Dietary supplements for Psoriasis : Real life experience

Are you curious about the worth of dietary supplements for Psoriasis?

In that case, this real life experience can be of some use for you.

You know…I never stop looking for more and more information about Psoriasis healing and Google helps me a lot in this quest of mine. Whenever I find something interesting, I share it here so that we can discuss and milk something fruitful from that. Gradually, this blog has become an integral part of my life. I have always advocated the concept of self healing because psoriasis is so specific and stubborn in nature that just gulping pills or applying creams (prescribed by even the best doctor in your town) is not going to help you longer if you don’t take the responsibility of overcoming it yourself. That’s why it says- Psoriasis Self Management– Self to be achieved through self efforts.

Today, I am going to share the personal experience of a psoriatic woman- how her psoriasis got disappeared using essential omega 3 fats and vitamin D supplements. Psoriasis is quite specific in nature. Hence, we shouldn’t blindly follow anyone’s experience or recommendation. It is very common in psoriasis that something working amazingly well for me may not work at all for you. Hence, we would discuss how worthy is her experience and would make a safe strategy out of it to try for.

Tara shared her psoriasis healing experience on a discussion forum. Her psoriasis healing experience goes like this:

• At the time of writing, she was 30 years old and was dealing with Crohn’s disease from more than last 10 years. Crohn’s disease is an autoimmune disorder related to inflammatory bowel condition. Inflamed lining of the digestive tract results in issues such as abdominal pain, diarrhea, fatigue, malnutrition and weight loss. It is interesting to note that psoriasis is also an autoimmune disorder and leaky gut syndrome (hyper-permeability of gut linings resulting in the seepage of undigested food, harmful bacteria and other unwanted stuffs into the bloodstream) is deeply related to psoriasis.
• She was on Humira to treat her Crohn’s disease. Humira is a pharma drug which is prescribed to treat various autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and others. It is supposed to lower the impact of various inflammation causing substances in the body. Use of hardcore pharma drugs such as humira has potential side effects. But, we are not going to discuss them here.
• After starting humira, she got psoriasis. It was a case of drug induced psoriasis. It is quite unfortunate that humira, the medicine that a lot of people take to manage psoriasis, became the culprit in her case to develop psoriasis. She hasn’t mentioned that how worthy humira proved to treat the Crohn’s disease.
• Her affected body parts were scalp, face, inside the ears and back. Dermatologists recommended medicines didn’t help her. When she stopped humira after one year, she was hopeful that psoriasis symptoms would get relieved, but it didn’t happen.
• Omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D- these two dietary nutrients are proven helpful to curb body inflammation. She started taking omega 3 and vitamin D dietary supplements to relieve both of her inflammatory conditions. Crohn’s disease didn’t show much improvement, but, psoriasis was completely gone.
• She used to take 5 grams of Omega 3 along with 1000 IU of vitamin D every day. She got results after regular consumption for one month. She didn’t mention the total amount of EPA and DHA that she was getting in her total omega 3 fat consumption per day.

What about Omega 3 fats and Vitamin D

Omega 3 fatty acids are essential fatty acids that your body can’t synthesize by its own and needs to depend on external dietary sources to make up for the minimum daily requirements. These fats have proven anti-inflammatory properties and doctors recommend them widely to manage psoriasis symptoms.

There are three types of Omega 3 fats:

• ALA (lesser health benefits and found mainly in vegetables, vegetable oils, seeds and nuts)
• EPA
• DHA

EPA and DHA are long chained complex omega 3 fats having the potent anti-inflammatory properties. Various varieties of Fish are the main source of EPA and DHA. Cold water fishes, particularly the cold water ones like cod, salmon and sardine are among the best ones. If your diet is low on fish, then you need to rely on dietary supplements. The American Academy of Dermatology acknowledges fish oil as the most promising dietary supplement of Omega 3 fats. We have already discussed in length and breadth about the benefits and dosage of omega 3 fats for psoriasis in one of our previous posts. I would request you to please go through that article again to get more insight about the healing effects of these healthy fats for psoriasis.

The World Health Organization recommends 300-500 mg of combined EPA and DHA for healthy people. To treat a health condition like psoriasis, obviously we need more quantity. I have advocated anything around 700-1000 mg of combined EPA and DHA during the initial 2 months time frame to get significant results. In her healing story, Tara has mentioned taking 5 grams of omega 3 fats. Here, it is worth mentioning that omega 3 dosage is always monitored by the amount of EPA and DHA and not by the total quantity of fish oil.

Most of the commercially available fish oil supplements provide 180 mg of EPA and 120 mg of DHA (combined dosage of 300 mg) per 1 gram quantity. Ultra pure/ highly concentrated ones can provide up to 750 mg (500 mg EPA and 250 mg DHA).

Hence, 5 grams of fish oil would give around 1500 grams of EPA and DHA together. Do remember that the combined dosage of EPA and DHA beyond 3000 mg is not recommended because it can cause bleeding and low blood pressure issues. People with heart disorders need to be extra cautious here.

Vitamin D is also a vital dietary supplement for people dealing with autoimmune disorders including psoriasis. Autoimmune disorders are linked to compromised digestive tract and hence fat malabsorption. It makes more difficult for your body to absorb vitamin D because it is a fat soluble vitamin.

Vitamin D deficiency is very common among psoriatic people. Let me tell you one thing from my own experience of managing this blog and related Social media platforms. I have never met a single psoriatic person who got tested for vitamin D and declared normal. Every one was deficient. If you get tested and receive normal reports, do tell me because I would be so happy to know that.

Sunlight provides more than 80-85% of the total vitamin D. Due to modern lifestyle, we get less exposure to sunlight. Also, psoriatic people tend to hide their psoriasis lesions with clothes, hence, they have lesser exposed body parts to Sun even when they go outside. Use of dietary supplements is pretty common to make up for vitamin D deficiency. To avoid vitamin D deficiency among healthy people, recommended dosage is 1000 IU (International units). In case of severe deficiency, as high as 5000 IU per day is also prescribed. The standard procedure is to get tested vitamin D levels in your blood and then decide dosage accordingly. For healthy people, vitamin D levels in the blood would be around 50-70 nano grams per ml.

Tara took 1000I IU of vitamin D daily and it seems pretty normal.

Take Home Message

Tara consumed 5 grams of Omega 3 and 1000 IU of vitamin D for a month. She got amazing results. These two nutrients are proven beneficial to treat various autoimmune disorders. Hence, there is no harm if we try out our luck also. Vitamin D- 1000 IU per day is cool. As far as omega 3 is concerned, she hasn’t mentioned if she is talking about 5 grams of fish oil or 5 grams of combined EPA and DHA. 5 grams of fish oil would provide 1500 grams of EPA and DHA together which is acceptable because the safety limit is 3000 grams per day. But, if she took 5000 grams of EPA and DHA per day, then we need to hold on. It seems too aggressive. In my opinion, we should not go beyond 1000-1500 grams of EPA and DHA per day. This dosage is pretty good and it would give results in two or three months if not in one month as in case of Tara. The advantage of taking this much dosage is that we would always be on the safer side even if this idea doesn’t prove as good as it proved for Tara.

Before wrapping up, all of us are grateful to Tara for sharing her experience about the benefits of dietary supplements for psoriasis and wish her all the luck for all her future endeavors.

You can check her original message here.