John Arts Abundant Living www.johnarts.co.nz

Today's column begins a series over the next few months which will look at health problems of our major body systems. The first system we look at is the one that looks back to us in the mirror each morning – our skin.

What we see is the outer layer of our epidermis. Beneath that is our dermis, comprised of tough connective tissue, and below that, the fatty inner layer – the hypodermis. Our epidermis forms a physical and biological barrier with the external environment. It not only acts as a physical barrier to bacterial, viral and fungal infection, it has a battery of chemical and biological defence mechanisms.

There are many diseases that can affect the skin including rosacea, benign and malignant tumours. The two we will focus on are eczema and psoriasis. Eczema (dermatitis) is the most common. The main symptoms are itchy skin with raised lesions and can be become raw and bleeding. The most common form of eczema is linked to asthma and hay fever.
There are two main aspects to eczema, firstly, the processes which cause the irritation, commonly environmental allergens, and secondly, the body's immune system response which triggers inflammation.

There is a wide range of medical treatments including moisturising, topical steroids and antihistamines. From a nutritional medicine view, we focus on controlling excess inflammation using anti-inflammatory supplements to try and desensitise the immune system and lower inflammation. This will often help any associated hay fever and asthma.

Psoriasis is another common skin disease. The most common symptoms are raised, red patches covered with white flaky skin. It is generally classified as an autoimmune disease whereby the immune system somehow identifies skin cells as something to be attacked. The body then responds with an inflammatory response. The effect is that excess skin cells are produced causing the excess flaky skin. Medical treatments are varied and include topical steroid creams through to potent immune suppressing drugs.

Nutritional therapy can really help psoriasis. The focus is building the immune system with high levels of vitamin D, enzyme-building trace minerals and various antioxidants, especially polyphenolics.

If you have skin problems you should seek medical advice, but it is equally important to understand that there are many nutritional strategies that can make a big difference. Give me a call if you need help.

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John Arts is the founder of Abundant Health. To contact John phone 07 578 9051 or 0800 423 559.