Psoriasis is a disease of the immune system which causes cells to build up on the surface of the skin, creating painful red thick itchy patches.
Even though psoriasis is a skin condition, it’s actually an autoimmune disease and happens when the T-cells attack the healthy skin cells. The overactive T-cells trigger the immune system to grow them more and more, in which they move up the epidermis and they spread on the skin.
As the dead skin cells cannot be removed easily, they accumulate in the patches that are typical for psoriasis. This skin condition highly affects the daily living on those who suffer from it.
People who have psoriasis are also more prone to other diseases, such as hypertension, heart disease, type II diabetes, and eye conditions.
For patients that suffer from psoriasis, it’s recommended to keep their vitamin D levels in the range of 50-70 ng/ml year-round. Vitamin D is a powerful immune modulator and it plays an important role when fighting diseases such as psoriasis.
According to one study, “vitamin D could have important immunomodulatory effects in psoriasis, but up to 80 % of patients in winter and 50 % in the summer were vitamin-D deficient.”
Vitamin D attacks psoriasis on multiple levels, including regulation of the healthy skin cells and affecting the toxic T-cells directly, in which D-vitamin inhibits them.
The current treatments of psoriasis are very expensive and are risky. One of the medicaments, Raptiva, was removed from the market for increasing the risk of brain infections.
Back in 2004, a professor Dr. Michael Holick published a book in which he encouraged the readers to get more sun exposure. Dr. Michael Holick was a professor of dermatology that focused his work on diseases like psoriasis and the treatments. As a matter of fact, he received the American Skin Association’s Psoriasis Research Achievement Award.
“As a result, I was in the department of dermatology, continuing to do psoriasis research. But once I began recommending sensible sun exposure for vitamin D, which is counter to what the American Academy of Dermatology’s message was, I was asked to step down as professor of dermatology back in 2004…
The American Academy of Dermatology still recommends: you should never be exposed to one direct ray of sunlight for your entire life.”