I even told him I feel like I'm the one holding the weight of this diagnosis alone because he always says he doesn't know how to help me but doesn't do research other than the one time he looked up how to avoid getting it which to me it's like yeah you don't want it but at the same time it's like that's not somebody who doesn't care about getting it because they care about you. It was old and he's made peace pretty much now with getting it but that one fact will just always leave me wondering... and it's because I care about him so much. He thought I was breaking up with him last night when that's the absolute last thing I would ever want to do. It's just that if I was alone I wouldn't have to worry about passing it to anyone and I could just die with it. I need him now more than ever to help pull me out of this hell I'm in because I don't want to push him away because I no longer feel worthy to have him at all.. it's just so much sadness and regret that I didn't kick the asshole out who did this to me and because of that I got sexually assaulted. I am so fucking ashamed.

Of course I met my bf after the assault and didn't know I had the virus until after we had sex so for all I know he already has it..

He's paid for my medication and he's done what he can do and is very patient with me but I don't know what more I can tell him to do to help me.. other than to simply be around me more but he does work quite a lot. :(

At the end of the day acyclovir and valacyclovir just aren't working.. what even could..