Four vitiligo Options

Last Updated on 25th August 2023 by Caroline Haye

Many vitiligo opportunities

The “four vitiligo options” of the title suggests you are going to read about four treatments. But that’s not what this post is about. It’s more about how we react to having vitiligo. Of course, the one option we don’t have open to us is not to have it in the first place. We don’t get a choice about that. But we do get to choose how we react.

I used to think that there was one single cause of vitiligo and that one day a team of scientists somewhere would discover what it was and produce one single cure. My assumption was that most disorders had just one root cause… So long as you were able to trace their development back far enough. However, my own recovery has convinced me that, if you can’t find a root cause, it is still worth tackling the symptoms.

If the root cause of vitiligo is a specific defective gene that makes some of us susceptible to pigment loss, then the goal must be to devise a genetically engineered cure. Such a permanent solution would render every other vitiligo therapy unnecessary and spare millions of people a lot of misery. But, until that day comes, it is important to realise that there are other viable options available to vitiligo sufferers… Including therapies that can halt and reverse pigment loss at any stage of its development (as my own experience proves).

“Incurable disease”

One of the worst effects of a vitiligo diagnosis is the feeling of helplessness . The feeling that comes from being told you have an “incurable disease”. This description, so commonly used by dermatologists the world over, is enough to depress even the most optimistic individual. It can feel like a life sentence, like doors closing and robbing you of control over your own future. But the fact is that you do have control and you do have choices. And, as I see it, they boil down to four options:

1. Embrace it and be happy (hard to do, but some inspiring individuals manage it)
2. Resign yourself to it and be miserable (not recommended)
3. Seek medical help (a lottery with very few prizes and a lot of disappointment)
4. Take charge of your own recovery (takes effort and patience but has the best chance of re-pigmentation)

These four options are not mutually exclusive. Most of us have adopted a combination of all of them at different times. But the trouble with allowing yourself to drift – or maybe even ricochet impulsively – from one to the next and back again (as I did for many years) is that it is unsettling. It is exhausting and gets you nowhere. Not deciding on a definite approach to your vitiligo is still a decision of sorts. A decision to be a victim for the rest of your life. Choosing a definite path to follow, on the other hand, can be an empowering psychological step. One that immediately reverses the balance of power between you and your white patches, putting you back in charge.

So which of the four options would I recommend you take? The one that makes you the happiest and healthiest of course. I can’t tell you which that would be (although it is pretty obvious which one it isn’t!)

Your four options

Number 1 might, arguably, involve the least hassle and the greatest level of contentment. That is, as long as you had the right temperament to achieve it. Not many people are truly able to do this. I couldn’t, so it was not an option that was open to me. (Besides, to ignore a symptom like pigment loss is to ignore the possibility that your body is trying to warn you of underlying health issues.)

Number 2 is only on the list so that you can put a big, thick red line through it… And, hopefully, never give it another moment’s thought.

Number 3 is the most common, and immediate, choice for the majority of us. If we develop symptoms we go to our doctor – it’s obvious. However, whilst some doctors are up to date on how to handle cases of vitiligo, the odds of finding one are random. The one thing your doctor or dermatologist is most likely to know is how to do is diagnose it. (And that is reason enough for making an initial appointment).

Number 4 is – in my opinion and in my experience – the best, most effective and empowering option of all. And it is the one most likely to bring you psychological and physical wellbeing. 

Taking charge of my own therapy was the best decision ever. One that has brought benefits beyond my own health and happiness. The reason I say this is because, in reality, there is a fifth option open to us. And that is to reach out to others affected by vitiligo and offer them the benefit of our own empathy and experiences – but that opportunity is more likely to present itself once you have already chosen a positive approach for your own personal vitiligo journey.

Vitiligo has been a journey of discovery

It is ironic that, during the 5 decades I suffered with widespread vitiligo, I understood very little about it. Yet in the 10 years since my re-pigmentation I have absorbed massive quantities of information on the subject. No doubt, this is partly because coping with the practical and psychological difficulties of living with the condition on a day-to-day basis required time and effort which left little of either to put into research.

Added to that is the fact that part of my coping strategy was to cover up my white patches and try to forget about them. So, obviously, the last thing I felt motivated to do was make a study of them. Of course, there is also the fact that publicly available information on vitiligo was almost non-existent during those years. And – perhaps most significantly of all – there was no internet for the majority of that time. So resources were scarce.

It was not until my unexpected recovery that I realised I was fascinated by the subject and passionate about gathering and sharing information on the causes, effects and treatment of vitiligo. And, if there is one thing all my hours of detective work have taught me, it is that it is complicated.

Vitiligo is complex: but this presents opportunities

Of course, almost any disease is bound to seem complicated to someone like me, given that I have no medical training. But, based on my observations, this ranks me slightly behind the experts and significantly ahead of most doctors!

Given how complex the causes and processes behind pigment loss evidently are, there is no simple way to tackle it. That’s the bad news. The good news is that, precisely because there are so many factors involved in this condition, it also means that there are multiple ways of fighting it… Ways of interrupting the vitiligo process, thereby allowing the body to start healing itself. And most of these therapeutic opportunities are available to us all because they are based on nature and some basic logic. A fact that allows us to take control of our own therapy.

There may not be much we can do about our defective genes but there is a lot we can do to halt the domino effect of events that eventually results in depigmentation. And by taking action we also stand to heal ourselves of many other symptoms that can accompany vitiligo. (E.g. poor digestion, poor nutritional status, fatigue, allergies, autoimmune conditions, etc., etc.) Not to mention the feeling of helplessness I referred to earlier.

Practical steps

I have written a lot about taking responsibility for our own recovery in my blog. (Mainly from a nutritional angle, since this proved to be the key to mine.) And I shall continue to write about it in as much detail as I can. But the short version comes down to this. Vitiligo – and good health in general – responds to the following strategies if you are willing to explore them intelligently, consistently and patiently…

• Compensate for nutritional deficiencies with both diet and supplementation (i.e. give your body the ingredients it lacks for manufacturing healthy pigment)
• Improve digestion by correcting acid levels and enzyme deficiencies (i.e. improve nutritional absorption and intestinal flora and heal leaky gut)
• Avoid known triggers (physical, emotional and environmental)
• Get sufficient, good quality sleep (this is something I have not focused on before but will come back to in a future blog)
• Get regular physical and mental exercise doing activities you enjoy
• Get regular, moderate sun or UV light exposure (so that your body can start utilising all of the above to restore normal pigment production.

So, if you have managed to stay with me throughout my musings on this subject, I hope that they have shown you that having vitiligo may not be something we get to choose or reject. But it does leave us with choices of how to react, both psychologically and practically. And that amounts to more options and opportunities than may first meet the eye.