Why vitiligo sufferers need more veg than the average person

Last Updated on 16th June 2023 by Caroline Haye

How eating your greens helps guard against depigmentation

It amuses me every time the media picks up on the latest “cutting-edge” research proving what we already knew… That vegetables and fruit are good for us. They are not just good for us. They are absolutely essential to maintaining physical and mental health. And they play a crucial role in warding off chronic disease. Like diabetes and heart disease, as well as cancer and dementia, to name a few. So it seems obvious to me that anyone with a chronic condition needs as much nutritional support, if not more, than most… Meaning that vitiligo sufferers need more vegetables than the average person.

It does seem laughable that it takes teams of expensive and highly trained researchers to tell us what mothers have been telling their children for millennia . Namely, that we should all eat our greens!

I am being flippant, of course. I realise that there is always more to learn about precisely why fresh fruit and veg is so very beneficial. And why green vegetables specifically have such a potent effect on our health and wellbeing. After all, it is one thing to accept that Hippocrates was right to attribute medicinal properties to a healthy diet. (See Is a Healthy Balanced Diet Enough for Vitiligo?) But it is quite another to identify all the individual vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other macro-, micro- and phytonutrients in each family, genus and species of vegetable and fruit… And to study the part they play in all the complex physiological processes of the human body! The more detailed knowledge we have about nutrition, the more effectively we can target specific diseases.

So, I do believe that this is an area of research that is important. In fact, possibly all the more so given that intensive farming methods over the past 60 years or so have resulted is very significant decreases in the nutritional content of our crops, as well as an increase in the residual levels of pesticides and other contaminants. 

Nutritional depletion of our crops

The net result of this declining food quality is, of course, that every mouthful we eat has less nutritional value than it should. So we would need to consume much greater quantities of greens and other fruits and vegetables than our grandparents did in order to derive the same health benefits. That’s bad enough. But what about the person with a health condition which leaves them deficient in certain nutrients to start with? How many buckets full of green, leafy veg would that person have to munch their way through on a daily basis in order to compensate? More than is practical or humanly possible, I would guess. 

Antioxidants are a prime example of this. Antioxidants are the naturally-occurring chemicals that fight off harmful free radicals that would otherwise run amok on a daily basis causing damage to the body at a cellular level. The high antioxidant content of vegetables and fruits is a key reason for their effectiveness in maintaining good health. They protect against chronic disease, cancer and the ageing process. Large doses of them are needed every day for the average person just to counteract the ongoing process of oxidisation that is an inevitable result of simply being alive. And for someone in poor health to maintain this status quo typically requires even larger quantities… Far more than can be absorbed by eating a so-called “healthy, balanced diet”. Which is why supplementation, on top of a balanced diet, can make all the difference (as it did for me).

The role of antioxidants in vitiligo

Scientists now know that vitiligo sufferers accumulate abnormally high concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in their skin. This leads to the inactivation of catalase and glutathione peroxidase. (Two of the antioxidants that would normally protect it from free radical damage). So the skin loses antioxidants at a much faster rate than would be normal in a healthy individual. And that loss creates a permanent state of oxidative stress… Which causes damage to the DNA of the skin and blood and to the loss of pigment. Unfortunately, research has not yet identified the root cause of these elevated levels of H2O2. But, until it does, it is pretty clear to me that one of the most important things anyone with vitiligo can do every day in order to offset oxidative stress is to consume high levels of antioxidants. And the best dietary source of those is fruit and vegetables.

In light of the power of plants to protect and heal, it is no wonder that some people recommend a vegetarian diet for vitiligo. And that, I suspect, is a topic for another blog. Personally, I have never stopped eating meat (although I prefer vegetables). And yet I have regained virtually all of my lost pigment. So the answer to whether or not a vegetarian diet is good for vitiligo is probably not as simple as yes or no. It may have little to do with the presence or absence of meat in a person’s diet. It may have more to do with the size of our crockery… Maybe the reason some people find a vegetarian diet beneficial to their vitiligo is because not eating meat simply leaves more space on their plate for additional vegetables and therefore additional antioxidants.

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