Education is King

Ignorance may be bliss but it is also very dangerous and can be the cause of great pain. This applies to so many situations in life. We do or say something that is terribly stupid simply because we do not know any better. The best way to prevent this from happening is to know everything about absolutely everything, so that we can always act and talk from an enlightened position.

This is, of course an impossible goal. We cannot possibly reach that level of knowledge, so we bumble along in life, tripping over situations that result from limited knowledge.

There is a way around this. It is to make no assumptions about anyone with whom we come into contact but to get to know them and their situation before we make up our minds about them as people. That needs us to keep an open mind about people and their situations, rather than to jump to conclusions then act stupidly.

I was on the committee of the Cape Psoriasis Association in Cape Town, South Africa, for a long time. I was also chairman of that body for a few years. During those years we on the committee came to learn of and meet various people who had psoriasis and who were very badly treated by friends, family, colleagues and people on the street. They were treated this way because those people did not know how to process what they saw in front of them.

There was a gentleman who came to our public meetings regularly. He told us that at the office where he worked, his colleagues refused to have lunch with him and would not even use the same telephone that he did. They were petrified that they would catch psoriasis from him.

He was no better off in his own home. His wife would not allow him to share a bed with her. She did not like to be near him with his flaking skin, nor to have the tiny flakes of skin that he had shed in the bed in which she was sleeping. She also would not tolerate the stains on the bedsheets that were left by the moisturisers and medicated creams that he applied to his skin to ameliorate his condition. She kept a special set of crockery and cutlery to be used only by him, he was not allowed to use the same as used by the rest of the household.

We also came to learn of a teenage boy who was ostracised by his family because of his psoriasis. They would not allow him to live in the family home, not to sleep or even to take his meals inside. Year round he lived in a tiny shed in the back yard of the home, in intolerable conditions, through summer heat and winter storms.

These situations exist because of closed minds and ignorance. The more educated a person, the more open their mind is likely to be and the more tolerant they are likely to be to others less fortunate than them. Those of us with psoriasis must appreciate how we appear to others who do not understand the condition. The worse the condition, the stronger the reaction that there is likely to be from other people and the more important knowledge about psoriasis becomes. Educating ourselves about the condition does two things.

First, it allows us to take whatever steps are needed to improve our skin. In the process we will become more healthy overall and improve our lives in general. Improving our psoriasis also reduces the visible impact when we are seen by others, so they will have less reason to be put off by what they see.

Second, it empowers us to spread the education wherever we go, into everyone with whom we come into contact. It equips them to interact with us with more confidence, in the knowledge that they and their families are not at any risk of breaking out all over with spots and scales. When they have that knowledge in their heads, they will pass it on to others, so the knowledge will spread.

There will be people who will not want to listen, not want to learn about psoriasis. Personally, I have never discussed psoriasis with anyone who did not want to learn more about it. If you do come across anyone who does not want to listen, who insists on treating you badly, move on and leave them behind. They are not worthy of wasting your time.

In your own interest, as well as of everyone else who has psoriasis, try to educate your family, friends and colleagues about the causes and results of psoriasis. I allow psoriasis to have minimal impact on my life and most of this is a result to educating myself and those around me about the condition.

Plastics and you

In recent posts I have mentioned the dangers of chemicals migrating out of polyester clothing and plastic liquid containers and onto or into your body. The dangers of plastics go further than that though.

We don't know which plastics present the most danger of leaching plasticisers into what we eat and drink. The plastics manufacturers aren't going to give us a straight answer, their business success depends on selling as much as possible of their product. The food manufacturers aren't necessarily going to tell us the truth either until they know that their packagings are truly safe because a bad answer will knock their sales.

We have to depend on government or independent testing laboratories, with no ties to the plastics or food processing industries, to supply honest answers. The testing that they have done has shown that there are chemicals that escape from the plastics, particularly under elevated temperatures and that this applies to many types of food packaging. Some of these chemicals are proven carcinogens, i.e. they cause cancer. Carcinogens in the digestive system are bad news, resulting in cancers of the various parts of the digestive system, most importantly the colon. This is where the bad chemicals are likely to spend the most time before being eliminated from your system.

The chemicals in the colon also affect the immune system, putting it out of balance. This can result in all sorts of autoimmune conditions, including psoriasis and arthritis. It is worthwhile to improve this situation by:-

1) Minimising the intake of chemicals out of food packaging

2) Getting them out of your body as fast as possible by ensuring that your digestive system is working properly

These chemicals may come out of any plastic containers that you use to cook or heat food in your microwave. That includes plastic packaging containing TV meals and other frozen pre-prepared meals that you either cook or heat in the microwave. Carcinogens have also been identified in coatings used to preserve the inside surfaces of food cans and have been proven to migrate into the food.

The problem is that we don't know fully which packaging does this and which doesn't. Until the food packaging industry cleans up its act this danger will exist. In the meantime I try to minimise consuming products that have been both in contact with plastics and at elevated temperatures. Many of these products are over-processed and bad for health anyway, so minimising them can only be a benefit.

Drink Pure Water

One of my tactics for clearing my psoriasis has been to try to eliminate any potential sources of unhealthy chemicals or products that might have been entering my body. I am quite diligent about reading any material that comes into my hands about things that are good and bad for health. I try to maximise the good things and minimise the bad stuff. You cannot do that without knowing which is good and which is bad, as well as what makes them good or bad.

One tends to believe that the water in USA is top class and that in Africa it is very suspect. My experience from living in Cape Town and Virginia Beach has been that the water in Cape Town is probably of more consistent high quality than in Virginia Beach. Here the water taste varies considerably from month to month. Sometimes it tastes muddy and other times it has a strong chlorine taste. I have little confidence in it being free of bad stuff.

We investigated a whole-house filtration system but it was very costly. We tried a small filter that attaches to the outlet of the faucet, which helped but is lacking in the number of heavy metals and other contaminants that it removes. Eventually we changed to an under-sink two-stage filter that removes a wide range of particles, chemicals and heavy metals and I use that for all drinking water, even if it is to be boiled. I think that the only way to get water that is more pure would be to distill it myself or buy distilled water.

Filtering your own domestic water from the city or county water supply is much cheaper than buying bottled water. It also gives more confidence about the source of the water that I am drinking. There have been a few TV programs and reports of investigations into the sources of some of the brands of bottled water sold in stores. Some of them are suspect or are just water bottled by a small supplier from the public water supply and fraudulently sold as spring water.

The other concern is that plasticisers in the plastic containers will contaminate the liquids that they contain, particularly if the bottle is heated in any way. This may be due to the bottle being inside a hot vehicle or lying on your towel on a hot beach. The toxic chemicals will migrate into the liquid that you will drink, which enables those chemicals to enter your digestive system and then every cell in your body. You can keep your bottled liquids cool to prevent this happening but it might be a long journey from the bottling factory to your mouth. If any supplier in that path is less than careful in storing the cases of bottles in cool areas and out of direct sunlight then the chemicals might have been in the liquids for days or weeks before you even buy the bottle.

Heavy metals and toxic chemicals can show in the human body in many different forms, from psoriasis to cancer or Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. There is no guarantee that any person will not contract those conditions anyway but it is worthwhile to minimise the chances by drinking good clean water, without dangerous contaminants.