Mucosal vitiligo Do you ever ask yourself pointless questions, like whether fish drink water or why men have nipples? (OK – just me then.) I recently asked myself a vitiligo question that sounds equally silly. Namely, do vitiligo sufferers develop white patches inside their body as well as on the outside? You […]
Vitiligo Blog
314 posts
A matter of quality AND quantity The word diet usually makes me think of hunger, restriction and abstinence. In the context of vitiligo, though, eating for vitiligo recovery is not so much about cutting foods out. In my experience, it’s more about ensuring you get enough of the right foods. […]
… is curable In my opinion, the most devastating vitiligo symptom is not the loss of skin pigment. It is the loss of hope. If you lose patches of colour, but still have hope, you are so much more likely to find a treatment that helps. But if you lose […]
How a neurotransmitter in your intestinal tract helps induce pigmentation Most people who have heard of serotonin probably know of it as the brain chemical that regulates mood. And many are aware that a lack of serotonin is linked to depression. What you may not know is that the vast majority […]
Is a cure coming closer? I was recently asked by a vitiligo friend on Facebook if I had heard of the drug #Tofacitinib and what did I know about it. I told him that what I had heard made me optimistic that research into definitive vitiligo cures was making significant […]
How I turned my bath tub into a skin-healing spa No matter what your doctor may have told you, there are many effective treatments for vitiligo. And many of them are home remedies. I used a combination of certain nutritional supplements and regular sun exposure to regain nearly all my […]
How would you rate your doctor? Back in the Dark Ages, before the internet, it was customary to rely on the family-doctor for all medical opinions, diagnoses and treatments. Our GP (primary care physician) was considered to be the infallible oracle for all questions biological and physiological and his or […]
The risk of D deficiency In my previous article on Vitamin D and Vitiligo I described the role vitamin D plays in the body and some of the reasons it can be helpful to supplement with this important nutrient. But in today’s post I am going to focus on a […]
Shedding light on phototherapy Ever since my vitiligo started to re-pigment some years ago, with the aid of nutritional supplements and sunshine, I have been fascinated by both elements of my recovery. I have written a lot about the nutrition involved but, until now, very little about sunshine or UV […]
Building hope and community When I first put my vitiligo success story on the internet in 2010 there were very few websites or blogs around that offered a genuine, personal account of what it is like to have vitiligo… And even fewer that actually offered any hope of recovery. Now, I’m […]
As someone with a keen interest in language, I believe that terminology is important. How we talk about things influences how we think about them. And how we think about them influences how we feel and, crucially, what we do about them. So, let me ask you this question: how […]
For the sake of everyone who finds #VitiligoProtocol a bit of a mouthful and bothersome to key into their browser, I am happy to announce that I have re-branded my #VitiligoSupportSite and #VitiligoBlog. I have shortened the name to something much more memorable. So Vitiligo Protocol is now The Vit […]
What are phenols and polyphenols and how do they affect pigment loss? Before you let the title of this post put you off reading any further, let me say that chemistry and biology were two of my least favourite subjects at school (joint second only to mathematics) so it comes […]
The Vitiligo 12 Days of Christmas As a child I used to lie to Father Christmas each year. When my mother took me to Santa’s Grotto and I was asked what I would most like for Christmas, I would reply “a Tiny Tears doll” or some other must-have toy of […]
What’s your trigger? A lot has been written about the possible causes of vitiligo. Scientific and lay publications on the subject often point in apparently contradictory directions. Some research points to a genetic cause, some to autoimmune involvement, others to oxidative stress, others to trauma… While some suspect digestive disorders […]
This delightful illustration of a human liver is by way of an introduction to this series of posts which I hope will be useful to all those vitiligo detectives out there looking for the underlying cause of their pigment loss. Until very recently I was only vaguely aware that vitiligo […]
Histamine and pigment loss In my last blog post A Vitiligo Mystery, I likened vitiligo to a convoluted whodunnit murder mystery, full of contradictions, plot twists, red herrings and a cast consisting of scores of suspects, one of which is histamine. Like all good whodunnits, the mystery of what causes […]
The weird and wonderful world of skin colour: part 1 It’s a pleasantly warm morning here in the north of England. (Yes, we really do get them sometimes.) But there is still some hazy cloud cover. So I am doing what I often do when I am at home this […]
Sun exposure and supplementation as part of a wider nutritional programme is my personal preference If you read my post entitled Should I Take Vitamin D For Vitiligo? you will remember that I ended by suggesting that taking vitamin D was a good idea… But that I would not necessarily […]
Some of the terms used in connection with vitiligo can be a bit baffling at first. Especially for those of us who don’t have a medical background. So I have put together a glossary of vitiligo terminology, featuring some of the most frequently used words. I hope you find it […]
… that could be making your white patches worse In 10 vitiligo solutions, part 1, I want to highlight five coping strategies that many people use, which could actually be making their vitiligo worse. (And offer some tried and tested alternative solutions.) Then in part 2 I shall cover five […]