Contents:
- Medical Video: What is Psoriasis and the Best Psoriasis Treatment at Mayo Clinic
- What causes psoriasis?
- What can trigger psoriasis?
- Then, does psoriasis spread?
- Psoriasis will not spread to other parts of the body
Medical Video: What is Psoriasis and the Best Psoriasis Treatment at Mayo Clinic
For those of you who don't know psoriasis, you might think this condition is a contagious skin disease. Psoriasis is a disease associated with skin conditions. In fact, this is not from the skin alone, there is more that affects the skin, the immune system. If so, is psoriasis contagious? Like making physical contact or being around someone who has psoriasis? Now this is for those of you who are afraid of contagious psoriasis, you should first consider the explanation.
What causes psoriasis?
Psoriasis is a disease caused by an autoimmune condition. When someone experiences psoriasis, the immune system will make skin cells grow faster than normal. Skin cells eventually accumulate and make the skin tissue grow abnormally, so the skin looks thick and scaly. These health conditions often appear on the skin surface of the elbows, scalp, lower back, and knees.
The skin, normally takes 28 to 30 days to produce new skin cells and release old skin cells. While in people with psoriasis, new skin cells can appear in 3-4 days and continue to press onto the skin surface.
As new skin cells grow, previous skin cells that have emerged cannot be released from the surface of the skin. As a result, everything piles up on each other. The more new skin cells are produced, the old skin cells are pushed to the surface, forming a thick, red, itchy and scaly layer.
According to the American Academy of Dermatology, someone who has psoriasis has a special innate gene that can disrupt the immune system. In some cases of psoriasis, even if a person has an innate gene, a trigger from the environment is still needed to make psoriasis active and able to develop. But there are also conditions that are not influenced by certain trigger factors.
What can trigger psoriasis?
Reported on the Healthline page, people who experience psoriasis do not have the same trigger. There are various environmental and lifestyle factors that can trigger it:
- Sun exposure
- Smoke
- Infection
- Trauma on the skin, such as having been burned, or cut off, or bitten by an animal.
- Stressful
- Expose very cold temperatures
- Some medications such as lithium, blood pressure treatment, and iodide
- Heavy alcohol drinkers
All of these triggers cannot cause psoriasis without the presence of gene abnormalities experienced by people with psoriasis.
Then, does psoriasis spread?
Many people are afraid and eventually stay away from people with this skin disease. From avoiding physical contact to even isolating it. Yes, most people might think that psoriasis is contagious. Even though actually psoriasis is not contagious.
Psoriasis is not transmitted sexually, by mouth, by physical contact or even swimming in the same water as people who have psoriasis. Psoriasis is also not caused by lifestyle or poor personal hygiene. So people who experience psoriasis also cannot be said to have low or unclean personal hygiene.
Psoriasis is not like other skin diseases such as scabies or impetigo, which are caused by infections from bacteria, viruses, or fungi. This is a problem of genes in the body that are definitely not contagious. Unless, inherited from the nature of the gene that affects the autoimmune condition of the parents, the child will be at risk of developing psoriasis.
Psoriasis will not spread to other parts of the body
Again, unlike skin diseases in general, psoriasis will not spread to other parts of the body. Usually, this condition will be divided into several levels of severity, namely:
- A mild level, ie the disease only damages 3 percent of the entire surface of the skin.
- Moderate levels occur when psoriasis attacks 3-10 percent of the skin surface.
- Severe level, marked by damage that occurs more than 10 percent of the surface of the skin.
Even though there is no cure for psoriasis completely, but treatment can reduce the symptoms of this disease. To know which treatment is right for you, you should consult a doctor.
