Soap

I started my new diet in order to manage my psoriasis. I've done pretty well with that so far. I haven't applied medication in months and there is only a mild indication of my disease. Occasionally the psoriasis will flare up, but usually it's a result of eating something I shouldn't (like a chocolate bar).

In this whole process, the key thing I learned is that I my disease is sensitive to stress, and there are 4 sources of stress in my life. Food and environment, exercise (or lack thereof), sleep (or lack thereof), and work. My changed diet has helped to manage a huge portion of my stress by eliminating foods which stress my body out (i.e. eliminating foods which cause an inflammatory response). Getting a CPAP helped significantly with my sleep, but I still do not get enough quality sleep, yet. I get moderate exercise (30 minutes at least twice a week) so my body puts out hormones which help me counteract other sources of stress (e.g. work).

Changing my diet helped tremendously with my psoriasis, but I haven't seen a complete remission. Earlier in this process I was nearly to the point of no longer needing medication, but my psoriasis wasn't clearing up enough, yet. I was pretty sure that I had eliminated all inflammatory foods from my diet so I was searching for other things in my environment which might be causing a reaction.

One day I was looking for soap for my shower and I noticed that the bar soap I usually buy employs "sodium palm kernelate" as a primary ingredient. The word "kernel" means seed, which suggested to me that it was actually a palm seed oil. I looked it up and sure enough, it's derived from palm seed oil.

Uh oh.

I looked at all of the other bar soaps on the shelves, including those for sensitive skin, and found that all of them use "sodium palm kernelate". Ugh. It must be an industry-wide standard which is significantly cheaper than beef tallow.

So I immediately switched to using body washes. But it took a while to find one which didn't appear to use a pro-inflammatory ingredient. I started to see further improvement in my symptoms. Up until this point I was using medication weekly, although at a lower dosage than I use to. After my switch to a body wash I would now apply meds about once per month.

But I didn't stop searching for a better body wash. One day I decided to look through Amazon and see what kinds of unscented body washes were available and compatible with my diet. There were hundreds of options, but to my amazement almost none of them were entirely compatible with my diet. They almost always use some sort of corn-derived ingredients, soy-derived ingredients, or nut, seed, or kernel oils (for example, "shea butter" is a kernel oil).

However, most of the way through the search results I was able to find a single option which fit the bill for me: Alevia Ensymatic Body Cleanse.

After switching to that as my body wash I no longer apply medication at all. I haven't for at least 4 months now. As mentioned earlier, I still have some symptoms, but I expect that those are related to other stresses in my life (e.g. low sleep quality and work stress).