How I Cured My Psoriasis By Diet

[alan540]

Hi Caroline. I'm not a believer of the genetic cause of this, after all I only developed this 12 months ago. Up until then I could eat whatever I wanted - in fact I'd go as far to say that I considered myself to have a cast iron gut. Now I'm having to be mindful of what I eat. So for me the link is the gut. In my case I do recall having serious food poisoning when abroad in Italy 6 months prior to this starting. I was very ill for 3 days whilst trying to work at the same time. I think it quite possible that I did some damage to my insides and the psoriasis is a direct result of that. Theories, theories! I'm aware that I might be completely wrong, but I can't think of anything else that may have caused the problem. So far, proceeding on this basis is giving me good results. I don't know anything for certain (that much I'm certain of!) but having had no joy with the medical treatment I received, all that was left for me was to manage my own problem.

I'm pleased with the progress made so far and in that sense the underlying cause is irrelevant, however, the gut connection ticks the most boxes with my own symptoms and experiences of trying to control the disease. Also, gut dysbiosis is notoriously difficult to get back into balance and in that sense it is a chronic condition, much like psoriasis is. Again, theories, theories.

I've read a lot of psoriasis forum posts and a common thread is trigger foods as I mentioned in my initial post. My feeling was, that if many people are posting similar experiences then it's worth investigating. Thankfully it's worked/working for me. The gut link then makes sense only in as much that I never had any food intolerances before. It's a working theory and I've been in contact with some research scientists directly who have been very helpful and provided information to fill in different parts of the jigsaw I seem to have created for myself.

As for fungus, candida exists in the human gut naturally. It is dimorphic, the normal form being yeast like and is harmless when kept in control by the normal gut fauna. If, for some reason, candida grows out of control it changes into a fungal form which is invasive and can cause leaky gut syndrome. Medicine now recognises leak gut syndrome to the extent that researchers mention hyperpermeability of the small intestine and or villous atrophy. In the fungal form candida expresses a protein which mimics gluten. This may explain why gluten is a major aggravating factor for many psoriasis sufferers. Also, other macronutrients may cause problems if they too are permeable through a compromied gut e.g. dairy products. Candida in the fungal form obtains nutrients from the blood supply, so is very resilient and eating sugars or starchy foods just spikes blood sugar feeding it and also feeding the yeast like form still existing in the gut which is a reservoir waiting to morph into the fungal form. In this way it's a hard thing to shift and certainly explains why psoriasis is resilient to treatment.

Jim's link to the historic pictures of psoriasis is interesting. If psoriasis is a gut problem there is no reason to think that it is a modern disease and anyone at any time in history may have suffered from it. It is possible that it is more common as we increasingly live in a sterile environment. A dysbiosis is more likely to occur if we have no way of topping up our good fauna through our normal diet. So, in my mind, historic evidence of psoriasis in no way contradicts my pet theory. In fact, it would be interesting to know how common psoriasis is now compared to when we had a pre-industrial farming/distribution system. I suspect it has gotten more common as we have sanitized our food supply chain, but that's pure guesswork.