Psoriasis Diet – Can It Help?

If you listen to the medical profession, it would seem at first that there is no specific psoriasis diet that can help eliminate or reduce psoriasis symptoms. But there is a growing belief that skin disorders like psoriasis are either due to or aggravated by eating the wrong things, and some people are beginning to believe that there is a strong link between psoriasis and diet.

Does A Psoriasis Diet Actually Exist?

Currently here is no “medically proven” link between psoriasis and diet, but all that illustrates is that there have been insufficient studies to identify any link – rather than the link not existing. Psoriasis is a problem that can affect people on every kind of diet from the simplest to the most exotic. However, following a particular type of psoriasis diet, by excluding certain foods, and including lots of very specific immune boosting foods does seem to actually help – and there’s lot’s more information about creating your own diet for psoriasis in the Psoriasis Free For Life report.

psoriasis diet

A few years ago there used to be a special psoriasis diet low in an amino acid known as trytophan which was sometimes recommended to psoriasis sufferers. But many scientific tests were done and they failed to prove that this particular diet helped with psoriasis in any way.

As low trytophan diets are hard to devise in any case (for example, very few meats are low in trytophan other than turkey), it would be difficult as well as probably pointless to try to follow one. Katy (author of Psoriasis Free For Life) has found that there are certain foods you can (and should) include as part of a psoriasis diet that can and do help eliminate the condition. So it’s not really a case of restriction on apsoriasis diet, but making sure you eat those foods that can combat the condition.

Weight Loss and A Psoriasis Diet Both Help

One possible course that can sometimes improve psoriasis is to lose weight – and a side effect of a healthy psoriasis diet could be some weight loss. Some sufferers who, for one reason or another, lost weight very rapidly, also found that their psoriasis cleared up. This may simply have been coincidence, but if you are in anyway overweight it could be worth a try, as excess weight is unhealthy from any point of view. If you have flexural psoriasis it makes particular sense to try to stay fairly close to the normal weight for your height as any unnecessary folds of skin will be extra places for the psoriasis to strike.

What Outside Factors Can Make Psoriasis Worse?

Many things can make psoriasis flare up. A sudden shock or emotional upset can affect it, and there are also some kinds of infection that seem to make it worse. For example, if you get tonsillitis this can temporarily worsen your psoriasis, or can even appear to be what triggers it off. (This is particularly true of guttate psoriasis)

If you suffer a cut or injury to your skin this can also have a bad effect, and sometimes make a patch of psoriasis spring up in a place where it hadn’t previously appeared. Manual workers and other people whose hands come in for rough treatment sometimes find they get outbreaks of psoriasis on their hands as a result. Irritating your skin by scratching it can also bring out psoriasis, or make the patches sore, so this is something you should try to avoid doing.

Some people notice that their skin clears in the summer and then the patches break out again in the winter. Again, this could have implications on benefits of a psoriasis diet, as we tend to eat healthier during the warmer months. Other people do not notice any changes from one season to another, and some even get worse when their skin is exposed to the sun.

One other question people ask is whether having pets around the house can make the condition worse. Animals are not believed to have any effect on the disease – and they cannot get psoriasis either.

Having looked at the general factors that can influence psoriasis in one way or another, you may be interested to know something about what is thought to cause the disease at a more fundamental level. Other articles on the site will describe, as briefly and simply as possible, some of the ideas that have been put forward by scientific researchers to explain the way psoriasis behaves and the reasons why certain people develop it. We’ll also take a look at various psoriasis treatment and home remedies.

Recommended Reading:

Psoriasis Free For Life – for more information about what foods to include in a psoriasis diet.