Craziest thing: Anyone here with Psoriasis?

[MannyGoldstein]

Wonderful and weird thing happened in my family, wanted to share it:

For years, my nephew had pretty bad psoriasis on his entire scalp. Even with nightly topical treatment of a cortisone (in oil, under a shower-cap), it wasn't well controlled.

Parents started giving him a tablespoon of lecithin each day, and the psoriasis vanished pretty quickly. Gone. Zero treatments needed anymore, and not a hint of psoriasis. For a couple of months now, and it hadn't ever gone into remission in the years he had it prior.

So why lecithin?

Lecithin is a common food supplement derived from soybeans that has a lot of choline. It turns out that:

1. 50% of psoriasis sufferers have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (hepatic steatosis)
2. fatty liver can be reliably induced by a choline-deficient diet.
3. most Americans get less, often far less, choline than the Adequate Intake level set by the Institute of Medicine.

Putting these together, it hints that psoriasis sufferers may not be getting enough choline, and the choline in lecithin might have fixed the boy's problem. Could be coincidence that the psoriasis disappeared when they started trying the lecithin, but it's a heck of a coincidence. And these are not crazy people.

Anyway, I wanted to share the info. If anyone's tried lecithin and had good or bad experiences, I'd be very interested to hear about it.

[Voice for Peace]

1. no personal experience with it myself but I'm kicking and reccing

because I think it's valuable information and have no
doubt it works, at least for some.

[Sherman A1]

12. And I will do the same

[Chipper Chat]

2. check out this book:

Energy by Naura Hayden. She has good things to say about lethicin and recommends a "milkshake" that uses it..

[MannyGoldstein]

22. Actually, my sister's family mixes it into a chocolate shake

and bakes it into brownies.

As it happens, I read one of Ms. Hayden's other books many years ago: I'm not saying which . Poorly written, but good advice.

[gateley]

38. Everything you wanted to know about energy but were too weak to ask?

That book changed my life -- until I fell off wagon.

I'm thinking she wrote a sex book too -- that must be the one you read, Manny,

[gateley]

26. I read a book by her in the 70's and started taking that shake -- it was amazing!

Got everybody in the office on it and the stories of how "I don't have to rest while walking to the bus stop any more" were plentiful.

I think the energy part comes from the brewer's yeast, but I know there was an equal amount of lecithin.

I should try that shake again -- are you drinking it?

[Chipper Chat]

35. Yes - off and on.

The taste is yukky - but better than 20 years ago when I started it. I put 2 TBSP of Hersheys syrup in it - tastes better. And I use whole milk and 2 tsp sugar instead of the equal. Adds calories but I exercise.

[gateley]

37. I remember it really helps to make it the night before and keep it refrigerated.

I was so sold on it I took all the ingredients and my blender on a trip and didn't worry about refrigerating it overnight because I'd been taking it so long I thought I could handle it at room temp. I had to toss it out and from that night on had the hotel keep it in the refrigerator for me. I may have to look into taking that again.

[bananas]

39. Great book - forgot all about it. nt

[rainin]

3. Flax seeds are a great source of lecithin.

You can blend up a TB of flax seeds in a smoothie. Delicious and very inexpensive.

[tavalon]

9. Yes, they are

Unfortunately, my tummy only allows them sometimes and I'm never given advance notice. Aargh.

[Voice for Peace]

21. try a little 1/4 tsp cayenne in a cup of water

it has changed my life, as far as what my tummy
will allow.. read up on it if you have any kind of
persistent digestion system issues. Really it has
changed my life. An awesome remedy.

oops on edit, I hadn't seen the reference to celiac
although it still may be a really useful remedy, if
you haven't ever tried it.

My biggest problem was with any kind of fats,
just could not digest most of the time, miserable
discomfort, pain, gallbladder & liver involved too.
IMO cayenne's a miracle drug.

[tavalon]

24. Wow, that makes my stomach contract just thinking about it

To say I have a midwestern palate is an understatement. Pepper! Yikes. That said, maybe when I have a few days off.......

[Voice for Peace]

25. lolol that's what I expected also.

and maybe it's not for everyone.

but very often, people attribute their distress to spices,
when in fact it's the oils causing the problem. Especially
hydrogenated fats.. they don't digest, they coat the
intestines (and arteries) inside, with sticky oily slime.

My view (not scientific, just personally anecdotal)
is that over a lifetime, there is gunk which builds up
in the system, and coats the inside of the intestines,
making digestion less efficient, among other problems.

It seems like the inside of pipes in kitchen sink, when
over time the inside of the pipes get gunky, and then
more gunk sticks to that, and on and on.

That's how system has felt for MANY years, like there
was something standing between healthy digestion of
my food and the food itself.

When I started the cayenne, within a short time
it felt as if my system was cleaning itself out, not
violently or urgently, but gradually and quite gently.
The cayenne was stimulating my intestines to do
their own work. The brief burning sensations don't
actually burn -- they stimulate blood flow to the
places most needed. The cayenne energizes the
whole digestive system.

If you decide to try it, start with small amount. 1/4
teaspoon in a large glass of water, you won't even
notice the hotness very much.

I looked up celiac + cayenne and there aren't any
risks. Maybe the cayenne isn't effective for everyone.
I'm just amazed by its effectiveness, especially
being so common, such an ancient medicinal food,
and I hadn't ever heard of using it this way before.

[tavalon]

34. Well, while I will wait until a 5 day stretch off of work (every two weeks, woot)

your enthusiasm and actually looking up celiac has won me over. I'll try it.

[shraby]

4. I'm kicking and reccing too.

[diane in sf]

5. Due to 30 years of disinfo most people eat way too many carbs and way too few good fats

[tavalon]

8. Amen!

And as an amusing aside to my other post about Celiac, gluten free has become the new fad. It helps me greatly because they plaster it on the front of everything so now I don't have to strain my eyes and yet they are acting like gluten free means healthier which is often not the case. Since I was diagnosed, my staples are fish and olive oil. I do eat rice but usually only wild rice and since I don't like any of the gluten free breads marketed and don't feel like making my own, bread has left the building. I just realized I am darn near a pesco vegetarian.

I was never one who lived to eat but now I carefully eat to live.

The Omegas and olive oil are very, very important. Ditching corn syrup is very, very, very important. Yeah, there's been a lot of disinfo for sure. Nothing like a life threatening food intolerance to make one bone up on healthy eating.

[InsultComicDog]

11. yep

My problem went away almost entirely when I went to a low carb high fat diet

[gateley]

27. Right! They didn't even acknowledge "good" fats very much.

[tavalon]

6. As a slight addition to this,

some people who have psoriasis actually are reacting to having Celiac Sprue. It isn't a majority but something to think about. When I was diagnosed with Celiac almost 10 years ago, it was believed that far fewer people in the US than Europe had Celiac but it turned out that about 1:120 Americans just like Europeans have Celiac, but in Europe, it's the first thing they test for in many, many situations and here in the US, it's one of the last, especially if the symptoms (as in my case) seem to have nothing to do with the gut. Most Americans have approximately 15 years of symptoms before they are correctly diagnosed. Europeans rarely have more than a year.

Purely anecdotal, but in my case, my diagnosis (accidental) turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm far healthier now as I head into my 50s than I was in my 20s.

http://www.dermaharmony.com/psoriasis/celiacandpsoriasis.aspx

[grahamhgreen]

7. Thanks! Sending to my brother!

[Not a Fan]

10. My son takes Vitamin D3 for his psoriasis

Vitamin D3 greatly improves psoriasis. You can google that or go over to the Vitamin D Council and look around for it.

My son has Palmar/Plantar psoriasis - an especially evil variety on just the palms of the hands and the bottoms of the feet. It is hell for the afflicted. Vitamin D3 keeps it under control beautifully - no problems. He's 26, very tall, but also very slim and he takes 10,000 IU a day for about three years now.

If he stops taking his VD3 it comes right back.

[kestrel91316]

31. Sometimes the peeling hands and feet are a reactive

dermatitis in response to untreated athlete's foot fungus. My BF (now ex) had it bad but never bothered to see a doctor about it. I got online, played doctor, read up on it, and had him get aggressive with topical antifungals for his athlete's foot. The peeling hands got better immediately.

[eShirl]

13. nothing to add except, beef liver is high in choline

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline#Food_sources_of_choline

[MannyGoldstein]

23. Which might be why most folks don't get their daily ration...

Full disclosure: I actually love liver.

[DCKit]

14. You just cost some drug company three billion dollars. nt

[postulater]

15. Don't you know?

If it's a drug then it's science based medicine. If its not patentable then it's woo.

[Patiod]

16. If there's a double blinded study

then it might be evidence-based medicine (even some double-blinded studies are crap). If it's not well-studied, then it's anecdotal. Might or might not be woo.

[gateley]

28. Not to worry -- they can tweak it to make it patentable (like Splenda and Truvia) and reap the

rewards. Only problem is -- the original substance is virtually unrecognizable and the benefits are lost.

Big fucking pharma.

[arikara]

17. There are a lot of conditions

that are cleared up by proper nutrition, not the woo diet that is pushed by the adverts and by the governments who are controlled by special interests that are definitely not in the interests of the people.

Modern myths abound and include: healthy whole grains, low fat, safe GMO's and much much more.

[Auntie Bush]

18. Hoping for more info...nephew has it.

kicking

[MineralMan]

19. Psoriasis is an unpredictable thing.

When I was a teenager, I had it on the palm of one hand and on both inside ankles over the bones. This was back in the early 1960s. I had lots of treatments for it, since the hand thing was very troublesome. Nothing did anything. Then, suddenly, when I was 18, all signs of it disappeared spontaneously in less than a week. It never returned

Given the unpredictable nature of psoriasis, anecdotal evidence isn't really a predictor of success. A trial would be worthwhile of this relationship, though, I think.

[Chemisse]

36. My son had it on his scalp when he was a teenager

I read up on it, and braced for a long-term problem. But then it vanished and has never come back!

So studies would be a good idea. Or heck, just try it and see if it helps.

[just1voice]

20. Phosphatidylcholine, been taking it for years

For me it improves memory, it's easier for me to remember details, numbers, names, etc... It also lowers my cholesterol number as yearly physicals have shown. I take capsules that are readily available, here's some info on it:

http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-501-PHOSPHATIDYLCHOLINE.aspx?activeIngredientId=501&activeIngredientName=PHOSPHATIDYLCHOLINE

[gateley]

30. Thanks! Never even heard of it, I don't think.

[stopbush]

29. I'v suffered from psoriasis since college. That's 40 years at this point.

The problem with this disease is that it's very adaptable. I've gone through many different treatments that work for a length of time then suddenly stop working. You get it to disappear on one part of your body and it shows up somewhere else.

I was fully macrobiotic for 5 years. Did nothing to change my psoriasis.

Used steroid creams. They worked for about a year. Then they didn't work.

Did light box treatments. These worked great, to the point where my condition went away totally, and where two 2-minute treatments a year were all I needed. Then, my work-provided insurance plan changed to a plan that didn't include my dermatologist. The one in the new plan didn't have a light box. He put me on steroid creams. Within 8 months, my psoriasis was back full blown. So, I went back to the old dermatologist and paid out of my own pocket. But the treatments never fully worked after that. Subsequent light box treatments I've started over the years have done nothing.

I used to go to the beach to tan under doctor's orders. Two weeks in the sun used to clear things up. But these days, I just don't have the tolerance to sit in the sun for extended periods day after day. I also count myself lucky that all that sun hasn't left me with a skin cancer or dried out skin (the only good thing about having psoriasis is that you're always visiting the dermatologist who checks for cancers every visit).

At this point, I have psoriatic areas on my torso, hips, knees and elbows.

I've had lecithin recommended to me before. Can't remember if I ever tried it. I'll try it this time as a pound of lecithin granules costs about $11, which at 2-4 tbsp per day should last for a couple of weeks. I'll give this anecdotal treatment a month and see what happens. If it works, great! If not. Well, I'm used to "didn't work" when it comes to treatments for psoriasis.

BTW - I'm sure they could find a cause and a treatment for psoriasis IF they spent 1/1-millionth of the funding they spend on cancer research to study psoriasis. It's pretty sad when the best chance we have of getting some money spent on psoriasis research is the fact that Kim Kardashian has been diagnosed with the condition. The only way a disease gets any attention or funding in this country is if some celebrity has it.

[Bluestar]

32. Could be a link between vitamin D3 and the previous success

with tanning and the light box treatments? I would try the vit D3, although the 10,000 iu's above seems high. You can conceivably overdose, although many vit D advocates dispute this. I'm going to try this with my husband who has a rash on his fingers that won't clear up. maybe at a lower dose.

[RagAss]

33. Just fyi...

I have been taking 15,000 iu daily of D3 since 2007. No issues and good results.