Psoriasis is a commonly occurring skin condition that affects 2% of the population. Two percent means “two people in a hundred”, so that means in the whole world there are roughly one hundred million sufferers. So what’s up with all these people’s skin? Why don’t their bodies make perfect skin?
The answer lies in faults in their immune system.
In a third of the sufferers there can be a heredity factor and in 40% of sufferers it can be indced by stress.
Our immune system controls the way we fight off infection, illness, cancer, even stress, etc. And if it goes faulty, a whole set of problems can arise.
You ask, “what creams do you recommend?” I am sure you will have seen your G.P. and possibly a Consultant Dermatologist (skin specialist) and, have been offered and used various creams and ointments on prescription. And, depending on the severity of your psoriasis you will have experienced varying degrees of success, and you may have also been given oral treatment as well, for the more severe forms of the condition.
Many of the prescription creams/ointments, with or without oral treatment, often give very good results, but there is definitely a large number of people who don’t get as good a result as they would have hoped for, and this is where complimentary medicine can help to maintain healthy skin.
In discussing the underlying immune system fault, we find that one of the main factors that keeps cropping up concerns a particular substance, (that we all make a part of our inflammatory process), called interleukin-6.
This substance is made in our bones by our stem cells and is involved in the purposely-initiated production of Inflammation. Why would we intentionally cause inflammation to be produced? The reason is that if we have, for example, a splinter of wood in our skin then our immune system automatically activates stem cells to produce the right cells to loosen the splinter by making the cells around the wound become inflamed, subsequently breaking down, allowing the splinter of wood to be pushed to the surface of the skin and fall out. The inflammatory process would then be called off, the skin would then heal, settle down and the wound area could become practically scarless.
But an overproduction of interleukin-6 cells, as it happens in people with psoriasis, will cause these faulty cells to “think”, after only four days of development, that they are “ready” to take their place in the skin. Fully developed cells normally take twenty-eight days to reach ideal state.
So, these faulty “I’m ready in four days” cells, leads to the typical production of faulty skin, causing inflammation, reddening and plaque.
Inflammation, when produced around a splinter, is completely normal and will cause the splinter to be pushed out of the body, but with psoriasis the fault of producing inflammation is ongoing and serves no useful purpose in the long term.
So what are the complimentary products that may help? There are several and they can be tried, each on their own, or can all be used at the same time, and along with the doctor’s products. In fact any creams/ointments that are being used and which have been prescribed by your doctor should still be used as normal and any curtailment of their use should only be undertaken when a significant improvement has been brought about and only by working with your doctor’s involvement.
Moducare, vitamins, minerals, race elements and co-enzyme Q10
In 1958, over fifty years ago, a patient in Pretoria, South Africa, was sent home from hospital, his family having been told that he was suffering from advanced prostate cancer and there was no treatment that could help him and he was given a week to live. A family friend, on hearing his situation, went out to the veldt and brought back a herbal extract, gave it to him. The patient rallied in a week, and went on to live a further 10 years, dying at the age of 86, and dying from a problem completely unrelated to cancer.
Thirty two years later, in 1990 Professor Patrick Bouic, Professor of Immunology at Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, researched this story and found that the product used was capable of modulating the immune system, enabling it to do its many functions efficiently.
This prompted him to follow this line of research into other natural products and their immune modulating (balancing) effects. He came across the sap of a particular species of Maritime Pine tree (Pinus maritima or Pinus pinaster).
When he removed the water from the sap of this tree and put the dried powder ( that had been left as a residue) into capsules, and gave them to people with auto- immune disorders, he found that it helped them maintain a healthy immune system. He found that seasonal hay fever often disappeared, long-standing urticarial rashes resolved, asthmatics were helped. And in all cases it was helping to re-balance the levels of the white blood cells called T Cells (which are made in our bone marrow and thymus gland), specifically the ones called TH2, levels of which are found in too high a concentration in the psoriatic plaque.
In his book, The Immune System Cure, Optimise Your Immune System In Thirty Days
he explains that Moducare had enabled some patients with psoriasis to go into total remission.
Professor Bouic, in an other chapter of the same book, writes as to what supplements patients should take and he lists vitamins A, C, E, D, the B vitamins (which are known to help the nerves, skin and digestion) and the minerals zinc, magnesium and selenium as all are being particularly beneficial for supporting the immune system and in particular skin problems.
Finally, he mentions the product co-enzyme Q10, to be taken as a supplement, which is involved in our energy production, including the energy to heal. Patients, on reaching the age of 40 years of age, should know that their Q10 levels have dropped down back to the production levels of a two year old, and by taking a 100mg capsule a day levels can be raised back to that of a twenty-one year old person. (See my blog on: “Co enzyme Q10 The Elixir of Life”.)
Other auto- immune diseases include :
Rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, crone’s disease, ulcerative colitis, systemic lupus erythematosus, these are just a few of about 140 known auto-immune diseases.
Omega 3 fish oil capsules and the Inuit paradox
It’s quite a simple observation that the Inuit people of Greenland don’t get psoriasis.
About 2% of them, like the rest of the world, have the gene for this disease, but they don’t get it. They don’t even have a word in their language for psoriasis! But if they come and live in the west and eat our food then those people can develop it. The difference is they live in Greenland on oily fish and this gives them enough of the polyunsaturated fatty acids, known as EPA and DHA, to enable them to build healthy cell membranes in their skin, and help stop the fault in their immune system from “kicking in”, and therefore allowing them to maintain healthy skin.
A dose of 4000mg (four capsules each of 1000mg) a day of omega 3 fish oil will often be seen to give a good benefit. Some people use even higher doses. A trial was reported in the Lancet where twenty eight psoriasis patients received ten fish oil capsules or ten placebo capsules (olive oil) daily. After 8 weeks treatment there was a significant lessening of itching, erythema, and scaling in the active group, with a trend to an overall decrease in body surface area affected. No change occurred in the placebo group.
Calcium Pantothenate (also known as vitamin B, number 5)
This vitamin is also known as the “anti stress vitamin” as it is involved in the production of fifty two of our own natural hormones in our adrenal glands. Example of this include cortisol in the outer part (the cortex) of the gland and adrenaline in the inner (medulla) part of the gland.
Optimum levels of cortisol helps control inflammation, and hence high levels of B5 have been used to help benefit such diverse conditions as asthma, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, eczema, hay fever. And truly wonderful results are obtained when given in a high dose to young people with acne (which plague so many people as they pass through their formative years) and I have my own records of 40 people, as young as eleven and as old as thirty six, who have had a wonderful response in as little time as one to four weeks and some (and I have documented with before and after photographs) see the result as quickly as two to three days.
The Common Milk Thistle (containing Silymarin)
This herb is world famous in helping the optimum function of our liver and taking this herb can support the liver function in it’s job of detoxifying toxins which may form in those suffering from psoriasis (these toxic amino acids are called polyamines). It will also help the psoriatic patient to cope better if they enjoy alcoholic drinks, which they should keep to a minimum.
Gluten
Gluten, found in grain, can aggravate psoriasis. Cutting this out could show a marked improvement. It is found in wheat and other grains, and in pasta, thickeners, bread, breaded fish, etc. A better idea would be to do a home celiac test which is available from dennisthechemst.com. You can have a sure diagnosis in under 5 minutes.
The Vitamin D connection
There is a definite relationship between vitamin D and psoriasis. It was discovered that vitamin D cream helped to control symptoms, and as a result a vitamin analogue cream called Calciptriol was developed. The cream had to be an analogue of vitamin D that did not elevate blood calcium. The cream could have adverse affects if used too much. We also know that UV light therapy and being around the Dead Sea helps reduce psoriasis. The UV light helps make vitamin D by splitting dihydrocholesterol into vitamin D where it can then be further bio-transformed into its active metabolites. I also said that Moducare the plant sterol supplement helps psoriasis by modulating the immune system. Interesting experimental research has shown that plant sterols found in Moducare have vitamin-like activity and agonise the vitamin D receptor (VDR). There has even been a vitamin D 5 proposed to be made by cracking open the sito-sterol ring structure through vigorous refluxing under pressure of sito-sterol.