Treating Your Psoriasis By Changing Your Diet

Do you think that changing what you eat could help your psoriasis? It's a question that is often asked by a lot of people on various forums. Would altering what you eat really make that much difference? I have no idea if it would or not but it may be worth a try.

Perhaps it might be an idea to keep a food diary. In your diary you could list what you ate & how it affected your skin. I'm not sure how accurate it would be in isolating what might trigger a flare. You may have to eat the same thing several times to make sure the food really does make a difference.

Some people swear that going gluten & yeast free helps them tremendously. Perhaps following a gluten free diet may help. I have not gone totally gluten free. I like my bread way too much for that but I have switched to wholegrain & wholemeal breads. I don't know if it has made a difference yet or not but it sure does taste nice.

Being alcohol free also will help. I'm not a drinker so I cannot compare what its like to have a flare up from drinking alcohol. There are many P sufferers out there who swear that giving up drinking has helped them. Plus a lot of health websites recommend being alcohol free when it comes to psoriasis. So it must be a good thing to give it up.

Fatty red meat & dairy foods often cause inflammation. So avoiding foods that may induce that would be a good thing to give up. Plus we know for many other reasons that too much fatty food is not good for you as far as clogging up your arteries by increasing cholesterol levels & blood pressure. Avoiding heart disease is always a plus in my books especially since high blood pressure runs in the family.

Eating a lot of fresh fruits & vegetables would be a good way to help improve your skin. Colourful vegetables are believed to be loaded with antioxidants. Which is something that we are told is very helpful to us in maintaining out health.

I switched to a Low GI diet about a month ago. I don't know if it has helped much as my psoriasis is coming back. I do know that I generally feel better than I did since switching. And eating Low GI foods hasn't been all that much of a change for us as a family. We were pretty much doing that anyway without realising it. We just eat a little bit more healthily these days.

If you do keep a food diary please let me know how you went. I would love to know what foods irritated your skin.

Healthy Eating

Gosh I didn't realise that it has been a week already since I was last here. I guess I had better let you all know what has been going on since I last blogged.

I saw Sarah last week and went through a few things with her like the sort of foods I eat and what I drink. Also if I have any digestive problems, which at the time I didn't think of it until we were part way through out discussion, but I had my gall bladder out a few years ago. So you could definitely say I have had problems there!

So from our chat we came up with the following plan for me to follow until the 1st of August when Sarah wants me to come and see her again.

• drink 2 litres of water per day
• have vita brits for breakfast (wheat biscuits) and sprinkle some oat bran on it & to have fruit with it as well
• snack: to have some fruit & nut mix or unprocessed snacks of some kind
• Ryvita's (a rye crisp bread high in fibre) for lunch with tinned fish
• Dinner is to be vegetarian. No meat whatsoever.
  

I am really struggling with trying to drink 2 litres of water a day. If I drink that much I don't like drinking anything else and I like the occasional cup of Caro Extra especially in the morning. I decided to buy a bottle of water from the supermarket, it's 1.5 litres, and I fill that every day in the hope that I can finish the bottle before I go to bed at night. It's not as easy as you think it would be to drink that much water. I don't know if it is a mind over matter thing or not but it truly is not that easy.

Now lunch time isn't always so straightforward either. I don't always have the ryvita and I have bought some wholemeal and multi-grain bread to help. It's much better than plain old white bread. I always make sure that what I have is fresh and as natural as possible. For example I will might 4 ryvita and on them I might have some cream cheese, avocado, tomato or tuna. It really is quite filling.

Snack time either in the afternoon or morning will consist of a handful of fruit and nut mix or an apple, orange or mandarin. Sarah also said to eat plenty of carrots but I haven't been doing that. Perhaps I should grate some up to have on my ryvita for lunch.

Dinner has been reasonably boring. Well with Mark and the boys eating meat I generally just have the veggies and perhaps some rice or plain pasta. Although I have skipped the fish for lunch and had tuna mornay or fish fillets for dinner instead.

I think I have been pretty good really with following this plan. I don't know if it has made any difference to my skin of yet. Perhaps it is too soon to tell. All I can say is at least I am eating more healthily.