What the f?

I have no idea what happened. I'm trying to pinpoint exactly where I went wrong, and what caused it. I was doing great with this blog for a while, then I completely just stopped doing anything. I think when I moved my room, or maybe once I started going to school? Well whatever it was/is I gotta find a way to change it. I need to make some kind of full-blown change to get back on track! My psoriasis hasn't really gotten any better or worse, but my life-style has turned in to a series of routines... that aren't very proactive anymore. Seasonal depression? I've always hated wintertime, and being cold. It practically stops me from moving! haha I think if I just put one foot in front of the other and get moving starting immediately I can get back into the ring. It's not over yet! I won't be bogged down!!

Stress.

Why do mac's only have one mouse button!?

I'm USUALLY an extremely stress free person. I'm very good at handling stress, by focusing on what isn't stressful about a situation, and keeping my cool. Well, like I said, I'm back in school. I'm taking a health and wellness class and for the final I decided to to an essay on Psoriasis. I figured, it was the perfect thing to do an essay on, since I already know the most about it, I have it, and it would be CAKE, right? Well It's due in about just under 2 weeks and I started to think, about how once I'm up there in front of my entire class, talking about it, everyone will know what I have and then go home and google it maybe. Not sure if you ever googled psoriasis but that shit ain't pretty. Considering my psoriasis looks 200% better than ANY of the pictures that come up, it's still stressful for me to think all of my classmates seeing all of these horrifying photos and immediately thinking about me. That is pretty much the exact opposite of what I want anyone to think about me. So this kind of stress is getting to me. I could just focus on the clear fact that there is like a 95% chance I will never see any of these classmates again in school, considering the particular class I'm taking isn't really part of any bachelor or AA degree, it's kind of a niche class, that doesn't exactly fall under elective choice, or required class for any degree. So pretty much everyone whos taking it is taking it because all their other elective choices were full, or they are taking one of the rare few certificates that require it, like the Wilderness skills certificate, the one I'm taking.

Living with the beast.

So for my health and wellness class, I have to write an essay on a disease or disorder of my choice, so naturally I chose to write it on Psoriasis. I've been thinking about what that entails though. As much as I want to raise awareness about psoriasis, standing up in front of my entire class and talking about scabbed lesions and living my embarrassing lifestyle with psoriasis doesn't sound very healthy for my self conscience. When it's likely that there are hardly any people in the class who realize I have psoriasis, it would make them more aware of my situation and I dunno, it just feels like, why would I want to bring more attention to my problem when my entire goal every day when I wake up before school is basically hiding it? I really don't want to give anyone a reason to google psoriasis and then think about me. I'm so thankful my psoriasis doesn't look nearly as bad as anything I saw on google image search but still, those images are pretty harsh for someone who hasn't lived with or seen what psoriasis looks like.

So I've decided to chose another topic. I have a little less than a month to write it.

Making friends with psoriasis sufferers.

Do cleaning supplies agitate your psoriasis?

 Sometimes when I'm on social networking sites, or hell, even dating sites, I like to search for people with psoriasis, and send them messages, just to talk to real people who have it. I only have friends who have eczema, none who have psoriasis, so all I ever get to learn about it is what I hear or read online. Sometimes it's nice to be able to talk to someone else who is going through the same situation as you and compare notes. 

This particular person has it really bad. She lives in the UK and sometimes posts little journal entrees about her life dealing with psoriasis. I sent her a msg to see if she knew anything helpful, and she did have some very good tips:

Hello Travis,

My advice:

- Don't smoke - my psoriasis was much better after I quit but deteriorated again when I started smoking again. Smoking starves your skin of oxygen as it constricts blood flow.
- Give up caffeine. I know how difficult this one is, I've been there but it really does have a hugely beneficial effect.
- reduce your dairy to a minimum, I have as much milk/yoghurt/cheese as I need nutritionally for calcium intake but no more (and I have always loved dairy products!).
- Cook your food from scratch, convenience foods are a killer because of the added chemicals such as emulsifiers.
- Cut down the chemicals in your home. Seriously. the less harmful chemicals in the air, the better. I use incense rather than air freshener, a damp cloth rather than furniture polish (beezwax is great on good quality wood but expensive and labour intensive), a cheap washing powder (fewer optical brighteners and perfumes) and a pure fabric conditioner, a grapefruit based detergent for cleaning my bathroom and kitchen surfaces, bleach for the toilet and washing up liquid. Most of my friends and exes have cupboards and bathrooms full of fancy cleaning products, many of which are aerosols and great at cleaning but all of that hanging in the air really isn't good for your skin.
- I moisturise with olive oil, it may mean I smell like a Greek salad but it is great for my skin :o)
- Use dead sea salt products where you can - at the very least just sea salt in the bath. It stings if your psoriasis is bad but it really helps (I have been known to swim in the sea at midnight in January when going through a really bad phase!).
- Try to make plenty of you time and relax - stress is the worst.

I eat particularly well, I buy my fruit and veg off the market and cook from scratch, I should have more oily fish but otherwise, my diet is great. Don't get me wrong, I regularly bake and don't miss out on anything, I even have coffee once a day but cutting out the crap has made a huge difference. Lots of exercise helps too as that stimulates blood flow to the skin and increases the oxygen that it gets.

In January, it was the worst I have ever known it, it came up so fast that it felt like chemical burns and I couldn't turn my head or smile/yawn/laugh without my skin splitting and burning. People were looking at me horribly in the streets and in shops. I had to use a hydra-gel injected burns dressing (bought at considerable cost on the black market as it isn't available to the public) just to be able to get my clothes on. It was purely down to stress and I ended up with the late night swims and using sunbeds to fight it. As a rule though, I don't suffer too badly and most of the time, you would barely know that I had it.

The lifestyle changes weren't difficult to do and over the last few years, I have gotten so used to living and eating this way that I find certain things that I once enjoyed almost insulting to the nostrils/tastebuds!

I hope your skin isn't too bad and that you can at least keep it to a manageable level.

I hope that helped and wasn't condescending, I don't knnow how much of that you already do!

Take care and good luck,

-Name Withheld

Quick update

Well I've had the Champori for about 20 days now, and was faithful with putting it on, but have noticed no improvement at all. My psoriasis looks identical. This is pretty sad since I really thought it would work. I started school on the 20th of September, and it's been slightly stressful wearing hats and trying to cover up the scalp psoriasis. I've resulted back to using the Neem mix. It works amazingly well at removing a few of the outer skin layers and leaving that pink "sunburnt skin" look that I've grown to love lol