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My experience
I have worked with about 12 people who have come for Vitiligo in well over 20 years of clinical practice so far. Vitiligo doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t harm you but it is clearly a problem that has the potential to cause a great deal of distress. Everyone cares about their looks and when those little areas of depigmentation start to spread it has the potential to be deeply unsettling. Vitiligo actually affects a lot of people around the world and my sense of it is that it is a problem that is increasing in frequency. Vitiligo is quite a mystery. No-one knows for sure why the immune system takes up arms against a select few pigment producing skin cells, melanocytes. With this uncertainty in mind I want to share three strategies that I and other practitioners have found to be helpful.
The first is the essential oil of Bergamot. Bergamot oil has substances in it called Bergaptenes that have a strong ‘photosensitising’ effect on the skin. That means they make your skin more vulnerable to ultra-violet light. This is bad news for Bergamot if you are vulnerable to sun-burn and it is the reason that much of the commercial sale of Bergamot oil has will have ‘Bergaptene-free’ in the fine print (you need to carefully check that it’s not one of those that you purchase). On the other hand this ‘photosensitising’ action may help turn back on the melanocytes which are activated by ultraviolet light. The technique is simple and easy to sustain for the kind of time frame you might need to get this to work. Take any kind of skin cream, moisturiser, oil, basically any kind of ‘carrier’ and put the drops of Bergamot oil into it before you apply whatever it is to the areas of your skin that are affected by the Vitiligo. It is difficult to be specific with amounts here because each person will vary but as a general guide if I was treating an area the size of a large coin I would want 2 or 3 drops of the bergaptene-containing Bergamot oil to be in the mix of the carrier cream. For a larger area, for example one that covered the size of the palm of a hand, I would want to use about 8-10 drops of the Bergamot oil in the carrier. These are strong concentrations of essential oil and you need to know that for some people with extra sensitive skin these amounts I am suggesting here would be too strong. The way to go about this safely is to ‘patch-test’ your skin with a smaller amount and a weaker concentration of the Bergamot to see how your body feels about it first. Bergamot smells pleasant so is not a hard thing to have on you in that sense but it also needs to be understood that the action of the oil will not last more than an hour or so. You need to have placed the Bergamot oil in its carrier on the skin and be exposing the affected area to sunlight within that one hour time frame. How long you should then have your skin in direct sunlight also depends on too many factors to make specific recommendations here. How fair are you and so how prone to sun-burn? What time of day or time of year is it? Getting too much sun will be just as harmful as not enough. Let common sense be tinged with caution and above all be patient. This is far more likely to help with a small regular exposure of sunlight over a period of many weeks to some ‘Bergamot-primed skin’ than it will over a time frame measured in any number of days. This will not work for everyone, nothing does, but if you proceed with it carefully there is a good chance it will help and is worth trying.
The second specific recommendation is to use the herb Ginkgo Biloba. There have been two small but quite good quality trials on Ginkgo for Vitiligo to be fairly certain that there is something helpful going on here. The first was in India and the second one was in Canada and both showed modest but significant improvements in helping Vitiligo. In my own clinical experience I believe Ginkgo has been effective in helping stop the progression of Vitiligo and that is no small thing as I am sure I don’t have to convince you.
Thirdly is Reishi mushroom. There is something extraordinary about these mushrooms that helps people whose immune systems are going haywire. I and others think the best source of Reishi is JHS mushrooms www.jhsnp.com/index out of America, they are able to be purchased online or through distributors. Some kind of problem with immunity is certain to underlie Vitiligo and whatever steps an individual might best take to help their immune systems be healthy overall are the most likely to help at the deepest level. Read more about this in immunity health and consider finding a good herbalist. |
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