Psoriasis Free For Life

What is Psoriasis and How can we Cure it?


What exactly is psoriasis and how does one get it?

Well, first off let me explain that I personally have psoriasis and despise it greatly! It has destroyed my self-conscious, and is doing a really good job destroying my social life as well.

Psoriasis is a common chronic, relapsing, non-contagious skin disorder characterised by red patchy lesions, with grey or silvery-white, dry scales, which are frequently painful, itchy and may bleed. Lesions are typically distributed symmetrically on the scalp, elbows, knees and essentially any part of the body. It's a condition where skin is replaced more rapidly than normal skin; the skin cycle that generally takes 28 days to complete in normal skin will take around four days to complete with psoriasis. It is often characterized by painful, itchy skin, which in some cases can be chronically debilitating and affect the quality of life, leading to depression, anxiety, and stress. Often, psoriasis is mistaken for other skin diseases, which results with many being treated for something irrelevant, allowing their psoriasis to fully manifest. Awesome isn't it? This so called "skin condition" afflicts over four million people in the United States alone, and scientist believe that certain people may be genetically predisposed to develop psoriasis. Can you BELIEVE that? I can't...

Plaque Psoriasis is the most common form, and effects eighty percent of all psoriasis sufferers. Patches appear most frequently on the knees, elbows, scalp, hands, feet, and lower back. Scalp psoriasis is another common type of this skin condition, and is said to be present in at least half of the people with the disease. Psoriasis of the scalp, for many sufferers, continues to be a horror story, and is one of the most socially embarrassing of conditions, even causing victims to actually lose their hair! That's just terrible, and trust me, I've been a sufferer of psoriasis for at least 3 years now, and it has been nothing short of miserable. To top it off, it can also affect the fingernails, the toenails, and the soft tissues of the genitals and inside the mouth, but wait because it doesn't stop just there! Oh no, plaque or guttate psoriasis is only the beginning, because you're also susceptible to psoriatic arthritis! That's when you're LUCKY enough to have joint stiffness and swelling, as well as extreme pain! Can you sense the sarcasm in that sentence, huh, can you?

We all know that skin care is very important, and since skin is one of those forefront body aspects that say a lot about our internal and external health, psoriasis does a great job at letting everyone know, or at least think that you're some diseased, contagious freak! Skin reactions, including itching, sunburn, and blistering are common, that's right, COMMON for people with psoriasis!

For you to truly understand what this disease is and how it effects people, it is very important that you know the causes or 'triggers' and find out the appropriate drugs that can attempt to cover the symptoms. Treatment begins with the prevention of flare-ups, and doctors treat psoriasis based on the severity of the disease, the size of the areas involved, the type of psoriasis, and the patient's response to any initial treatments. Treatment focuses on the control of symptoms and prevention of secondary infection, as well as using topical lotions, shampoos, and cold tar preparations. To be completely honest, and I'm sure most sufferers will agree, current skin treatment is NOT very satisfactory, because there is no specific remedy or cure. Topical vitamin D analogs for treatment include calcipotriene ( calcipotriol ), calcitriol , and tacalcitol. There's plenty more where that came from, and initially they all work pretty well, but then the disease becomes resistant and the creams fail to do ANYTHING!

The American Academy of Dermatology, the U.S Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all discourage the use of tanning beds and sun lamps, however both UVB and UVA are found in natural sunlight, although the beneficial effect for psoriasis is attributed primarily to UVB. Treatment with ultraviolet light usually involves standing in a "light box" where the whole body receives the ultraviolet light, not just the areas affected by psoriasis. Light therapy patients need to protect uninvolved skin during treatment, usually using washcloths to cover up sensitive areas. Studies have shown that combining ultraviolet light treatment and a retinoid, like acitretin, adds to the effectiveness of UV light for psoriasis. I haven't personally tried it so who knows, but ANYTHING is worth a shot am I right?

Lotions, creams and ointments are applied directly on the skin and are often a first line of therapy, though topical tar preparations, including shampoos, creams, and other preparations are recommended to be used once or twice daily.Topical high-potency corticosteroid solution or ointment works best when covered by cellophane wrap at bedtime, or so I've heard.


Now for the GOOD stuff!



Natural home cures have helped a large number of people to eliminate psoriasis as a problem within their lives, and continues to help MORE and MORE people each day! Natural psoriasis treatment can help your traditional treatment and help you control your psoriasis so you can feel MUCH better about your own skin. Natural treatment using herbs and oils works wonders, and one natural remedy for psoriasis is to use sea salts in your baths. It is a very traditional way of fighting against the infection because we often use salt to clean other types of wounds and infections in the body and skin. A few of the superior herbal remedies for psoriasis are Neem, which is used as a topical cream or taken internally in capsule form, Oregon Grape as a tonic or as a detoxifier and Tea Tree Oil. Other natural home remedies include daily baths to soothe irritation and loosen and soften the scales formed by plaque psoriasis, frequent utilization of heavy moisturizers, topical use of creams produced from aloe vera extract and ingestion of fish oil supplements, which is an excellent source of inflammation-fighting Omega-3 essential fatty acids. If you're like me, and are DYING to know anything and everything about curing your psoriasis, then I urge you to pick up a copy of this natural psoriasis treatment here.



It also comes with a ton of informative books to help keep your skin fresh and clean!

What is Low-Dose Naltrexone and How is it Going to HELP your Psoriasis?

To start this off, let me explain what Low-Dose Naltrexone is ( hereby referred to as LDN ).

Snippet from the LDN website:
"Naltrexone itself was approved by the FDA in 1984 in a 50mg dose for the purpose of helping heroin or opium addicts, by blocking the effect of such drugs. By blocking opioid receptors, naltrexone also blocks the reception of the opioid hormones that our brain and adrenal glands produce: beta-endorphin and metenkephalin. Many body tissues have receptors for these endorphins and enkephalins, including virtually every cell of the body's immune system."


Now that that's taken care of, here's another post about how it's going to help your psoriasis;
The brief blockade of opioid receptors between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. that is caused by taking LDN at bedtime each night is believed to produce a prolonged up-regulation of vital elements of the immune system by causing an increase in endorphin and enkephalin production


Alright, so essentially what this is saying is that when you take LDN at night, it's going to block your opioid receptors, and since between 2 a.m and 4 a.m is when your body is producing endorphins and enkephalin, it will basically 'trick' your body into producing more. This is a good thing because that means you're going to have more 'bodyguards' and 'soldiers' in your immune system to help get it back to a normal, perfect state which will cause your psoriasis to get much better. That's the run-down, but if you really want to get scientific and know a lot more then I suggest going to this website: http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org/

Okay, I'm going to say one more thing and then I'm done with this post; LDN has done wonders for me, but not just it alone. I'm under the assumption that prolonged usage of LDN will only decrease the visibility of my psoriasis, and increase the clarity of my skin, which is what I want! Still, I'm not sure how long it would take using LDN alone, so a month or so ago I decided to introduce this natural psoriasis treatment I found searching around online and ever since then I've had a tremendous amount of relief! Don't believe me, try them both out for yourself! LDN cost around 25-35 dollars I believe, and the natural remedies aren't too expensive either. You'll end up spending a lot less than you probably do or would on any of the DEADLY biologics they're giving everyone these days. I mean, some people find a lot of success with these so kudos to them, but I'm not really achin' to give them a try and have to constantly see a doctor to check out how my body is doing. LDN has virtually no side effects, although you might have a hard time sleeping for a week or two, but THAT'S it!

Hope this was informative and enlightening, and may you find success in all your endeavors,

Derek







Monday, March 28, 2011

Psoriasis Help - Tough News

So I went to my doctors the other day to examine some blood work I had done and to also talk to him about getting prescribed to LDN so I could get pills compounded and sent to me. I've been ordering LDN from India and compounding it myself by dissolving the 50mg pills into the same amount of distilled water. Although I do think this method is somewhat effective, I'm just not satisfied with where I'm at right now. I do however know that it is definitely working, because if I stop taking the LDN for even 3 days the psoriasis starts to get bad all over my body. I think the pills compounded over here would be far more effective, but it's a little tricky getting your doctor to believe you that a drug used for alcohol and opioid addictions can help psoriasis or any auto-immune disease.

He said he'd take a look on the med website he trusts, and if he happens to find any research or anything that suggests that LDN could be beneficial for psoriasis then he'd gladly prescribe it, but for now I got nothing. For some reason I just think that he won't really find anything on the websites he's looking at and so I'm really about to abandon the LDN and go back to my dermatologist and force him to prescribe me on the best biologic. It's to hard to order from overseas and have to wait, plus I'm not even sure how legit the LDN I'm getting from over there is, and so I'm ready to take any risk involved with biologics with hopes of getting all this disgusting crap off my skin. My doctor did however give me some more depression meds, but I'm not sure they will really do anything so long as I'm still afflicted with psoriasis.

Anyways this was just a quick update, so thanks for reading and if anything changes with the LDN or I do end up getting on some biologics then I'll be sure to keep everyone updated.

Sincerely,
Derek

2 comments:

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