Healthy Live Everyday

Skin Diseases: VITILIGO (piebald skin)
Vitiligo has no other symptom but the loss of pigmentation in patches of the skin, with the affected parts becoming more vulnerable to sunlight and, consequently, burning more quickly.The area may be a single patch or a number of patches of any size with sharply demarcated lines. Often a permanent condition, vitiligo is usually slowly progressive. Generally there is no specific medication except protective ointments or lotions against the sun. Using custom embroidered patches, you can also spread the good news to others.

Skin Diseases: BALDNESS (alopecia)
The only cure for male pattern baldness (hereditary) is a toupee or hair transplant. The latter is unpleasant, tedious, and expensive, involving the transplanting of each individual hair by punch graft from a thick spot to the bald area. Despite years of research and large expenditures of money to cure this affliction all that has been learned so far is that it is not an affliction-it is the same as inheriting blue eyes or a long neck or pointed ears.

There is some small solace believed by many, including some authorities (perhaps they are bald themselves), that bald men with heavy beards also enjoy a superior virility, noting that such men have a higher output of male hormones. Eunuchs, they argue, are known to have a heavy head of hair and little or no beard. The validity of this concept has not been thoroughly investigated.

Male pattern baldness can start in middle age or in youth, often as early as in the late teens. Patchy baldness (alopecia areata) , ranging in size from a dime to a quarter or larger, is a different matter. After a few weeks or months the hair returns as mysteriously as it disappeared. No one seems to know much about it. Women do not suffer from hereditary pattern baldness. They can and do lose some of their hair, but it is usually in late middle age and follows a less definite pattern. However, hair loss earlier in life does occur, resulting from specific causes, such as pregnancy (the hair will return after the child is born).

Other conditions that can produce some degree of baldness in both sexes are high fever, syphilis, TB, and infectious diseases. If and when the underlying condition is removed, the hair usually returns. Hair loss in women is more often due to abuse-dousing the hair with rinses, bleaches, hair dyes, none of which does the hair the slightest bit of good.

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Other articles about skin:

Pemphigus
Lichen Planus
Contact Dermatitis
HIVES (urticaria)
Psoriasis

Psoriasis

A tenacious, recurring, unsightly disease affecting approximately 5 to 7 percent of the population in the United States, psoriasis involves mostly adults between the ages of twenty and fifty. Despite intensive research, the cause of this disease remains unknown. The few good things that can be said about it is that it is neither a threat to life and health nor contagious; but it remains, however, a very distressing ailment because of its unsightliness and discomfort.

The Danger: Psychologically only, except for occasionally associated arthritis.

Symptoms: Psoriasis first appears as small dull red patches (rash) covered with dry, silvery, or asbestos-like scales. The definitive symptom is a tiny bleeding point under a scale. The areas most affected are around the elbows, knees, low back, ears, and scalp. The small patches tend to coalesce into larger ones. The lesions heal without scarring. There may be itching. Fingernails are often affected. The nails may be split, cracked, discolored, pitted, and separated from the bed.

Treatment: Psoriasis is controllable but not curable. Remissions, which may last from weeks to months to years, occur about 20 percent of the time. More than half the remissions occur in the summer, generally a good period for this disease.  Although no specific treatment is available, a large number of different procedures are employed. The most consistently beneficial treatment, more than any other, is full body exposure to sunlight. Such topical measures as steroid creams and coal tar derivatives are often effective.

Recently medications derived from drugs used in cancer therapy (antimetabolites) have been administered internally but are dangerous except in very expert hands. Steroids taken internally are usually contraindicated because of their frequently dangerous side effects.

Psoriasis is an erratic disease that responds and behaves differently with different individuals-a medication that will help one patient will do very little for another.

Outlook: Modern methods of treatment have somewhat improved the outlook for psoriatic patients. Many patients have spontaneous remission, which may last for a prolonged period of time even after the disease has had many years of duration.