Lichen Planus - getting to the root?

[jenP]

So my Dad was recently diagnosed with Lichen Planus. Apparently it is of autoimmune origin. His mouth is red, inflamed, and incredibly painful and has been for about two months now. I just figured he had thrush, and he tried treatment for that which helped somewhat but not nearly enough. (Likely he had thrush in addition to the lichen planus and the GSE cleared up the thrush but he still has the main problem.)
It seems that for this strange disorder, the best that conventional medicine can come up with is lidocaine rinse for pain relief so he can eat, and steroid pills to dampen down the immune system attacking his own body.
But, though the steroids may stop or lessen the inflammation, it isn't really treating the cause. It seems the cause is unknown! But there must be some kind of imbalance or allergy or something that makes this happen!

Has anyone or anyone you know been down this road and had any luck figuring out how to treat or correct whatever imbalance could be causing this problem? Homeopathy, herbs, diet changes, changing medications? (Dad is on statin drugs and high blood pressure meds, could those trigger something??)

Thanks so much for any insight!!!!

Jen

[Panserbjorne]

My mother has it and she has done excellently with herbs, homeopathy and diet changes. She used to have to take steroids daily and only stopped because even the doctors agreed that they were exacerbating the issue (by degrading tissue.) She couldn't be happier that she stopped and is currently feeling better in every way. We started off with acute treatments which helped quite a bit. We then introduced herbs and then moved on to constitutional treatments and diet changes. She wasn't able to make any massive changes to her diet before she balanced a bit-or that would have been my first step.