From people.com
From visible symptoms and painful flares to unexpected lessons in self-care, three people share the realities of living with psoriasis
NEED TO KNOW
- Psoriasis affects 7.5 million people in the U.S. and can impact skin, nails, and joints differently for everyone
- Three individuals share their journeys with psoriasis, from delayed diagnoses to managing triggers and emotional challenges
- Experts and patients emphasize the importance of mental health, stress management, and personalized care in treatment approaches
Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the immune system that affects nearly 7.5 million people in the U.S. While it’s known for causing visible patches and plaques on the skin, the condition can also affect nails and joints, with symptoms varying widely from person to person.
PEOPLE spoke with three people about their own experiences with psoriasis, including childhood diagnoses, years-long searches for answers, tips for managing triggers, and learning to live more comfortably in their skin.
Megan Ixim Was Diagnosed With Psoriasis at 13. Now 35, She Says ‘There Was Nothing to Be Ashamed Of’
Megan Ixim
When Megan Ixim was 13, her entire scalp developed flaky patches of skin that would bleed when she brushed her hair. Her doctors suspected she could have multiple autoimmune disorders, and her mother eventually brought her to a dermatologist, where Ixim was diagnosed with psoriasis. But having an answer didn’t make growing up with the condition any easier.
As a teenager, Ixim says she had flakes in her hair and on her clothes, “almost leaving a trail behind me.” She was constantly grooming herself and treating her psoriasis, yet “it felt like I was never fully ‘clean,’ ” the social strategist tells PEOPLE. She also had visible patches across her arms and knees, which made getting dressed difficult. Then came the questions from other people, who would point to the scales on her skin and ask, “What is that?” making Ixim feel as though her skin was something “contagious or to be feared.”
More than two decades after her diagnosis, Ixim, now 35, says her biggest challenge is her psoriatic arthritis, which can make her feel like she has “the joints of a 70-year-old.” Some days, she says, it hurts to even write with a pen for an extended period of time. She still deals with psoriasis on her scalp and ears and has learned that stress and weather can contribute to her flares.
While living in Jersey City, she remembers walking along the water during a cold, windy winter day, when the sensation on her exposed skin was “comparable to holding a lighter to your skin when the wind would hit any uncovered spots on my body.” For relief, Ixim keeps her skincare routine simple, avoids fragrances and harsh ingredients, takes olive oil baths and swears by Neutrogena T/Gel.
But after more than 20 years of living with psoriasis, perhaps the biggest lesson she’s learned is that the condition doesn’t diminish her. She wishes she’d understood sooner how closely her mental and physical health were connected, and that her diet could either relieve or exacerbate her symptoms. Most of all, she wishes she’d known sooner that she had nothing to be ashamed of. “Having flakes and redness and patches did not make me any less than,” she says. And now, she has a message for anyone who encounters someone with a visible skin condition: “People with visible skin conditions already know they’re visible. They don’t need your staring, your advice, or your questions.”
Travis Plotkin Spent Years Being Told He Had Eczema. A Biopsy at 38 Finally Revealed Psoriasis
Travis Plotkin
For most of his life, Travis Plotkin was told he had eczema. From childhood through his early 30s, the 40-year-old entrepreneur says he saw more than 20 dermatologists, and every one reached essentially the same conclusion. He’d get “a steroid shot, some creams, and be sent on my way — over and over,” he says. The treatments helped manage the severe itching at best, but “it never actually treated what I had.”
It wasn’t until 2018, after Plotkin finally had access to specialists, that a dermatologist at California Coastal Dermatology asked him a question no doctor had asked before: Had he ever had a biopsy? He hadn’t. The biopsy came back as psoriasis, finally giving Plotkin the right answer after years of being treated for the wrong conditions. During his follow-up, his dermatologist also connected the joint and spinal pain he’d experienced for most of his life to psoriatic arthritis — pain Plotkin had always chalked up to his weight, which at its highest reached 330 lbs.. By then, the physical toll had been immense. The itching was so severe that he says he would “literally tear off layers of skin,” while years of struggling with his health took an emotional toll, too.
At that point, Plotkin says, he was deeply depressed and broke down to his wife and parents more than once, telling them, “I don’t know how much longer I can live with the pain.” Even after finding the right specialists and starting a biologic medication that gave him “about three good weeks a month,” he says, “one week was still brutal.”
He kept telling his family how hard he was working (seeing specialists and nutritionists and going to the gym) while still dealing with pain. Then his father pointed out something Plotkin hadn’t fully confronted: Stress was one of his known psoriasis triggers, yet he’d never talked about how he was actually managing that stress. His dad asked why he hadn’t tried therapy. “It was like a light bulb went off,” Plotkin tells PEOPLE. About a year after starting therapy, and 145 lbs. lighter, he says he is now pain-free and flare-free.
Plotkin’s experience has changed the way he thinks about treating psoriasis, and about asking for help. “As a man, it’s hard to admit you need mental help, especially when your own mind can trigger a flare-up,” he says. Looking back, he wishes he’d been properly diagnosed as a child and started therapy much sooner. “I wish I’d started therapy the day I was diagnosed instead of years later,” he says.
Plotkin also wishes his doctors had been more willing to question the original diagnosis. “Doctors should check their egos at the door, lean into modern medicine, and treat patients like people,” he says, emphasizing that a biopsy could have given him the right answer much earlier. Now, he wants other people with psoriasis who are still struggling to know that a difficult treatment journey doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve run out of options.
“Treatment keeps improving,” he says, adding that he remains on the medication as well. “Even if you have the right diagnosis and you’re still struggling, better options are coming. That’s the message I’d want other people to hold onto.”
Nicole Cruz Says Her Psoriasis Taught Her to Listen to Her Body: ‘It’s Annoying as Hell, But [There’s a] Silver Lining’
Nicole Cruz first noticed something was off with her skin during her junior year of college, when an itchy patch appeared behind her ear and simply wouldn’t go away. “I just thought it’ll go away eventually,” Cruz, now a speaker and executive coach, tells PEOPLE. But during a particularly stressful period in college — including a serious health scare that left her bedridden for a month — her symptoms became harder to ignore.
Cruz, 42, eventually learned in her 30s that she had Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune condition, and says psoriasis is how her condition primarily manifests externally. Her skin tends to become more irritated during stressful periods, though there have been some unexpected bright spots along the way. During a year living in Italy, for instance, Cruz says her skin “quieted down.” She can’t pinpoint exactly why, but suspects it may have been “a combination of the walking, the food, and a lifestyle pace that was slower and less demanding.”
Her psoriasis also eased during pregnancy, only to become more persistent after she gave birth. When she’s experiencing symptoms, Cruz uses Aquaphor to help with the dryness and itchiness, particularly after showering. She also found significant relief after following a restrictive anti-inflammatory diet for about six months, eliminating sugar, caffeine, gluten and nightshades. “All my symptoms went away,” she shares with PEOPLE, though maintaining the diet proved difficult. These days, Cruz focuses on managing stress through practices including yoga, which she’s done for more than a decade, and daily meditation. “Ninety-five percent of my day is spent giving myself to another human being,” she says. “So it’s nice to take a breather somehow.”
After years of living with psoriasis, Cruz says the condition has changed the way she thinks about the connection between her mental and physical health, something she’s learned through her trauma-informed training about the relationship between emotions and the body, as well as research she has encountered on chronic stress, systemic racism and autoimmune disease. For Cruz, that connection has become something she actively pays attention to.
“It’s like, oh, it’s not just a thing I can ignore,” she says. “It’s there. And it’s visible, and I deal with it every day.” When her skin starts itching, she now sees it as a cue to check in with herself: “Okay, it’s really itchy today. What’s going on? How can I take care of myself?” Looking back, Cruz wishes she’d seen a dermatologist sooner instead of spending a year assuming the patch behind her ear would disappear on its own.
She also wishes she’d known earlier that psoriasis doesn’t necessarily have one simple cause or solution. “The thing that’s most frustrating with psoriasis sometimes is that there’s like, people like, ‘Oh, it could be caused by this, it could be caused by that,’” she says. Still, Cruz has found an unexpected benefit in having to pay closer attention to what her body is telling her. “The psoriasis and my autoimmune has really encouraged me to make the mind-body connection more,” she says — the “silver lining” to her “annoying as hell” condition, she says with a laugh.
https://people.com/people-living-with-psoriasis-stories-12041626
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