On 29 July, I received a message via Messenger from a WebMD journalist seeking professional insight into the management of psoriasis. Despite the short deadline, I felt compelled to contribute, as I understand first-hand the complexities of living with a chronic inflammatory skin condition such as psoriasis.
Like many others, I have asked myself difficult questions over the years: “Why me?” “Why is my skin like this?” “Why do I feel like I’m struggling with something that doesn’t have clear answers?”
For a long time, I kept my experience private due to feelings of shame and embarrassment. Living with visible psoriasis symptoms, including red, flaky, and inflamed skin, often led to discomfort in social situations and heightened self-consciousness. This is my personal journey.
Early Onset of Psoriasis Symptoms
At the age of 11, I travelled to Greece with my mother to visit family. During this time, I experienced significant homesickness and emotional distress, often crying at night.
By the end of the five-week trip, I noticed small, itchy patches developing at the base of my scalp. At the time, I did not understand that these early changes would become the beginning of a long-term skin condition.
When we returned to Australia, the skin changes had progressed and appeared on my arms. A visit to the local doctor resulted in a diagnosis of psoriasis and a prescription topical cream. However, over time, the condition appeared to evolve, and the initial management approach did not provide the outcome we had hoped for.
Exploring Dermatological Care and Ongoing Management
Over the following years, I consulted multiple dermatologists in search of clarity and support. Each provided similar diagnostic explanations and conventional management strategies for psoriasis.
Looking back, I believe this reflected a natural desire for answers and hope that a different perspective might provide new insight. At that stage, we were still learning about the chronic and complex nature of inflammatory skin conditions.
Living With a Chronic Skin Condition
Throughout my adolescence and early adulthood, I explored a wide range of supportive approaches under the guidance of different health practitioners. My mother played a significant role in advocating for me and seeking additional perspectives, ensuring that we explored various options available at the time.
These experiences contributed to my understanding that managing chronic skin conditions such as psoriasis often involves a multifaceted and long-term approach, rather than a single intervention.
A Turning Point: Exploring Chinese Medicine
A significant turning point in my journey occurred in 1994, when I first consulted a Chinese medicine practitioner in Essendon.
Prior to this, I had experienced a significant flare following a hospital admission in 1992, where my skin involvement became more widespread. During this period, I recall feeling overwhelmed, uncertain, and emotionally impacted by the chronic nature of my condition.
Following consultation, I commenced a prescribed Chinese medicine-based care plan. Over the following months, I observed a reduction in visible skin symptoms. While this was not viewed as a cure, it provided hope and a renewed sense of possibility in managing my condition.
Hope became an important psychological factor in my journey with chronic skin conditions, particularly during periods of uncertainty.
Professional Path and Clinical Perspective
This personal experience ultimately influenced my academic and professional pathway. I went on to complete a double degree in Chinese Medicine and Human Biology, spent time studying in Nanjing, China, and worked in a hospital clinical setting. I have since been in private practice for almost 19 years.
Through both lived experience and clinical practice, I have developed a deeper understanding of inflammatory skin conditions such as psoriasis and eczema, and the importance of a holistic, individualised approach to care.
Key Realisation
One of the most important insights I have gained throughout my journey is:
Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin condition that currently has no known cure. However, many people are able to work towards long-term management strategies that may help support symptom control and periods of remission under appropriate clinical guidance.
Being featured in WebMD was an honour, however my greatest fulfilment comes from supporting people living with psoriasis to better understand and manage their symptoms through a holistic and individualised approach.
Having personally experienced psoriasis for many years, I deeply understand the challenges it can bring, both physically and emotionally. For me, each person who gains greater control over their symptoms represents an important step forward in their own journey.
While psoriasis can feel isolating, it is important to remember that support, education, and guidance are available, and no one needs to navigate this condition alone.
If you would like to read the WebMD article and hear from other individuals sharing their experiences with psoriasis, you can access it here.
Alternatively, if you would like to learn more about my personal journey with psoriasis, you can read my story here.
Salubre’s Psoriasis Skin Range
Skincare products developed by me, Dr Irene Pratalos (Chinese Medicine), are focused on many of my own challenges around having psoriasis and scalp psoriasis. To truly understand psoriasis and all its symptoms, both physical and mental, you have to go through the journey yourself.
To all the psoriasis warriors out there, don’t look at this disease as a burden, look at it for what it is; your body letting you know something is just not right. Change the narrative you have been told for years by your doctors. It’s not your immune system attacking itself for no apparent reason, but in fact your immune system bringing awareness to inflammation in your body that needs to be dealt with.
I developed Salubre skincare to treat my psoriasis as I realised what my skin actually needed to improve and which healing oils, botanical extracts, and natural ingredients can deliver the nutrient profile my skin was looking for to become healthy again. Even though I still get a spot here and there, it certainly isn’t a flare up and I now have my resources available to me to help me kick it in the butt before it becomes a problem.
Read why each product in the range was developed:
Scalp Psoriasis
One of the biggest issues with scalp psoriasis is the oily treatment creams make your hair greasy, so you wash it incessantly to remove the oils which causes the scalp and hair to become dry. Another issue is the thick plaques on the scalp stop the healing ingredients from reaching the inflammation on the scalp, so you really end up going around in circles.
For this reason, I developed the Triple Threat Scalp Pack that solved all my issues with scalp psoriasis:
Nutritive Scalp and Hair Mask
The bentonite clay-based mask helps to gently lift and exfoliate the thick plaques on the scalp. Together with white willow bark (a natural salicylic acid) and botanical extracts, the flakiness reduces and makes way for the other products in the pack.
Non-Greasy Scalp Treatment Spray
If you are like I was, you find the scalp gets dry and itchy during the day. So, I thought the best way to tackle this problem was to hydrate the scalp without any greasiness so it could be used during the day. Less dryness = less flakiness, less itchiness = less flakiness. We all know how embarrassing it is to have snowflakes on our shoulders, this was developed to reduce the flakiness and embarrassment.
Enriched Scalp Oils
Nighttime is a time for deep hydration and rejuvenation of the scalp and hair. So many people suffer from dry and brittle hair while trying to manage scalp psoriasis. The Enriched Scalp Oils was formulated to hydrate the scalp, support the hair follicles, and hydrate the hair to prevent hair from falling out and breakage.
The three products in this pack support the health of the scalp and hair and prepare the scalp for the next stage. This pack is probably the most popular amongst our customers and the feedback has been amazing. The protocol is simple, by addressing the key issues with scalp psoriasis, it makes it much easier to manage and see the results you are looking for.
Salubrious Skin Balm
I can’ tell you how many people have told me over the years they have used paraffin or Vaseline to hydrate very thick plaque lesions on their body. I know the pain of plaque psoriasis; it reduces elasticity, and it can cause so much pain when the skin cracks and bleeds. When I was thinking of my experience with plaque psoriasis, I realised we needed to deeply hydrate the skin, but it had to be with natural ingredients. Products with coal tar, Vaseline or paraffin aren’t great and with a damaged skin barrier as with psoriasis, these ingredients are being absorbed into the bloodstream, which is not ideal.
This balm is 100% healing oils, preservative free and vegan (no beeswax). It is deeply hydrating and aims to reduce tightness in the skin to help with moving freely and reduce itchiness in skin.
Revitalising Scalp and Body Cream
Was formulated for the scalp and psoriatic lesions on the body that are not as thick as plaque psoriasis. This is a light cream which easily washes out of the hair and gently hydrates the skin on the body. It is a mixture of botanical extracts and healing oils with MSM and colloidal oatmeal to reduce itchy skin.
Healing Psoriasis with Mediterranean Cooking
While I was writing my book, Feel Great in Your Skin, I realised anyone reading this book would be really struggling to successfully implement the changes to their diet I was recommending.
Over the years, I have had many patients tell me that they were unsure as to what they can eat once I gave them the diet plan. Understanding these challenges would have transcended between my readers and patients, I asked my mum if she would consider writing a cookbook with me. Knowing how to implement these changes to your diet is so important in reducing the inflammation in the skin and effectively seeing the results you are looking for.
To my delight, my mum said yes, and we got to work. We set out to share all the recipes my mum created over the years when I was so sick, especially in my teens and twenties. We came up with 60 recipes that cover all meals of the day, including snacks, vegetarian meals, and desserts. We even have our own yoghurt recipe we make from scratch.
This cookbook is a great start for anyone ready to transform their diet as it includes recipes to regulate insulin resistance and has a glossary of all the benefits each ingredient has to psoriatic skin.
It has been reviewed as being the wellness bible for any psoriasis warrior looking to clean up their diet and heal their skin from the inside out.
Feel great in your skin - Book + CD
For the longest time I was ashamed about having psoriasis. I know it shouldn’t be but having rashes all over your body is intense. Perhaps I thought I was hiding it but deep down successfully hiding a skin disease is stress in itself. When I finally got on the other side and started treating patients in my private practise, I realised so many people were struggling as I once did and felt the same shame and embarrassment I did as well.
Having psoriasis is no one's fault so why must anyone feel shame or embarrassment? At this point I realised this could be something I could help them with. I know how awful it is to have psoriasis, I know the challenges around finding a doctor or therapist that can alleviate the pain, I know the fears around “will this disease ever go away”. This is exactly how I felt, so I decided to write about my entire story and share step by step exactly what I have done to heal my psoriasis from the inside out.
Shortly after, the Feel Great in Your Skin meditation CD followed. The one thing we all can agree upon and that is that stress makes psoriasis worse. I think I have met 1 person in my life that said stress made it better, but this was coupled with a very low-calorie diet which would have inadvertently helped with reducing the inflammation caused by insulin resistance.
In this CD, there are 3 meditations and positive visualisations that can help you calm the nervous system and help with reducing the inflammatory adrenaline and cortisol. When the body is in a restful state, it is in a healing state. All things wellness happens when we are calm and fear nothing. Meditation is the only exercise that can elevate us to that level of consciousness to release the healing chemicals in the body and create wellness. Making it a daily practise of 10-20 minutes will initiate healing within weeks.
