Psoriasis may be deemed incurable, but you can certainly maintain a healthy lifestyle by keeping its symptoms under control. Follow these five simple tips to manage your psoriatic symptoms and lead a comfortable life:

Bathe with Care and Keep the Affected Areas Moist

Excessive bathing, chemical soaps, and extreme water temperatures can irritate the affected skin areas. Establish a bathing regimen every third day and avoid rubbing the psoriasis patches with a towel, pat instead. You can also ask your skin doctor for a medicated soap.

To reduce scaling, irritation and itchiness, it is essential that the affected skin areas be moisturized regularly. Consult your doctor for topical lotions, ointments or gels and apply them immediately after you shower to lock the moisture in.

Stick to the Medication Routine

Regularity is the key to controlling the progress of psoriasis lesions. Whether your doctor has prescribed topical creams, oral medicines, biologic agents, or light therapy to keep your psoriatic symptoms under control, it’s necessary to stick to a plan to achieve concrete results.

Consider Dietary Changes

You are what you eat, and so is your psoriasis. There have been a lot of scientific scrutiny behind specific foods that worsen the symptoms of psoriasis. Empirical evidence suggests that many patients experienced reduced flakiness and itching after cutting down on foods containing high amounts of sugar, processed flour, caffeine, and gluten. While the results may vary according to individual anatomies and psoriatic severity, experimenting with dietary changes would not lead to deterioration of the condition.

De-Stress Yourself

While stress may not be a direct cause behind worsening the symptoms of psoriasis, it makes affected people more conscious of their skin condition and leads them to scratch the affected skin areas aggressively. Stress also drives smoking and drinking, both of which contribute to making the symptoms worse. Experts agree that quitting smoking and heavy alcohol intakes can lead to exceptional improvement in psoriasis.

Expose Yourself to Some Light

Ultraviolet rays from the sun have traditionally been used to treat psoriasis. However, the method is now getting redundant due to the risk of sunburns and concerns over the combination of topical medication with sunlight. If you are also worried about the potential risks associated with excessive exposure to the sun, phototherapy can offer you an effective way to keep your symptoms under control.

Available as a narrow-band ultraviolet B (UVB) therapy, phototherapy offers a more focused approach as opposed to other light treatments. Respective to the kind of psoriasis they are dealing with, phototherapy experts also use another approach to make the skin respond to targeted light therapy by combining ultraviolet A (UVA) light with a drug called Psoralen. With relatively few side effects, Phototherapy kills the immune cells in the skin that lead to psoriatic lesions.