I will share what has worked for me. I have had a severe case of what I believe is HS for the past 10 years. I was never diagnosed as I was too embarrassed to go to the doc, but afyer trying every snake oil remedy on the internet I decided to take matters into my own hands.
Over the past 3-4 years my thighs were so bad I would only wear black pants, as I would always have a boil actively draining. I live on the beach and was never even able to go because what if my shorts decided to ride up my thighs and people saw, even lost my boyfriend of 5 years bc I would refuse to have sex. I was tired of being in prison for something I had no control over. So I understand your frustrations. I felt compelled to come on here today to tell my story, and hopefully it can help someone else.
Since starting my current routine I've not had one single boil pop up in almost 6 months. With that said it took many weeks to get everything under control, and I still have really bad scarring but the pain is gone, and I bought my first pair of jeans recently!
So the first thing I did was throw away all body poufs, loofahs and started only using washrags, got rid of all scented soaps, and replaced my shower head with a high powered detachable one.
I bought hibiclens, and some alpha hydroxy face cream with 7.8% AHA (alpha hydroxy acid) it was $4 at Walgreens and lasts forever.
I started taking my washrags and towels to the laundromat and drying them in the very high heat dryers there to kill of all bacteria.
I started applying hibiclens in the shower and gently scrubbing each thigh for 3 mins each, and then let it sit in my thighs for 5 minutes before rinsing off with my shower head on the highest setting with warm water then rinsed with cold water for 1 minute. I did this morning and night without fail.
I feel like one of the things that I was doing in the past was scrubbing my thighs too hard, and making matters worse. So AHA was something that acts as a gentle exfoliator I make sure that I put it on immediately after the shower and within a week you could tell a difference in the texture of my skin.
Ive tried it all before, and I even tried hibiclens and all of the other anti bacterial soaps with no success but what I think does the trick is leaving it on your skin and giving it time to sink in and do its job, and also being consistent.