If you have psoriasis, you may develop silverish skin that looks similar to scales. The skin underneath may appear thick and red. Although it most often affects places like your face, elbows, and knees, it can affect various other locations on your body, and you could even develop nail symptoms. At Scott Sanders Dermatology, serving New City, NY, Dr. Shilesh Iyer, and Dr. Scott Sanders provide care for this skin condition and would like you to learn more about it.
What Is Psoriasis?
Psoriasis is classified as a skin disease. It'll cause you to have scaly patches of skin that often are itchy. The appearance of the rash, however, varies from person to person and depends on the type of psoriasis they have, which our practitioner can determine.
What Are the Symptoms?
In general, though, you might have a rash with gray, white, or silverish scales. It may have dandruff-like flaking. The skin affected by the condition may become dry. It might also crack and bleed. You may experience itching, soreness, or burning at the rash site as well.
Keep in mind that these symptoms may not be all the time. Often, people with this condition have flares that last around a few weeks to a few months. They'll then fade away but will return when the next flare happens.
With plaque psoriasis, for instance, you may have skin that looks like it's covered in scales. Guttate psoriasis causes scales that look like raindrops on your arms, legs, and trunk. Inverse psoriasis causes smooth red patches of skin.
And bear in mind that there are other forms of psoriasis.
What Causes Psoriasis?
Researchers believe psoriasis is an immune issue where your healthy skin cells are mistaken for an invader. As the immune system destroys the cells, it causes more cells to grow rapidly, resulting in scaly rashes.
The exact cause isn't known, but researchers think that environmental factors as well as genetics contribute to the onset.
Fortunately, this condition isn't contagious, so you didn't get it from anyone and won't be able to spread it.
What Causes Flares?
Although this varies from person to person, certain triggers commonly occur, such as the following:
- Skin injury
- Smoking
- Weather
- Infections
- Oral corticosteroid withdrawal
- Certain drugs, like hypertension and antimalarial medications
Besides causing flares, smoking can make the symptoms of one worse.
At Scott Sanders Dermatology, serving New City, NY, Dr. Iyer, and Dr. Sanders help patients with their dermatological issues, including psoriasis. Treatment usually revolves around slowing cell production. Topical, oral, or injectable medications may be prescribed.
Call (845) 499-2017 today.