Psoriasis Causes

First, understand that home remedies for psoriasis, as with other natural skin care remedies, require a two-step plan of action. There are inner components—dietary requirements that must be met and, almost always, gut imbalances that must be corrected—as well as an outer factor, topical applications to sooth and heal damaged tissue. Let's start at the beginning, however, with psoriasis causes.

Causes of Psoriasis

In order to best understand what causes psoriasis, it can be helpful to have a clear grasp of how skin cells grow, and good understanding of skin's functions. If you'd like a refresher in that information, start with Begin Within Natural Skincare's Skin Type page.

Moving on to more in-depth reasons then as to psoriasis causes, technically, and I quote from Nutritional Pathology and the Health Care of the Future by Stephney Whillier, psoriasis is “increased turnover of squamous epithelial cells, with high activity in the basal layer and no time for normal maturation and keratinization of cells. The accelerated rate of replication of cells is too fast for the top layer to shed normally andso scaling appears on the surface of the skin.”

It seems with psoriasis that there is an “imbalance in the two mechanisms that control cell division: cAMP is a messenger involved in cell maturation and decreases cell replication, whilst another messenger cGMP increases cell proliferation. In psoriasis, cAMP activity decreases and that of cGMP increases.”

In layman’s terms, one of the main psoriasis causes is the lower layer of skin reproducing skin cells faster than the top layer can shed skin cells. Cellular communication is working improperly and skin health is negatively impacted.

Additionally, research seems to indicate that a contributing factor to improper skin growth and shedding may be a faulty metabolism of fats. Many psoriasis sufferers have abnormal serum levels of free fatty acids, therefore consistent and long term dietary changes with regard to fat intake may positively impact skin health.

While the exact cause of this autoimmune disease is still unknown, psoriasis likely has a hereditary component that is then triggered by some external or internal stressor. As one of the primary contributing factors to auto-immune diseases is dysbiosis or leaky gut, it is likely that one of the contributing psoriasis causes is an imbalance of microbes (i.e. bacteria) in the intestinal tract.

Triggers of Psoriasis

The symptoms of psoriasis tend to ebb and flow depending upon the season, dietary intake and stress. There are, therefore, a variety of factors that can trigger a psoriasis outbreak:

• incomplete protein digestion
• impaired liver function
• alcohol intake
• anxiety
• excess consumption of saturated fats
• nutritional deficiencies
• surgery
• cuts
• other illnesses
• infections
• some drugs and, as already mentioned,
• dysbiosis.