This is a report on the success that I'm having, treating what I would consider in my life history a somewhat mild form of what some might call crotch rot, or more commonly called jock itch, which is a one of at least a couple potential different types of fungal infections affecting the groin area.
Mainly at the point where, let's just say either one of the legs meets the pelvis from front to back.
So I'm gonna use mild language and keep it as minimal as far as the explicitness of it.
It's not really necessary. Because for the most part of my experience, if you're wearing underwear that are not boxer briefs, then the elastic lining that circles the inside of the inner thigh, that's pretty much, and understandably so, that's pretty much the main area that's affected.
In my experience, though it's not limited to that area. It can expand beyond it, certainly.
And the conditions conducive to it are often cited as moisture and heat, thus creating humidity.
And these are the areas, the armpits, the crotch, the feet, if enclosed in shoes or boots, of course, there's an ambient heat and moisture in the environment, or if that's being created by your activity, hence any form of exertion that's going to create sweating and heat.
Then you're creating a humid climate, a microclimate on your body, where parts of the body are in contact with each other and don't have the ability to air out efficiently.
So if you are not familiar with fungal infections of the groin jock itch mostly affecting males.
It's a gendered term, obviously. So without getting into that nuance, point being, anytime, anywhere, no matter the external environment, can make it better or worse. But it's possible at any time with exertion. And lack of proper hygiene is a factor as well.
But unfortunately, washing can do more harm than good at a certain point, at least in my experience, sometimes you have to go without bathing in order to maintain dryness, to dry out, or to at least inhibit the growth through more longer duration drying periods.
So obviously, starting to having laid out some of the factors, some of the causes of this condition.
Another one that should be mentioned, which is not mentioned enough, is sugar and high carb, simple sugar diets.
So I'm gonna get into that more in a minute. But for me, the things that I watch out for are the degraded hygiene, creating more opportunity for fungal infection in the crotch, with factors including moisture from exertion, sweating and the temperature that's created from the exertion and then the ambient humidity moisture, temperature etc
The theaters of war in tropical environments are known to cause a lot of trench foot, crouch rot, different forms of skin infections.
And as some of the veterans of Vietnam would say, oh, you've got skin issues, welcome to Vietnam. And whatever your proximity is to the knowledge base of Vietnam vets, there's a lot to be learned.
My biggest evolution, having studied those voices, is that it makes me really question how carb and sugar based the MREs may be that they're eating.
Because if you're feeding that infection with simple sugars in the bloodstream from your diet, then you're feeding all kinds of disease vectors at that point.
So to have the ability to continue to consume calories, but not in the form of high carb or high sugar, simple sugar and carbs and whatnot, that's leaning into ketogenic or Paleo dietary choices as a preventative and a treatment.
If you have to do an elimination diet in order to inhibit the growth of a fungal infection, that's something that I've learned to do.
And for the most part, I've had zero issues with this with any type of skin fungal infection over the last several years, where I've been almost a hundred percent paleo, with just a tiny little fraction of my diet being some dried fruit, usually raisins in a small amount per day.
I'll notice, if I eat too much sugar at a time, maybe you have another snack of the raisins.
I'll notice itchiness around my body in different places. It's not a fungal infection, but it is just almost like a warning for me that I've had many times to back off the sugar, whatever it is, because even a ferment that I'm making and it's not quite done completely, then it's gonna have more sugar from that honey in it.
And if I have too much of that at once, I will feel that itchiness.
So I've become very sensitive to excess sugar, and for me, that's a very low threshold, and I'm fine with that.
I'm just glad that there's some warning mechanism, because that's how I know.
If I get an itchy scalp or something like that, I know something in the formula is off.
I need to ferment this longer, or I need to back off eating this food product.
But I've been able to have full exertion, even with minimal hygiene, but enough just to not have major issues.
But point being, I've had great success of inhibiting any type of fungal infection on the skin, simply through diet despite creating humidity and being covered in moisture in high temperatures for long periods of time where exertion isn't even a factor, it's not necessary. Without exertion, this can happen just in the heat.
I'll tell a brief story of when I had to commute in LA traffic every day in a hot part of the year and had no AC in the vehicle.
That commute gave me horrible crotch rot at the time and it was nasty, it was on both sides. It was very painful and very itchy and very uncomfortable. It was unrelenting. And at night, it was even more torturous. I had to treat it with over the counter medicine.
Years What I thankfully discovered turmeric powder.
For myself, for most skin issues, I treat them with either turmeric powder or turmeric water or vinegar mixture, depending on if I'm irrigating a wound very early on, but then later, I'll be just caking it on to any kind of scratch, rash, small cut, scrape, etc.
It’s basically powdered skin and it creates that sealing, that drying, that blocking out of additional pathogens from the skin, effectively, a powdered band aid is what I would call it.
I have been carefully experimenting at times when I've had any kind of rash in the groin area with using turmeric however again I'm gonna, say without being explicit, the most sensitive of skin in that area has got to be as carefully avoided as possible.
So what I have been doing in these last few days, last week or so, where there has been some exertion, I have been experimenting with some non paleo, non strict paleo dietary changes.
I will say that there is a introduction of that potential fungal feeding material.
It is the X factor that brings in the recurrence of the ability for me to have this issue, which was never a chronic issue.
But the main the time I remember it worst was what in the story I just described.
So I have experience with it. What I had to do at that point was get an anti fungal cream, which I did keep in my preps for a number of years.
However, my goal with permaculture design is to become independent and self sufficient, ultimately, to where my medications are things that I can grow, that there's no weird chemicals in them.
They're they're not toxic to the environment, and they're holistic, which I would not assume most fungal creams off the shelf are gonna be any of those things.
So anytime that I can replace one of those preps, one of those measures of medical intervention, sometimes the herbal methods in the home remedies, they not effective, or they're too late.
It's too little too late. In terms of effectiveness, they're usually good at treating things preventative in advance and just creating overall healthier environment that's less prone to to infection.
But treating infection sometimes you have to take antibiotics if you wanna live, or you have to use anti fungal cream if you wanna not rot completely to the bone.
I'm glad to know, and I'm sharing this now, that for the first time, under these conditions of, yes, I feel like that horrible, menacing, tortuous state of affairs of jock itch in the groin, it's such a sinking feeling.
Oh no. The first really gnarly kind of itching. And you say, please let this not spread.
So some, obviously, some dietary changes and the application of very carefully applied turmeric powder, I've evolved with that.
It's working. It's worked. It's keeping it dry. I'm able to bathe as normally as I possibly can, and thus meaning I'm able to clean the area with natural soap then the moisture that's left over from that cleaning is not just making the rot worse, because it never dries. I'm able to towel dry and then apply small amounts of turmeric, very spot treating, very direct, and carefully applied.
And that is maintaining, almost like a cake of powder to keep the area free of moisture and to inhibit the moisture that would be resulting from sweating or from from bathing.
So it's kept dry, it's medicated with anti fungal properties, which I'm not a scientist about, but I'm a believer in, and I'm a living success story because of the anti fungal, anti microbial properties of turmeric in many forms.
So to me, this is another very positive score for the scoreboard of turmeric powder’s ability to treat issues with the skin.
And this is one where I really was hoping for it to succeed.
And over the last few days, again, it's proven out that, yes, after careful inspection, the funkiness, which was minimal, far less severe than it had been before.
And at that time, I didn't mention I had a horrible diet, so I should have expected that, but I didn't know better at the time.
Now, I think the dietary optimization has mitigated the scope of the potential for it to spread or to get worse.
But I don't wanna just be sitting there either, so treating it in this way has been effective.
It's great also because I have a comparison of the other leg. My I'm a white man. The skin is very pale and white on the other side where there's no issues, there's a little bit of redness around the hair follicles, mainly, and just a few of them.
So maybe no more than about one to two square inches of surface area of skin.
But it has friction there. You're walking, you're moving, you're doing things, you feel it, you're agitating it so as much as possible, letting it stay dry, air out and mitigate and minimize activities.
But the other issue is that for people who are active or where this is something where you don't have the freedom or the luxury to call time-out on whatever it is that you're doing in life, and you have to soldier on through this issue.
For me, it's been continually, every opportunity I get, examining the area re applying the powder.
Certainly, if it's a hot day or I'm moving around, I'm gonna check more often.
I'm gonna apply it more often. It can be messy, because turmeric is very prone to stain things.
So if banyone's considering this, because you're searching for this topic, and you find this commentary, then you obviously wanna be aware of this. It's not a permanent stain on the skin.
It will make your skin very bright orange, but it will also stain linens.
So you may wanna act accordingly with towels or paper towels, or whatever.
I haven't seen it stain any any other surface that you could clean off. That wouldn't stain from anything else.
I will just try to take a bit of a note of what could possibly be getting either caked with the powder or if I'm using the container, I gotta be very careful not to spill it anywhere.
So what I've evolved as far as my EDC every day carry first aid. It's really shrunken my first aid kit overhead to where a lot of what I would have used to have, a number of items taking up a lot of space, and some of them even sub optimal to this.
I have just a little, it's called a waterproof match holder that you can put on a key ring or necklace, or however you wanna do it.
I store it in one of my side pockets. You could fit about 50 dimes in it.
I would say it's maybe two or so inches tall and a little bit wider than a dime.
It’s threaded so that you can unscrew, about 2 inches, and then you have maybe a half an inch or so of a top that has a point that you can connect it to and hang it or secure it somehow.
So that is typically sold as a waterproof match holder if you were boating or whatnot, if you were in the rain, you would want your matches to be kept dry.
But you can really put anything in there that fits at that size profile.
So for me, I've got several of them. One of them is ear plugs. Another one is important documentation of certain types. So it was a no brainer for me to use one of the ones I already had and then fill it not all the way up, because I realize, oh, then when you open it, it's gonna spill out, and then I have to tap it if it's been moved around to make sure that whatever powder could be up in the top portion of it is knocked down to the lower portion, so when I unscrew it, nothing really falls out.
It's not foolproof, but it does help a lot to do that, to just sort of flick it when you're opening it, and then I can perfectly dip my pinky in.
I don't have to moisten it or anything. I'll just dip it in.
It'll pick up enough to where whatever just natural moisture is on the skin, or after bathing, if there's moisture there.
I wouldn't want there be a lot of moisture. But even the tiniest bit is a little bit helpful, because it'll stick better when it's applied.
But even if it's bone dry, a lot of it's gonna fall off, but enough of it's gonna stay.
And then I'll notice over time, it'll kind of spread out the coloring so I know it's getting into the skin. It's doing what it needs to do, and it's having a preventative effect beyond the area that's already infected.
I'm very careful to not over apply it so that it doesn't go places that could be very irritating.
unfortunately, that's just a factor with a lot of things that are not irritating in tougher skin areas, or normal skin areas.
They get close to anything sensitive, you're gonna be feeling different sensations that are unpleasant.
Beyond just that uncomfortableness and it does wear off and go away and fade out.
So it's not my favorite thing to have to deal with.
But knowing that I don't have to stop doing anything. I just have to be on extra self care mode, but I can stay active.
I don't have to go to the doctor. I don't need toxic fungal cream, which kind of counteracts the dryness that I would like to maintain.
Not medical advice by any means, but it's just me giving a report on what I'm thrilled about right now.
This is what's on my mind. This is what's on my body.
And I'm thrilled that I'm having this great success with a tiny amount, literally the tiniest amount of a very, very affordable product, which is organic ground turmeric powder, which I eat, which I use for, again, every other issue on my skin.
And I just have to be extra careful where it's near sensitive areas.
But if it's effective the way it is for this, that's another plus that I'm gonna shout out for this natural gift, and I hope you enjoy it.