Fitness celebrity and Bravo TV host Jackie Warner has been promoting a special workout website for psoriasis patients called Fit in Your Skin. [By the way, if you have not been there, you should check it out--good psoriasis-patient-friendly health/fitness tips there.] She recently was interviewed by USA Today in a piece that promoted her best-selling diet book, her new TV show, and the psoriasis website she is a paid spokeswoman for. It’s always great to see psoriasis in the news, right?
Well, in that article, she repeated a claim she has made in previous media interviews:
“…you can really be a benefit with nutrition and exercise decreasing the symptoms of psoriasis…”
Diet and exercise can improve psoriasis? We’ve never seen research proving that, so we went to the Fit in Your Skin website, where we read this:
“…there is no proven research that shows specific foods or diets directly lessen development or symptoms of the disease…”
What the website says is what the top experts have told us. While we would all love to be able to improve our psoriasis through diet or exercise, that is, so far, either wishful thinking, anecdote (“my aunt ate nothing but Lucky Charms and her psoriasis cleared”) or misinformation.
Why do we care? Wouldn’t it be good for all of us, psoriasis patients and non-psoriasis patients alike, to eat better and exercise more? Sure. The problem is that when USA Today carries a piece that says psoriasis can be improved through diet and exercise, it feeds the false but persistent idea that psoriasis is the fault of psoriasis patients.
This diet/exercise myth then makes it easier for insurance companies to refuse to cover expensive psoriasis treatments (‘why provide a $20,000/year psoriasis treatment for a disease that can be dealt with through diet?’); it gives an excuse to government officials not to fund psoriasis research adequately; and it misinforms the general public, which already does not take psoriasis seriously.
If there is research showing that diet or exercise improves psoriasis, send it to us and we will write about it (and we’ll share it with the pharmaceutical company that owns the Fit in Your Skin website). But as the message boards on the social network for psoriasis patients, Psoriasis.Name, have shown, for every person who writes that consuming tomatoes causes psoriasis, someone else says eating tomatoes cleared their skin. 
That is why we believe scientific research is the answer.
Though we may try the Lucky Charms diet just in case….
Category: Diet, Insurance, Psoriasis Research, Triggers/environment
Tags: exercise, Fit in Your Skin, Jackie Warner
Diet can have a MAJOR effect on other auto-immune diseases so it’s logical that it would have an effect on this one also. If you doubt the effect of diet, eat nothing but Twinkies and Coke for a week and report back how you feel…
We certainly advocate for healthy eating, but we believe that science, not anecdotes or wishful thinking, is the best hope for better treatments and ultimately a cure for psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.
Ben Franklin never ate a Twinkie, nor drank Coke, nor consumed pesticides, plastics, or high fructose corn syrup. But he had psoriasis. The people whose psoriasis was recorded in ancient texts thousands of years ago had all-organic, free-range diets, but still had psoriasis.
There are vegans with psoriasis, thin and large people with psoriasis, and people all over the world have psoriasis. We hope to be the first to report when a scientific study shows a food has a real impact on psoriasis. But the evidence is just not there yet.
Blaming the victim for his or her disease is not a new phenomenon, but we intend to stand up for patients nonetheless. Psoriasis patients do not ask for psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis, and do not bring it on themselves through their dietary choices (though there is contradictory research concerning alcohol that we will publish a full examination of soon).
Most studies of experimental, orally-administered psoriasis treatments include a group of “control” patients who, without knowing it, are given sugar pills instead of the real treatment being tested. Typically, 3 to 4 percent of those receiving the sugar pills see their psoriasis improve. So maybe Twinkies and Coke ARE the answer!
In all seriousness, healthy eating can make you feel better in your daily life, even if it has no impact on your psoriasis specifically. That’s true also for exercise. Thanks for writing.
Actually I find all forms of sugar fizzy drinks, particularly coke and diet coke, cause a definite flare up in my symptoms (p arthritis sufferer since 2005 – on enbrel since 2007). I thought it might be the caffeine but I am not so sure. I think leaving them out does make a difference.
I’ve found that alcohol, marijuana and tobacco can make my psoriasis have a flare up the very next day. When I’ve smoked marijuana it’s the worst. It might be something connected with stress, even though pot is supposed to relax.
I have psoriasis since 1976,and never found cure for it but realize that beer,wine,tomato,chocolat,creamy cheeses,and high in sugar foods, increase a lot the flare up. once I stop consuming them an improvement comes inmediately. thanks.
I’ve had ps for 10 yrs on my scalp and most recently the rest of my body. I do notice a huge difference if I consume alcohol.
Thank you “psoriasis cure now” for writing the article. Especially helping inform insurance companies of diet having no relation to the disease that we know of. We need all the well informed help we can get.
I’ve had Psoriasis for 3.5 years now and I find diet has a lot to do with it…especially bread, gluten, refined sugar, dairy and cheese all aggravate it and make it worse.
And exercise…especially when you perspire and get hot…aggravates it too. It’s a double edged sword, but I find getting hot and perspiring can set it off so I try to exercise without breaking a sweat.
Psoriasis is genetic…inherited…I don’t understand why people find that so hard to understand….stress, food etc. might aggravate it but it’s not the cause. The cause is a pre-disposition that impacts your immune system to over react.