I want to talk about steroid drugs they're a  double-edged sword and i'm talking about the cortical steroids i'm not talking about androgens  or testosterone, now this drug is used mainly for anything connected with inflammation like  rheumatoid type conditions rheumatoid arthritis, lupus vasculitis that's inflammation of your  vascular system asthma hay fever allergies hives psoriasis copd that's a chronic lung  problem ibd that's irritable bowel disease,  ms and all the other autoimmune conditions.

Here's the problem when i was in my 20s I think it was like 25 I got poison ivy and it got really bad, I took steroids every year after that probably for  15 years i had to get a series of steroid injections to handle this darn poison ivy, that I would keep getting every single year in the  fall but, as the years progressed it worked less  and less to the point where it didn't work anymore,  so if i get poison ivy which i keep getting every  year I can't take another steroid injection I just  have to cope with it live with it and wait for  this poison ivy to go away. So my allergy to  poison ivy has gotten pretty bad where if I touch my eye it just swells up.

When I have this poison ivy reaction i'm trying  to cover up this severe poison ivy reaction that  actually went into my eye so it's pretty pretty major allergy but the steroids that i took  really messed me up with my sleep cycles and my  immune system but the two big effects that this  steroid cortisol has on our body are number one  suppression of the entire immune system. Now that's  your army to fight all pathogens so it's very very  dangerous to suppress your entire immune system, the second effect is to suppress inflammation  another dangerous thing especially in the healing process.

So steroids suppress the t cells that  help fight infection especially viruses that invade your cells so then the t cells are supposed  to kill off and now they can't kill them off, so we have this runaway viral infection they suppress  the macrophages that actually go around and eat  viruses and and yeast and parasites and bacteria  like pac-man cortisol also suppresses the other  white blood cells like the neutrophils the basal  cells, the eosinophils that have a lot to do with other functions of the immune system when  you've taken steroids for any period of time it increases your risk for having a cold turn into  a severe pneumonia infection also steroids can greatly increase the risk of getting tb now 25  of the population has a latent tb infection which means it's in their body it's in an inactive  form well going on steroids can bring that out into an active form of tb and considering that  25 of the population has it that's a lot of people so steroids are a double-edged sword and  should only be taken short-term not long-term and very infrequent because if you're taking them  chronically.

When you start to come off steroids your adrenals basically have shut down and now  your body can't produce it so you have all sorts of withdrawal symptoms like osteoporosis ulcers  in the stomach and also in the small intestine severe infection diabetes weight gain like jerry  lewis who had a certain autoimmune condition which in which he had to take steroids and he just kind  of blew up his whole face was like round cataracts skin problems and the list goes on and on and so  if you want an alternative to steroids there are  a couple things that you can take one human which  is a potent anti-inflammatory if you're going to  take curcumin make sure you're taking at least  200 milligrams per day next one is boswellia.