I discovered I had psoriasis a few years ago. \u00a0The first sign was an arthritic pain in the foot. \u00a0It wasn’t diagnosed as psoriasis until I saw a dermotologist about some dry skin on my neck about a year later.<\/p>\n
Both things seemed fairly constant. \u00a0No sudden appearance or dissapearance of sympoms, which meant identifying any triggers was really hard.<\/p>\n
Later on, I started to get a related eye problem. Thats when I found out\u00a0I have a gene thing called HLAB27 positive.\u00a0 Turns out all my ailments could be connected to that one gene. \u00a0But it also helped with something else – I now had a very visible, relatively quick indicator of potential triggers.<\/p>\n
I might start to think of the eye issue as a blessing.<\/p>\n
At first, I thought the eye would flare up randomly.\u00a0 But why would that make sense?\u00a0 My body is a ‘closed system’ – one big bag of human chemicals that either:<\/p>\n
HLAB27 confirms that the second proposition is true (my body isn’t going to react the right way all the time), but both points are not mutually exclusive. \u00a0A trigger is still possible.<\/p>\n
The hypothesis – reducing salt intake will stop my eye flaring up<\/strong><\/p>\n I stumbled on the idea that salt intake could be a contributor because of some suspicions:<\/p>\n Suspicion #1:<\/p>\n I wondered whether the cause of the skin flareups was being delivered through the pours of my skin – the sweat in particular.\u00a0 Turns out that sweat comes from your pee pee – so your Kidney’s are involved.\u00a0 Kidney’s have something to do with food processing right? (did I mention at the beginning of this that I’m not a doctor?)<\/p>\n Suspicion #2:<\/p>\n I stumbled across an article on PH balance when browsing the net.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sadly, I can’t find that article.\u00a0 Anyway, the author spoke about the fact that our bodies are designed to maintain a particular PH balance.\u00a0 You can eat too much acidic stuff, or alkaline stuff, forcing your body to restore its balance.\u00a0 Turns out the Kidneys have a big role in maintaining PH balance by getting rid of the nasties. Eating stuff that pushes the body away from its PH balance might strain the body.<\/p>\n There is a twist in this story though that is more shocking than the ending of The Usual Suspects<\/em>.\u00a0 Almost everything I thought was acidic was in fact alkaline and vice versa.\u00a0 Lemon?\u00a0 Its alkaline.\u00a0 Orange? Alkaline.\u00a0 Bread? \u00a0Acidic! \u00a0Go figure?! \u00a0This list is helpful<\/a> for figuring out what is what.<\/p>\n Suspicion #3:<\/p>\n When my skin was flaring up, I could often smell something very similar to Chlorine.\u00a0 In fact, I could have been convinced it was<\/em> Chlorine (even though didn’t swim).\u00a0 Years later, I learned that Chlorine is made from …drum roll….salt.\u00a0 This was like a light bulb moment.<\/p>\n Suspicion #4:<\/p>\n My son would get a flare up of something on his skin from tomatoes and kiwi fruit (two alkalines).<\/p>\n The test so far<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite the gut feeling that a PH diet would be good, I’m not the dieting type (too hard basket).\u00a0 So I figured that I would try to cut back on the salt intake, stop eating tomatoes like apples and stop the Indian takeaways.\u00a0 Its been many months (probably coming up to a year) when I started the exercise. \u00a0The pain in my foot hasn’t been as bad (I’m careful with footwear which helps the most), no signs of a skin flareup (never used any topical drugs or steriods – ever), and no eye fare ups. \u00a0Fingers crossed this works.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I discovered I had psoriasis a few years ago. \u00a0The first sign was an arthritic pain in the foot. \u00a0It wasn’t diagnosed as psoriasis until I saw a dermotologist about some dry skin on my neck about a year later. Both things seemed fairly constant. \u00a0No sudden appearance or dissapearance of sympoms, which meant identifying … Continue reading Psoriasis – cutting out salt seems to work<\/span>