Psoriasis

[bartfull]

My Mom had psoriasis for 30 years. When she was diagnosed with celiac and went on the gluten free diet, her psoriasis totally and permanently disappeared.

I have psoriasis. It has gotten bad lately, and it was in doing research on that, that I found a connection with celiac. I never had my psoriasis diagnosed, but Mom did. She went to a dermatologist for years with no results.

I went to a psoriasis forum and mentioned Mom's experience and they pooh-poohed the idea. They said if my psoriasis goes away, that means it wasn't really psoriasis at all.

Even though I never went for a biopsy, I KNOW that's what I have. It is hereditary, as is celiac, and if Mom's DIAGNOSED psoriasis went away on a gluten free diet, it makes sense that now that I have celiac and must go gluten free, mine will too.

Today is day four of being gluten free, and already I see some improvement in the psoriasis.

I guess what I'm asking is, have any of you had similar experiences? Thanks.

[kareng]

I think you will find a lot of people on here with "diagnosed " psoriasis that turned out to not be psoriasis. It was DH. I don't have it but I have seen alot of posts about that.

[Jestgar]

I have psoriasis and gluten-free did nothing, but corn free clears it up almost entirely. It's an inflammatory disease, and removing whatever is causing the inflammation can improve it. For me, that was corn, for you and your mom it's gluten (or wheat, or barley, or rye).

[bartfull]

The reason I know it is not DH is that it is only on the palms of my hands and on my heels and bottom of my feet. It looks EXACTLY like the pictures of palmoplantar pustular psoriasis I see on the internet. It almost disappears in winter and comes back in summer. When I tried lotion on it, it got worse. Now I know why - that lotion contained gluten. Here is a picture of what it looks like:

Open Original Shared Link

And even in this article they mention a possible connection with gluten intolorance.

Today, my hands are noticably better, and I can walk without pain for the first time in weeks. There are NO new pustules forming today, and I used to get new ones every day. If going gluten free cured ONLY this problem, it would be worth it! I am very very happy right now and feeling so optomistic I don't even CARE about feeling hungry!

[kareng]

The reason I know it is not DH is that it is only on the palms of my hands and on my heels and bottom of my feet. It looks EXACTLY like the pictures of palmoplantar pustular psoriasis I see on the internet. It almost disappears in winter and comes back in summer. When I tried lotion on it, it got worse. Now I know why - that lotion contained gluten. Here is a picture of what it looks like:

Open Original Shared Link

And even in this article they mention a possible connection with gluten intolorance.

Today, my hands are noticably better, and I can walk without pain for the first time in weeks. There are NO new pustules forming today, and I used to get new ones every day. If going gluten free cured ONLY this problem, it would be worth it! I am very very happy right now and feeling so optomistic I don't even CARE about feeling hungry!

Palms & feet bottoms? Honey, how annoying! So glad you found a way to stop them.

[bartfull]

Palms & feet bottoms? Honey, how annoying! So glad you found a way to stop them.

You don't know the half of it! I own a music store and give guitar lessons for a living. It HURTS to play guitar. Not only that, but my favorite exercise is walking here in my beautiful Black Hills, and I haven't been able to do that either. So I'm getting fat, I am missing out on the beautiful scenery, and I have to keep smiling at my students, even though I'm in pain. (It used to be I would play guitar to soothe myself when I was having a bad day. Maybe now I won't have so many bad days!)

[cassP]

sorry if i sound like a dumba$$... but even when i look at all the pictures- i honestly cannot tell you if what i had on my foot years ago was excema or psoraisis.. but it was BAD- i first had it on the inside of my foot at age 8. went away, came back in my 20s for OVER 5 YEARS!!!! it was disgusting- i wore socks ALL THE TIME.. and itched 24/7... i would wake up in the middle of the night to itch- and i would have to stop itching when it was bleeding... so awful.. at age 28- i went on a Paleo type diet- still had gluten but VERY LITTLE OR NO WHEAT.. it totally went away! and hasnt come back. the DANDRUFF also went away.

i got a little excema on my knuckles this last winter- and i was surprised cause im gluten free now... still kinda here... a girl on twitter told me that i need to get off dairy, but i cant yet :/

i am sure that going gluten free will greatly improve and possibly cure your skin issues.

[bartfull]

CassP, what you had was probably eczema, because PPP doesn't usually itch much. It hurts because you develope what look like white head pimples (only they're kind of greenish), and any pressure you put on them hurts like, well, pressure on a white head pimple would. Then in a day or two, the pustule will break and leave a dark red spot, followed by thickening skin that is shiny and peels off. The skin becomes dry and cracks, and that hurts too.

Other types of psoriasis itches like crazy, and you can get it anywhere on your body, with knees, ankles, elbows and the hair being most common. With that type, you don't get the pustules, but you do get the shiny, flaking skin.

On a side note, I just made my first batch of gluten free cornbread this morning. It was delicious, and I'm starting to not be so hungry all the time. Headache seems to be ALMOST gone this morning too.

[gfgamine]

My Mom had psoriasis for 30 years. When she was diagnosed with celiac and went on the gluten free diet, her psoriasis totally and permanently disappeared.

I have psoriasis. It has gotten bad lately, and it was in doing research on that, that I found a connection with celiac. I never had my psoriasis diagnosed, but Mom did. She went to a dermatologist for years with no results.

I went to a psoriasis forum and mentioned Mom's experience and they pooh-poohed the idea. They said if my psoriasis goes away, that means it wasn't really psoriasis at all.

Even though I never went for a biopsy, I KNOW that's what I have. It is hereditary, as is celiac, and if Mom's DIAGNOSED psoriasis went away on a gluten free diet, it makes sense that now that I have celiac and must go gluten free, mine will too.

Today is day four of being gluten free, and already I see some improvement in the psoriasis.

I guess what I'm asking is, have any of you had similar experiences? Thanks.

Hi bartfull,

I was diagnosed with psoriasis early on, many years before I began having any dietary/gluten issues. Like you, one of parents also had psoriasis - my dad. After being diagnosed gluten intolerant and going gluten-free a year ago, within DAYS I noticed a huge improvement in my psoriasis. I asked my doctor if there might be a connection, but he seemed skeptical. The changes were hard to ignore.

I still have psoriasis, but it's slightly more under control (especially now that's it's summer and it's getting plenty of sun exposure - I find this really helps somehow, in safe doses). I rarely have flares and I don't get new spots any more. I do have a number of other resulting food sensitivities and unfortunately am still mysteriously weak (and have days when I need to eat everything to stave off nausea) a year later, but I did find a strange immediate correlation between cutting out gluten and improvement of my psoriasis.

[Juliebove]

Psoriasis can be misdiagnosed. It was for me. AFAIK, gluten isn't an issue for me but it is for my daughter.

I used to get rashes that would come and go when I was a child. The Dr. never really said what they were. But my mom did take me after the school nurse reported that I might have ringworm. I didn't. The Dr. just said they were from some sort of allergy.

Towards the end of my pregnancy I noticed that I was having to walk more slowly. My legs got tired very easily. My feet and legs swelled a lot! I was told this would go away after I had the baby. It did not.

I went from Dr. to Dr. One of them prescribed a diuretic which seemed to help little. Then I got a rash on my legs. It itched and I would scratch it and it would bleed. The bleeding wouldn't stop. To compound things, my daughter was a toddler then and she learned when she was angry with me to kick me there on the sores so that they would bleed. My Dr. told me it was dermatitis and prescribed some sort of cream that didn't do a thing. I wound up going to a dermatologist who said it was psoriasis. He prescribed something else that didn't do a thing.

Then we moved to NY. I went in to the Ob/Gyn for a routine exam and he remarked on my legs as did the podiatrist I saw. Both of them said I had stastis dermatitis and sent me to not only a dermatologist but a vascular surgeon. Long story short, the deep veins in my legs are bad. The blood flows down and then pools in my feet and lower legs. When enough blood has pooled, there is the appearance of a rash. It isn't really a rash at all. It's pooled blood. And eventually it will forum an ulcer. It is the pooled blood that is called stasis dermatitis. But it looks very much like psoriasis. The treatment can be the same as far as the creams and ointments go. But without daily elevation of the feet above the heart and wearing medical stockings when up and about, it will not go away.

Now to complicate matters, I do indeed have psoriasis at times. It will usually appear on my elbows and knees and for some reason it is worse when I am out in the sun. I know sun is supposed to make it better but it doesn't.

So you may have psoriasis. You may not. It could even be that your mom was misdiagnosed.

[mushroom]

I have psoriatic arthritis. The arthritis came first - the psoirasis came later. I do NOT get pustular, mine is mostly guttate and what I have seen called "sheet" psoriasis which is a widespread redness and itching in tender places. I get the guttate on my feet and have had it a couple of times on my hands. It is totally unresponsive to gluten removal (and I am corn free and a lot of other things as well). The only Rx that works for me is injections of Humira, which suppresses my immune system (and makes me subject to infection which causes me to take lots of antibiotics with other yucky side effects). My left foot is really flaring right now because I have been on antibiotics for cellulitis (and have to stop the Humira wile that healsl). The psoriasis both itches and hurts - sometimes it is hard to tell which is worse

So far as I know no other family member ever had it, although my dad did have an arthritic condition which I believe was misdiagnosed as being polymyalgia rheumatica.

I hope hat the removal of gluten works for you.

[bartfull]

I'm glad this thread came back up. Right after making and eating that cornbread I was so proud of above, my psoriasis (I'm still sure that's what it is) flared up with a vengance. It turns out, the reason it got so much better so quickly was because at first I ate no corn. Corn is the culprit, and I am just waiting to try gluten again after a few months to see if corn might be my ONLY problem. (Probably not, but I can hope, can't I?) The thing is, I need to find out quickly because my psoriasis usually goes into remission in the winter.

[lovegrov]

I didn't develop psoriasis until AFTER I went gluten-free. Before that I definitely had DH, though, and it's gone.

richard