Over 50? Keeping Up With Your Healthcare Needs

Effects Of Alcohol On Your Psoriasis

2 June 2016

Nellie Ryan

Psoriasis is a condition that leaves skin dry, red, and itchy, and most people find that there are certain triggers that cause it to worsen. If you have psoriasis, you might be surprised to learn that drinking alcoholic beverages might be causing your symptoms to worsen. Alcohol is one of many things that can trigger this condition, and here are several things to understand about this.

What is psoriasis?

To understand how alcohol can affect this condition, it's important to understand what psoriasis really is. With psoriasis, your body will replace new skin cells every few days instead of every few weeks. In other words, your skin will grow much faster than it should, and this does not give your body time to shed the old, dead skin. As this occurs, you will experience outbreaks of psoriasis on your skin in certain areas.

The reason this happens is most likely a result of a problem with your immune system, although experts are not exactly sure why this occurs with some people.

How does alcohol affect this condition?

Having a drink every now and then is not likely to have any visible effects on your psoriasis, but drinking several drinks every day is likely to cause more flare ups. Researchers are not exactly sure why alcohol can cause psoriasis or lead to flare ups; however, most of the research conducted on this correlation clearly shows that alcohol does in fact have negative effects on this condition. There are several different theories on why this occurs, and here are a couple of them:

• Alcohol dries out the skin – If you have psoriasis, one of the best ways to treat it is by keeping your skin hydrated and moisturized. Unfortunately, consuming alcohol removes moisture from the skin, and this could be one of the factors is why it can lead to flare ups.
• Heavy drinkers often have depression – Drinking too much alcohol may lead to depression, and feeling depressed may lead to heavy drinking. The problem with this is that depression weakens the immune system, and psoriasis is thought to be an immune system problem.

It's also important to know that alcohol can interfere with medications people use for treating psoriasis. In other words, the alcohol you are consuming might be preventing the medication from working as it should.

If you are having trouble controlling your psoriasis, you might want to begin by reducing the amount of alcohol you consume. You can also learn more by visiting a doctor that specializes in skin treatment. To find out more, speak with someone like Henry D. McKinney M.D.

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