Psoriasis symptoms include:
- Red and inflamed skin forming silver scales
- Itchy and painful
- In the nail, causes pitting and discolouration
- Nails detach from the nail bed and crumble.
If you suffer from psoriasis it is due to T-Cells, you
r immune system blood cells, accumulating in the skin. This stimulates the skin cells to grow rapidly, resulting in the silvery scales on the affected areas. The area is very itchy but should not be scratched.
The most common sites are elbows, knees, scalp, back, face, palms and feet but can occur anywhere.
Usually, cell turnover, that is the replacement of old cells with new cells in the skin takes a month but psoriasis suffers skin does this in a few days. The cells do not get time to properly mature and arrive on the surface immature and vulnerable.
There is some debate as to the cause of genetics being one of the leading contenders. For me and many others it unlikely to be the cause.
As can be seen from the earlier paragraphs psoriasis is a classic autoimmune disease.
A quick recap of the immune system.
Broken into 2 parts, the inflammatory response and the regulatory response.
- The inflammatory response is initiated by the body, resulting in a build-up of inflammatory T-Cells that in this case accumulate in the skin.
- Regulatory response removes these T-Cells and this is controlled by the bacteria in the gut, such as B.fragilis.
In the case of psoriasis the second response the regulatory response is not happening.
Psoriasis Treatment
Conventional ‘wisdom’ holds that psoriasis cannot be treated but only managed. The management treatment usually consists of steroid creams, vitamin D3 cream, ultraviolet light, and immune system suppressing medications such as methotrexate.
These treatments to me are barbaric. I would recommend treatment for acute relief, Eucerin® creams and lotions containing urea.
Long term curative treatment is the regular use of Noster ProBiotic® daily.