When dealing with a chronic autoimmune skin condition like psoriasis, you can’t rely solely on the doctor’s diagnosis and treatment. An experienced skin care expert who is not too much money minded and genuinely wants to help you can be really very helpful, no doubt about it.
But to assume that you can win over psoriasis by just taking the medicines prescribed by your doctor is incorrect. You can’t put the whole responsibility of psoriasis healing on doctor and just get away by gulping those pills and paying for the treatment.
If you have been dealing with psoriasis for a couple of years now, I am sure you would agree to it.
Why doctor’s treatment alone is not enough?
As we all know, psoriasis does not have a once-for-ever cure. It means, you can treat (manage) it, but just can’t make it disappear forever.
So, when you visit a doctor, s/he would prescribe medicines that you need to take for a couple of months (or even longer) till your symptoms subside significantly. Thereafter, if the symptoms return, you visit the doctor again and same cycle keeps on repeating.
So what? You can ask that what’s the big deal about it.
It’s not a bad idea to treat those episodes of psoriasis flare up with the medicines and continue living the life as you are.
Well, it’s not simple. Let me explain.
In my personal experience, our body develops a sort of resistance to the medicines with the course of time. When you take a medicine for the first time, it gives quite good results for some time, but gradually it’s effectiveness reduces and either you need to increase the dosage for same healing effect or even you have to switch over to a new medicine as the current medicine becomes almost ineffective.
For instance, methotrexate is a commonly prescribed oral drug by dermatologists for psoriasis treatment. It’s an immunosuppressant drug that suppresses the hyper-active and the faulty immune system to slow down the growth of skin cells to reduce scaling.
In the beginning, the dosage around 10 -15 mg per week shows good results. But, gradually, it would lose the effectiveness and the doctor may increase the dosage. Then, a time comes when it becomes potentially dangerous to increase the dosage further, owing to various side effects and you switch over to a more potent immunosuppressant. This drug will also behave the same way and then the doctor may put you on some injectables instead of oral drugs for immediate results.
Ultimately, a time would come when you would exhaust all the options with that dermatologist and either you would change your dermatologist or may try alternative medicines (such as Ayurveda) instead of conventional (mainstream) medicines.
The story goes on and you continue to spend plenty of money and time exploring various options with varying success. Well, it’s not just about money or time, but, these strong immunosuppressants got some serious side effects when consumed in the long term. You just can’t close your eyes to these potential threats when your inner body system is already messed up as your own immune system is attacking you.
Methotrexate is packed with potential side effects
The continuous consumption of methotrexate has a negative effect on the liver and kidney health, particularly the liver. So, a good dermatologist will always ask for blood and related pathology tests to monitor the condition of your liver and adjust the dosage accordingly to minimize the damage.
Psoriasis is often linked to an impaired liver and methotrexate will further weaken it. So, I would not be comfortable with methotrexate as a long term strategy to manage psoriasis.
Also, methotrexate is an anti-cancer drug, used in the treatment of various types of cancer. Again, it does not sound good to me that I would be regularly taking a drug which is given for the treatment of a dangerous disease as cancer? It would be foolish on my part to believe that it would not cause some serious side effects when taken regularly.
Apart from liver damage, some of the most concerning side effects of prolonged use of methotrexate are- loss of appetite, black stools and urine, tiredness, mouth sores, hair fall, fertility issues and swelling inside the mouth. (1)
What about the conventional topical treatments (creams, gels, ointments, shampoos)
If not the oral drugs, why can’t we treat the symptoms forever with various external application remedies.
Definitely these skin care products are helpful to reduce the scaling, inflammation and itching when you are going through a flare up. But, to take these chemical laden medicated skin care solutions as a permanent treatment and not doing anything to fix the internal body matters, is a bad idea.
Long term use of these topical treatments can make your skin dry and dull.
Have you ever experienced that after using coal tar and salicylic acid based shampoo, your hairs got brittle, super dry and lifeless? It’s because these chemicals tend to peel off the psoriasis lesions without caring much about the natural intrinsic moisture of your skin. So, you do get a psoriasis-free scalp for the day, but, in return, you lose the natural moisture and shine of your scalp and hairs.
Skin thinning is another side effect associated with continuous use of steroids based skin care products. It can make the skin prone to bruising, cuts and injuries which itself is a trigger for psoriasis. Also, due to thinning, the skin may become sensitive to sun and external heat.
Have you ever noticed the blood vessels become more visible in those skin areas where you keep on applying these creams for a very long time.
What about the alternative medications (such as Ayurveda, Homeopathy and others)
Personally, I have been taking help from Ayurveda for a couple of years now. Whenever I feel that things are going out of my control and none of my healing strategies working, I do take help from Ayurveda to calm down the immune system.
Ayurveda is among the oldest holistic healing system, that involves natural plant herbs based medicines. In general, it is quite safe to use Ayurveda under the guidance of an expert.
But, here again, if you take the Ayurveda medicines as a permanent cure and just keep using them without doing anything to re-establish the natural body-mind-spirit balance, you would get disappointed eventually.
Ayurveda is also not immune to side effects if abused
Yes, you read it right. Ayurveda is quite a safe approach, but you can’t take it for granted if used in excess.
Let me share own experience here.
I have been a victim of chronic constipation from my teenage. During the early years, it was an on-and-off problem which became more severe with age. If not the only reason, I do blame chronic constipation as one of the reasons for psoriasis breakout in my case.
When diet and lifestyle changes didn’t give a permanent, stable relief with regular bowel movements, I tried Triphala powder. It is the most widely recommended Ayurveda medicine used to treat constipation.
It’s an herbal formulation made from the combination of three naturally occurring fruits. In the beginning, a teaspoon of this medicine at night with warm water would ensure smooth bowel movements the next morning and I would be delighted with the results.
I sort of become addicted to it as an easy way out. When continued taking it everyday for a couple of weeks, the effects started to dilute. Now, I would need 2 to 3 teaspoons of triphala powder for the same effect. And, then a time came when I would need even more than 4 teaspoons at a time and it became practically impossible to carry on any further.
So, where did I went wrong?
I simply abused a wonderful herbal remedy to the extent that it became counterproductive.
Constipation is a symptom and signal that your digestive health is compromised.
Instead of working on the root cause of poor digestive health, I overused triphala to just take care of the symptoms.
Triphala is a wonderful digestive tonic, but, excessive use of triphala to forcefully flush out the colon would actually weaken your gut health and it would lose its the natural ability to process the food and eliminate the wastes.
The same happened with me.
After giving up on triphala, my digestive health became even more sluggish and constipation worsened. I tried few more powerful laxatives for a brief and then, finally, things started to improve when I work on better bile production and maintaining a healthy gut flora. Now, my constipation is largely under control apart from some occasional hiccups.
So, it’s a classic example of the side effects of the Ayurveda formulations.
Bile is a liquid produced and released by the liver and helps with fat digestion, absorption of fat soluble vitamins and most importantly, aids in the elimination of body wastes via bowel movements.
Healthy gut flora refers to maintaining a good population of beneficial microbes (probiotics) in the digestive tract.
The bottom line
A knowledgeable and caring doctor is a wonderful companion on this long journey of psoriasis healing. But, you just can’t rely on the medicines forever. For me, whenever there is a flare up and I feel helpless, I seek advice. Otherwise, I try to manage it by myself with learnings I have gained in all these years by exploring various options.
Your psoriasis treatment is your responsibility!
My whole strategy of psoriasis healing revolves around improving the gut health (digestive health) and emotional health. The positive changes in diet, dietary supplements, digestive aids, proper sleep, yoga and exercise, a regular and balanced lifestyle, stress management- all these steps aim to restore the body’s natural ability to function properly.
I try to naturally calm down the immune system instead of forcefully suppressing it.
The whole purpose of this blog is to share all my learnings and experiences with you and learn from your experiences. So, do let me know in the comment box if this article makes sense to you.