Last Updated on 30th March 2023 by Caroline Haye
She cured herself, of course
My last blog was about how antioxidant tablets may help to break the domino effect that leads to vitiligo. I suppose you could describe any disease as a process of cause and effect. But I wonder just how many dominoes there are in the chain reaction that ends in vitiligo. I get the feeling that there is a complex knock-on effect at play… One that involves genes, hormones, the digestive and immune systems, as well as environmental and life-style factors. Trying to determine which domino belongs where can be no easy task. Which, presumably explains the frustratingly slow rate of progress in vitiligo research. When I think about the process that researchers must have to go through, it reminds me of an old song… “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly”. (Look up the lyrics if you are too young to remember this!)
While researchers and specialists in this field are well aware of the complexities of the condition, most medical practitioners who deal with vitiligo patients are not. A frighteningly high proportion of these doctors dole out the same tired old phrases: “harmless skin condition”… “no cure”… “try this steroid cream or else just ignore it”… “stay out of the sun”, “blah, blah, blah”. If you are lucky, your dermatologist might recommend UV treatment. But, even then, the focus is still firmly fixed on the very last domino to fall: i.e. the white patches. Try to talk to your doctor about genes, hormones, digestion, nutrition or even autoimmunity and you are likely to be met with a glazed expression… Or else a patronising one.
In spite of everything that has been discovered and published about the causes of vitiligo, very little has filtered down to the doctors who diagnose and treat patients day in and day out. It is as if their knowledge on the subject has remained unchanged for decades.
As pointless as polishing a rusty car
Call me simple, but I think that trying to treat a vitiligo patch without first treating the human body that has produced it is about as pointless as polishing a rusty car. Of course, I am not telling you anything you didn’t already know. I think we all accept that western medicine is based on treating the symptom rather than the patient. All too often this means superficial diagnosis rather than in-depth investigation… Prescribing drugs rather than promoting healing… And reducing waiting lists instead of reducing disease. This kind of system is not suited to ensuring the long-term vitality and well-being of individuals with complex, chronic conditions.
I am not saying that this is a deliberate policy. Not being a conspiracy theorist, I don’t think that the medical profession is trying to keep us all sick so that they can keep making money from us. I am sure that the majority of doctors enter the profession because they want to heal people. (I’m not so sure about the drug companies though… They have a huge vested interest in keeping us sick. And, of course, they are massively influential in how doctors treat their patients.)
But the harsh reality is that the system has become a colossal industrial machine… One in which patients are sorted, tagged, processed, stamped and ejected the other end of the conveyor belt as efficiently as possible. This is not necessarily all bad. For someone with a broken leg this is a system that works pretty well. But for the person with a chronic condition that has no simple cure it is often an unmitigated disaster. Especially if that condition crosses multiple medical disciplines (dermatology, genetics, endocrinology, gastroenterology, neurology, immunology, rheumatology, etc.) This is why so many vitiligo patients end up feeling worse when they leave the doctor’s office than they did when they first walked into it.
Layers of causality
My view of the health system is not so jaundiced that I would ever advise against consulting your doctor. On the contrary. It is usually the very first thing that I would recommend, if only to get a professional diagnosis. But it is a question of having realistic expectations of what will happen after that. Because of the way our health system works, most doctors simply don’t have the time or specialist skills to drill down through the layers of causality in non-life-threatening, chronic illnesses like vitiligo. This is why most patients who actually do find long-term effective treatments do so outside of the mainstream. Some go to complementary medical practitioners for natural and holistic solutions. And others do their own research, using the trial-and-error method of self-treatment at home, as I did myself.
Getting to grips with the mystery that is vitiligo feels like looking at the end result (i.e. the white patches – or the dead lady, in the aforementioned song, who swallowed a horse) and working your way back through the steps that led there. Was it the cow that caused the old lady to swallow the horse? Well, yes – but she wouldn’t have swallowed the cow unless she had previously swallowed the dog, etc., etc.
Some of the possible causes of vitiligo
Some experts state that vitiligo is caused by melanocytes being either killed or “disabled” and they stop at that. Others offer the explanation that the loss of functioning melanocytes is a result of inflammation. But what causes the inflammation? We are often told that this inflammation is a consequence of various stresses. These include physical (i.e. injury or friction), emotional (mental trauma or pressure) and oxidative stress.
As it turns out, inflammation and oxidative stress are also associated with both raised histamine levels and autoimmunity. But which came first? Does it really matter which came first, when it comes to finding an effective treatment? If all of these conditions form a vicious cycle, it doesn’t really matter which one came first. The most important thing is to break the cycle at some point, any point… Ideally, at every point.
Some say that faulty genes are at the bottom of all these adverse reactions. (But that vitiligo only occurs in cases where an environmental trigger is present.) If genetics are at the root of the problem, you could liken that to the fly (in the ointment!). It would have been better for the old lady never to have swallowed the fly in the first place. But the technology to successfully edit “vitiligo genes” is not yet available. So interrupting the chain of cause and effect would seem to be the next best option. And, while there is no magic wand, there are ways of doing this that can help enormously.
In other words, it may not yet be possible to tackle the genetics involved. But there are ways we can reduce stress, histamine and inflammation, increase antioxidant levels, avoid triggers and balance our immune system. After all, it wasn’t the fly that killed the old lady. It was the series of events that came after.
Your doctor cannot cure your vitiligo but you can improve it
Well, if you have made it all the way down to this point in my ramblings then I congratulate you! You are probably about ready to eat a horse yourself by now. So I will get to the point. My point is that, for most of us, our family doctor and our dermatologist will not be able to cure our vitiligo. They may or may not be able to improve it. But the chances are that any improvement will be temporary (as with phototherapy alone) or may come at the cost of side effects (as with steroid treatments).
The only person who will be willing and able to devote the time to sift through the layers of causality that have resulted in your pigment loss is your holistic practitioner (for which you will pay – but, if successful, it would be worth it) or YOURSELF.
I chose to do it myself. This old lady (me) may have been unfortunate enough to swallow a fly but, thankfully, she didn’t rely on a doctor’s prescription for indigestion tablets to solve her horse problem. She was lucky enough to stumble on a simple home treatment that worked for her and this prompted her to take responsibility for her own health and well-being by continuing to learn as much as possible about her condition and find as many safe and effective ways as possible to support her own body in its efforts to heal itself. If you haven’t already read my story you can do so by browsing the menu on this page.
A strange quirk of fate
In the course of writing this post, I decided to go for a walk in the fresh air to clear my head. And, by a strange quirk of fate, guess what happened along the way?… Yes – I actually swallowed a fly!
