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Comment by cwbriscoe | Hacker News Reader

I have had psoriasis for over 30 years now. The only consistent thing that makes it go into regression is getting a lot of sun in the late spring / summer. Unfortunately I live in a northern state, so over half of the year I do not get UVB from the sun and my psoriasis starts coming back in the mid-late fall. I have tried Vitamin D supplements but they don't seem to work for me. Even at high dosages.

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While not dirt cheap, UVB lamps/LEDs for treating skin diseases like psoriasis are fairly common and seems like a well proven treatment?

- https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.det.2019.08.001

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8634827/

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5597604/

Fascinating! Both my wife and my mother have psoriasis and they both say the exact same thing! They both swear by sunlight as a way to treat it. My wife has actually gotten Dermatologist-applied blue light therapy which has done wonders for her scalp.

I will have to look into blue light therapy. I used to have psoriasis really bad on my scalp. This might sound gross to some people but what cured it for me was to not use shampoo & conditioner every day in the shower. I still wash well with warm water but ever since I stopped using "products" in my hair every day, I have not had an issue with scalp psoriasis in over 15 years. I will take naturally oily hair over scalp psoriasis any day.

I wholeheartedly agree. Most people aren’t willing to go through the oily phase, but if you go long enough your scalp will regulate its oil production and then you don’t have oily hair OR dry scalp. Source: haven’t used shampoo in over 8 years; have beautiful hair. ha

FWIW my sister had regular sunlight therapy for hers as a teenager, it sounded essentially like a tanning bed at the dermatologists office but probably had particular settings or something. She also used a product called Coal-tar shampoo and skin lotion, not sure if she still does (hers has reduced a lot as an adult). I don’t recall vitamin D directly ever being part of her treatment.

Yeah, I use coal tar as well. I would recommend it over anything else I have tried. It is kind of messy and annoying to apply but worth it if for nothing else than to relieve the pain of dry cracked skin.

I remember some chatter on HN that sun exposure also causes the skin to produce nitric oxide, and that this is potentially under-studied.

My brother has psoriasis and lives in a northern state as well. He spent some time in Australia a while back (late 90s) on a research assignment and said his psoriasis was never better.

can you clarify 'was never better' please

More sunlight, especially UV = fewer symptoms

aha, so going to australia made him better? thanks!

Anecdotal, but I had psoriasis and I accidentally got rid of it. I moved into a new flat and, due to the state of the kitchen, ate junk food for a few days, then went the other way to eat anything but junk food. After a week my skin got better in many ways and I realised that I had quit sugar. So I decided to make a streak of it, for thirty days. Thirty days came and went, with added sugar removed from my diet. So I still eat fruit, which is fine to enjoy, but absolutely no added sugar enters my home under any circumstances. Sweeteners are banned too, even honey, because that is probably sugar pretending to be honey.

As well as the psoriasis there were other skin blemishes that I had always had, yet they had gone.

No added sugar means I always have to home cook, from single ingredient foods. There were a dozen other health gains and just moving is so much nicer these days. I haven't any time for scales, tape measures and so forth, but my belt does not lie.

I would highly recommend that you do a trial of not eating added sugar if you have the misery of psoriasis and have been given creams that don't work and have assumed it is vitamin D for that to work for a bit. I am no doctor and my experience is anecdotal, but this has to be the best thing ever for my skin.

Regarding the article, my skin feels naturally moisturised and I have no body odour to speak of. It turns out that sugar is really bad for the skin and I am wondering if it is this sugar in everything we eat that is the problem rather than the sun when it comes to protection from the sun.

My view is that suncream only makes sense if you eat a lot of sugar, and that restored skin, with no added sugar, is much more resilient. This summer I am going to put the suncream away and see if I die of skin cancer. Well, that is an exaggeration, but my view from ditching the added sugar is that the sun is not the enemy but sugar might be.

I do Keto. I think it does help but isn't a cure for me by itself. That plus a little bit of exercise does help me keep the weight off though.

I would definitely use sunscreen if you are in the Sun for over an hour or two depending on your skin type though. Sunburn = bad.

Do you think you'll ever move to a state with more sunlight?

I have thought of moving to Nevada or Arizona just to be closer to the equator. However, it is going to be hard to leave the PNW because I love hiking and backpacking. Maybe I should snowbird down south in the winters once I ditch work for good.

Consider a one-week trip to Hawaii in the darkest time of winter; supplementation studies have shown that the body can safely absorb and store 100K IU, that it takes about 2 months to deplete such an amount. Your skin produces 20k IU in 30 minutes on a sunny day at the beach (wearing a swimsuit). If you're in the PNW (or central Europe at the Southern German border) your skin cannot produce vitD from October through April because of how low the sun is in the sky even at its zenith.

I definitely should do more sunny trips in the fall/winter. I am going to try tanning in a UVB bed a couple times a week during the bad months this year. I have heard that it has helped some people.

> However, it is going to be hard to leave the PNW because I love hiking and backpacking.

I'd argue that the desert southwest is a great place for hiking though you obviously have to plan around the extreme temperatures. But the mountain ranges tend to be significantly cooler and a viable option in the summer. The big downside, more for backpacking, is that you either have to: carry all your water, stash water ahead of time, or refill at springs that may be unreliable.

Yeah, I have only hiked day trips in Nevada and Arizona in the Summer. I definitely want to try at least an overnight trip in the cooler months or at the higher altitudes. It is on my list of things to do.

Is it possible you need other vitamins to utilize the higher levels of D, such as vitamin K? Or perhaps it's not vitamin D related but some other benefit of the sun?

Perhaps, I have heard about taking vitamin K with D and have tried supplements with both. You are right, maybe there is something else besides vitamin D. Maybe something to do with melanin production.

I’m not sure I understand why living in a northern state prevents you from getting sun exposure for part of the year. Is it cold out? Sure. But if the benefits are as much as they seem to be for you, I’d endure some cold exposure in order to get that sun therapy.

It has to do with UVB rays, rather than UVA rays. UVB rays only show up where I live from mid April to around October. Other months of the year, the Sun is too low in the sky and those rays bounce off of the atmosphere. The closer you are to the equator, the more yearly coverage you get of UVB rays.

Interesting

The sun can’t be at too much of an angle or the UVB can’t get through the atmosphere.

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