Stress and Psoriasis

Why 21st Century Living Encourages The Development Of Psoriasis

It is not hard to see why living today encourages psoriasis. Many of us tend to live stressed and hurried lives, we eat the wrong kinds of foods and too many of them, we eat too quick, we even eat in front of TV or computer. An interesting survey recently mentioned that 1 in 8 people today globally are on Facebook and 1 in 5 people in America eat one meal of the day, either breakfast, lunch or dinner, while checking their Facebook page! This is like sending a text message while you are driving, you can your brain be engaged with eating and digesting a meal when the mind is concentrating on something else! Soda drinks and alcohol as well as copious amounts of coffee and tea are drunk every day by millions.

Many people still live in damp or poor ventilated housing or what we known in New Zealand to be “leaky buildings”. Others routinely take an antibiotic or the oral contraceptive pill, antacids, statin drugs or anti-inflammatory drugs. There are so many reasons why we live in an age today which is just as conducive for the development and maintenance of psoriasis as it was in the 1980’s, and I suspect in the year 2050 that folks will be just as susceptible to psoriasis. According to current studies, as many as 7.5 million Americans—approximately 2.2 percent of the population, have psoriasis.

Plaque psoriasis is often treated by medical doctors with different kinds of pharmaceutical medicines including creams, ointments and drugs but is generally far from successful, in fact, it is only treating the symptoms and many people with plaque psoriasis end up giving up on these kinds of conventional treatments, preferring to look for natural and drug-free ways of treating their skin problems. Other common medical treatments for chronic plaque psoriasis include phototherapy or systemic agents (strong drug treatments), and I’ve found that many psoriasis patients simply aren’t interested in going down this path.

When a person is affected with plaque psoriasis, their skin cells have an accelerated growth with lots of premature (not fully developed) skin cells coming to the surface, forming thick skin plaques.You can read a lot more here about psoriasis.

The itching, cracking of skins and pain may or may not be the cause or symptoms for plaque psoriasis. The plaque psoriasis is detected with their distinctive silver white emergence and the skin that is inflamed under has a reddish tinge. Moreover, the patient will feel a burning sensation when the plaques of affected skin area are touched with clothing.

Plaque psoriasis is also found to have hereditary links. On the other hand, it can also erupt when exposed to sunlight, excessive smoking, excessive alcohol intake and inherent immune conditions. This type of psoriasis can be severe, asymptomatic, mild and acute. The plaque psoriasis may recur again in a week’s time or a month or after a long period. Hence, adequate precaution and treatment is essential to prevent its recurrence.

But there are many ways we can avoid getting into this mess in the first place, and the first and foremost thing that we can do is to look carefully at what we are eating and drinking everyday, and how we are actually living, it’s as simple as that.

After having read the Psoriasis Diet, you will have gained a good understanding of avoiding certain foods and including others in your diet, you will have read and learned all about the importance of raw foods, a pH balanced diet as well as the reasons why you should be including those important fermented and cultured foods in your diet. There are more than 200 pages packed into the Psoriasis Diet book, more than in any other book I’ve seen on this topic. You will find another book I’ve written contains valuable information about psoriasis-inhibiting “special” foods in Psoriasis – Special Foods, Supplements and Herbs.

By implementing these dietary strategies I’ve outlined you are doing everything you can in a diet sense, but believe me, this is not enough! Recognizing stress in yourself is important if you are going to beat psoriasis once and for all.

To fully understand the impact of lifestyle and especially stress on psoriasis, t is especially important that you read the book called Psoriasis and Understanding The Healthy Lifestyle, it is a fundamental part of the Psoriasis Program concept. Health-care professionals are generally great at telling their psoriasis patients what to eat and what to avoid as well as the correct supplements or products to take that will help to reduce their psoriasis, but this is not enough to eradicate it and prevent it from coming back.

Recovery will mean that you need to be focus at least eighty percent of your efforts into positive diet and lifestyle changes, there is little point in eating a nutritious and healthy balanced diet if you eat it in front of your widescreen every night, or you have lunch while checking how many friends “like” your comment of recent photos on Facebook.

I’ve learned years ago to keep away from screens when it comes to eating. I also learned to slow down and relax more and to accept that jobs I accomplish are OK at 75% and don’t need to be 100% perfect. I’d like to explain about how stress can negatively impact on your immune system and the importance of relaxation when it comes to psoriasis recovery, this piece of information may be your tipping point when it comes to not only recovering from psoriasis, but from many other health complaints that may have plagued you all your life.

Stress and Psoriasis Link is a Scientific Fact

There will be some who will read this article and believe that there is little proof of a link between stress and psoriasis, but I can tell you from the research I have done when I wrote the Psoriasis Program, that this is certainly not the case. Just as in many dermatological conditions, psoriasis appears to worsen with stress in a significant segment of patients, there are an incredible amount of studies which report that the proportion of psoriasis patients who respond quite strongly to stress and who notice skin aggravations in relation to stressful event ranges from 37% to an incredible 78%.

Picardi A, Abeni D. Stressful life events and skin diseases: disentangling evidence from myth. Psychother Psychosom 70(3):118–36 (2001 May-Jun).