Psoriasis: A Demoralizing Disease That CAN Be Cured

Psoriasis is a disease that causes various types of inflammation and lesions on the skin that, at best, are sore and itchy, and at worst, unsightly, painful and disfiguring, sometimes debilitating. Its cause isn’t known, but it is considered to be an immunological condition, and there are a number of typical triggers including stress and infection. Because of the social stigma, sufferers usually try to cover it up – but it is not contagious.

It is generally agreed by the medical fraternity that there is no cure for psoriasis. But there are people whose psoriasis has been cured, or at least forced into long-term remission, including mine. The very unlikely cure-source is the pod of the African sausage tree, Kigelia Africana that has also been found to be “active” against skin cancer, fungal infection, eczema, and other skin problems. 

As a journalist, I know that psoriasis is a condition that has had sufferers screaming for help for a very long time. As a medical problem that relates to the immune system, it tends to attack the body and then never leave. My own introduction to the problem was via a larger than life, hugely successful (PR for an international hotel group) friend who had a child in the same class as my oldest son. I couldn’t see her condition, and nor could anyone else – unless she chose to show them. But as I got to know her, she confided that she had been to the Dead Sea to try and cure the disease, and was terribly frustrated that even that hadn’t helped for more than a short while.

Understanding Psoriasis

The US National Institute of Health (NIH) describes psoriasis as a non-contagious immune system problem that normally occurs in adults and sometimes recurs in families. The process, it explains, is an extremely rapid “cell turnover” that causes the cells deep in the skin to rise to the surface within days. This process would normally take about a month. Causes, they say, can be anything from medication or stress, to infection or even simply dry skin conditions.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes psoriasis as “a chronic autoimmune skin disease that speeds up the growth cycle of skin cells.” Identifying a serious public health problem, it began focusing on psoriasis in 2010, which at that stage was estimated to affect about 6.7 million adult Americans. Two years later, the CDC published an “analysis” that stated amongst other things that psoriasis was “significantly associated with” both smoking and obesity. However the published paper stated that there was a need for further research.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported at its 67^th World Health Assembly in May 2014 that psoriasis was “a chronic, noncommunicable, painful, disfiguring, and disabling disease for which there is no cure”. It also stated that people suffering from psoriasis were more at risk for a various co-morbid conditions including obesity, diabetes, stroke and various cardiovascular diseases, ulcerative colitis and liver disease. Further, the report said, as many as 42 percent of psoriasis suffers would develop psoriatic arthritis that would at very least cause pain, swelling and stiffness, and at worst would develop into permanent disability and disfigurement.

READ Biologics - New Treatment Hope For Psoriasis Sufferers

So how could there possibly be a cure for this supposedly incurable condition? I believe the key is in the very words of WHO; after all quick diagnosis and proper treatment is the key to just about any cure for disease. 

Kigelia: An Underestimated Source for Treating Skin Diseases

My Psoriasis

Although a reasonably ardent believer in alternative medicine, when I realized I had developed a chronic skin condition that was probably psoriasis, I went to a general practitioner. When the expensive skin medications he prescribed failed to make any difference to the condition, I realized I would probably have go to a specialist dermatologist. But first I did some serious research – and it paid off.

Clearly there is no agreement on what causes psoriasis in general, but the direct trigger for me was another skin condition that had resulted from a series of very unpleasant insect bites. It had happened before, and I knew immediately that the rash I had developed all over my body was from a mite that burrows into hay and straw. All I had done was to sit on a bale of contaminated hay! I immediately self-medicated with a parasiticide soap that contains five percent Monosulfiram, and is manufactured to prevent and treat a range of skin infections and rashes from severe eczema to scabies and head and body lice. It eased the itching, but didn’t clear the rash. I also used tried-and-tested Calamine lotion and antihistamine cream for the itching.

It was some months later that I went to the doctor. The cream prescribed by him was very expensive and even less effective than the soap had been. After a repeat prescription, and still no results, I started my Internet search and found a relatively inexpensive, local (made-in-South-Africa where I live) product online that I later discovered was made from Kigelia Africana. 

It is totally natural and supplied as a colorless solution (that is sprayed on) and a lotion that is rubbed into the skin once the solution has dried. The Kigelia solution is absorbed into the skin and it starts to repair it at a cellular level, from beneath the skin, getting rid of toxins and harmful bacteria. Rather than keeping the skin moist (which several other remedies do), this particular treatment allows oxygen to get into the skin while it is kept as dry as possible. However patients are advised to use a nourishing skin cream to ensure the skin doesn’t dehydrate.

My personal experiment started early in 2008 (above left), and it wasn’t quick. I wore long skirts and jeans 24:7 because my skin looked so horrible. While the original rash was all over my body, the resulting psoriasis was mainly on my legs. But it was when it started appearing under my arms and on my elbows, that I became seriously alarmed.

The solution and lotion seemed far too simple, but I persisted daily for more than two years … watching as it slowly started to abate (above center, taken March 2010). But a typical characteristic of psoriasis is that it is variable and tends to change its form, flare up, improve, even go into remission, and then flare up again. As the raised red skin on my legs shrunk, I began to get lesions on the palms of my hands. At one stage they were so bad they were open and seeping. Eventually the inflammation on my legs and body disappeared completely, and it has never reappeared. The picture (above right) was taken this week (2015). My hands eventually also cleared, though inflammation on them was triggered as recently as last December, but only for a few days (left).

Other Success Stories

The Kigelia Africana product I used was the brainchild of two long-term psoriasis sufferers. Brigitte Ramsay had suffered from the condition for 16 years, mostly triggered by stress when she discovered the plant extract. In 1997 she experimented on herself, and it took two months for the condition to vanish. Dr Joey Gobind, a general practitioner in Johannesburg, had also suffered for many years. He tried Brigitte’s original homemade remedy and started treating his patients with the same concoction. Then the pair got serious, trademarked their products and started a very low-key business, selling only via the Internet from February 1994. The business is still low-key, and they claim only to have enabled sufferers to go into remission, some, including Brigitte, permanently.

Most of the patients who have subsequently used their Kigelia Africana solution and lotion had previously tried cortisone creams and other prescription medicines. Photographs and Testimonials on their website tell the story. 

But theirs is not the only product that works both to reverse psoriasis and inhibit chronic skin conditions. As long ago as 1995, a British study by a Kings College, London biochemist. Dr Peter Houghton, found that an extract from Kigelia was able to counter skin cancer and melanoma cells. Researchers have also found that the plant has antifungal and antibacterial properties, amongst other things.

Kigelia Africana and Its Medicinal Uses

Common throughout Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and other parts of southern Africa, the sausage tree is quite a plain-looking tree, except for its extraordinary sausage-shaped fruit that is huge. Not only do the enormous pods weigh a lot, they are also almost impossible to cut.

READ The Ten Most Common Psoriasis Triggers

Various parts of the tree, including the pod, are commonly used for traditional African medicine for just about anything from treating constipation and gynecological disorders, to sores and snake bites.