When 21-year-old Anika Najran was diagnosed with psoriasis it was aggressive and unforgiving. Like so many people who have been on Gutted  she tried lots of different treatments over a period of a year and a half that didn’t provide much relief,  this included topical steroid creams, coal tar soaps and shampoos, medicated shampoos, protopics, anti-fungus medication and moisturising wraps. 

In desperation at the state of her skin and determined that she was not going to be on steroid creams and medication for the rest of her life, she started to look for alternatives. Anika tried diet and lifestyle intervention for her skin and was delighted with the results! 

In this episode we chat about the impact of social media and how shared patient experience online helped her gain so much information and insight early on in her diagnosis, and ultimately helped her overcome  severe psoriasis through diet and lifestyle intervention. 

She shares her experience  of natural healing from the inside out on Instagram at - @ani_psofit 

Nutritional Therapist Sophia Delgaizo, 31, was diagnosed with guttate psoriasis when she was 18.  She tried conventional topical steroid creams for her skin for years, however these did not control her psoriasis. 

She discovered that stress, alcohol, gluten and processed foods were the main triggers for her psoriasis, and armed with this knowledge she has managed to keep her psoriasis under control for the past seven years, using diet and lifestyle interventions. 

Having experienced first-hand how nutrition and lifestyle changes can improve health, she decided to retrain as a Nutritional Therapist after years working  for the government in the mental health field.

Sophia is very passionate about skin health and wants to share and support others with skin issues. She is very interested in gut health, as our gut microbiota directly affect our skin (skin-gut axis), and the link between psoriasis and intestinal permeability.

Dualcast with the lovely "Shirley Says" from Bearsden Beauty in Scotland!

We chat about the impact of skin conditions on confidence, self-esteem and mental health and what you can do to make your skin GLOW!

Having both had psoriasis, we chat about the pharmaceutical products we've tried that only offered short-term relief, and why we both now believe diet and lifestyle is critical when it comes to good skin. Top tip - "Eat more plants".

Bearsden Beauty Instagram
Bearsden Beauty Facebook 

Dr Catherine O'Leary is a consultant clinical psychologist specialising in chronic health conditions. For many years she has worked with people who live with chronic illness, from heart failure to cystic fibrosis, and she has learned a lot about how to help people cope with poor health and differences in appearance.
 
Catherine has also had psoriasis herself for 30 years.

In her blog, Coping with Psoriasis, she focuses on the psychological aspects of the condition, covering some interesting topics including psoriasis and sleep, psoriasis and pain and psoriasis and shame. 

Catherine talks about how psoriasis causes physical and emotional pain, but also how we respond to the pain determines how much suffering we will experience. Some ways of reacting to psoriasis-related pain can actually make the situation worse, and in the podcast we chat about what therapies can be employed to reduce suffering.

We also discuss a study shared in her blog, a study of over 900 people with psoriasis that found that shame was one of the most common emotions experienced (Sampogna et al, 2012). Shame is clearly having a serious impact on the lives of people with psoriasis, and participants in the study didn’t seem to get used to having psoriasis: the longer they’d had the condition, the more shame they reported.

"When it comes to psoriasis, what we put in our mouth is more important than what we put on our skin"

Wise words from Mohammed Khan, 22, or as some of you may know him, The Psoriasis Bodybuilder. Mohammed, a 22-year-old bodybuilder living in Toronto, was first diagnosed with plaque psoriasis in October 2017 and it changed his whole life. He has had psoriasis for over 2 years now, and he is keen to share his experience and discuss the things he has tried in order to heal his skin.

After he transformed his life, he wanted to help others do the same. In 2019 he started a YouTube channel about fitness and psoriasis. He also started prepping for his first ever bodybuilding show. He now feels that having psoriasis has been more of an opportunity to grow as an individual and do something different and great with his life. He wants to be the person that people look up to and say "that person helped me change my life for the better".

Excited to have Emma Gould, Nutrition by Emma, on Gutted to kick off 2020. Emma has a degree in Human Biology and Psychology and a Diploma in Nutritional Therapy with the College of Naturopathic Medicine. Emma also has psoriasis.

You may have seen Emma's before and after photos, and her story, on the Psoriasis Association website and social media.

Emma started to develop psoriasis when she had her first child at the age of 31. Three years later, after her second child, and a very stressful house move, her skin was out of control and she was around 50% covered. She was exhausted, stressed, eating bad food and felt she had lost all connection to herself.

She, like many others who have come on Gutted, went down the conventional medicine route first, but something didn’t sit well with her. She applied daily steroid creams to quieten down the symptoms without ever getting to the root cause of the problem.

Like me, and others we've chatted to, she started to research natural therapies to help her body get back into balance. The book “Healing Psoriasis Naturally” by Dr John Pagano was her starting point. She followed the book to the T for 4 months and by the end of that time she had completely cleared her skin. She was 100% clear.  Added bonuses were how much energy she had. She was running 5-10k regularly, sleeping well and bouncing out of bed in the morning.  She realised the power of nutrition and this is what inspired her to do a Diploma in Nutritional Therapy and become a Nutritional Therapist.

If you want to learn more about diet and lifestyle intervention for psoriasis, check out my book, 10 Powerful Steps to Clear Psoriasis on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/10-Powerful-Steps-Clear-Psoriasis-ebook/dp/B07VRYLN4H

Matt developed acne, rosacea and a plethora of other diseases that lasted for 14 years. He started getting acne in his teenage years and after struggling with his skin, he was prescribed two courses of antibiotics to treat his acne. This lead to a whole host of other issues such as food sensitivities, fatigue, depression, anxiety, chronic overheating and swelling of his nose and cheek areas, in other words rosacea.

At university he drank a lot of alcohol, ate junk food (sometimes daily) and was under a lot of stress from his course, he barely slept. All the while he was using topical steroid treatments to try and combat his symptoms. He had his first outbreak of dermatitis aged 21, which lead to countless visits to doctors and dermatologists, who prescribed steroid creams and other anti-fungals and anti-inflammatories that weaken his immune system.

Matt also tried a whole host of other expensive treatments provided by various experts, including laser therapy. At one stage he was even taking anti-histamines and Valium daily, but the problems just kept getting worse and worse. Eventually nothing was working anymore and he became desperate, so he researched alternative treatments and stumbled across people who had cured all of the problems he'd with diet and lifestyle intervention.

If you want to learn more about diet and lifestyle intervention for psoriasis, check out my book,10 Powerful Steps to Clear Psoriasis on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/10-Powerful-Steps-Clear-Psoriasis-ebook/dp/B07VRYLN4H

This is a BUMPER episode to coincide with #PsoriasisAwarenessWeek in the UK! In this dualcast I interview well-known psoriasis vlogger and blogger, Matt Ludwig, who now runs the very popular Psoriasis Healing Warriors group on Facebook. 

Psoriasis Healing Warriors group has almost 16K members now who share knowledge, experience about diet and lifestyle intervention for psoriasis.

Matt was diagnosed with Psoriasis ten years ago and had some of the most extensive psoriasis I had seen. Over the the last few years he started a journey of healing on his own by keeping a psoriasis diary. He started diet and lifestyle intervention to heal his psoriasis, and blogged and vlogged about his journey, sharing the story of his healing with the world.  

Matt was one of the first people I came across online when I was looking at diet and lifestyle options for clearing psoriasis and his advice was invaluable. He proposed maybe of the things I’d learned about through Pagano’s Healing Psoriasis book but with many useful additions like lemon water, increase water intake, focus on alkaline, green juice etc. Some of the other great things I learn from Matt were mental elements of the healing process (which can often be as challenging as the physical).

Matt’s videos inspired me greatly, it was amazing to see the changes he made and continues to make and his passion for diet and lifestyle intervention is infectious!

If you want to learn more about diet and lifestyle intervention for psoriasis, check out my book,10 Powerful Steps to Clear Psoriasis on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/10-Powerful-Steps-Clear-Psoriasis-ebook/dp/B07VRYLN4H