Psoriasis on the hands impacts every aspect of your life. Simple, everyday tasks, such as picking up items, writing, typing, and washing dishes, become difficult to do. And when you do these tasks, they can make the symptoms of your psoriasis, such as cracks and blisters, more painful and itchy. Social situations such as shopping can become awkward when people stare and ask, "Is that contagious?". While there is no cure for psoriasis, the good news is the symptoms can be managed. Learn more about top nine natural remedies and lifestyle changes that can positively impact psoriasis symptoms, help control the flares and improve your hand's appearance.
What Triggers Hand Psoriasis
The hands are extremely susceptible to psoriasis flares due to the impact of routine daily activities and tasks involving hands and fingers. For example, when hands are exposed to soap and other harsh cleaning products when you complete routine daily tasks it can irritate the skin. Constant exposure to soaps and cleaning products can trigger a psoriasis flare-up. Hand psoriasis commonly affects homemakers, manual laborers, farmers, and people who do intensive washing of their hands such as healthcare, restaurant, gym, and salon workers to name a few.
Symptoms of Hand Psoriasis
Among people living with psoriasis, around 3-5% experience symptoms on their hands. Hand psoriasis symptoms vary depending upon where the flare-up occurs. Hand psoriasis can occur on the palms, fingers, nails, and knuckles.
Common symptoms of psoriasis on the hands include:
- Cracked skin
- Pain
- Bleeding
- Thick raised skin
- Itching
- Dryness
- Flushed skin
- Fine scaling with silvery-white flakes
Top 9 Natural Remedies to Manage Hand Psoriasis
Natural remedies and lifestyle adjustments are one can go a long way to help heal hand psoriasis and prevent flares from worsening or recurring. Here are the top 9 natural home remedies that help treat psoriasis symptoms and reduce the flares on your hands.
Moisturize Frequently
Constant movement combined with frequent exposure to warm water and cleaning products results in your hands becoming extremely dry. Using a fragrance-free moisturizer every day can help protect your skin and help it heal during a psoriasis flare-up. Don't just moisturize in the morning and daytime. Moisturize in the evening at bedtime.
Don't pick just any product to use as a moisturizer. Find a product, which is designed for intensive moisturization. The thicker the product, the better it is at hydrating your skin. Prosoria Rapid Repair Skin Exfoliating and Moisturizing Ointment is an ideal product for daily moisturizing especially if you have psoriasis. It helps smooth and soften dry, cracked, flaking, inflamed, and irritated skin. With daily use, it exfoliates and sloughs off dead skin cells which intensely moisturizes, hydrates, and smooths your skin. Using Prosoria Rapid Repair at night accelerates the recovery process and quickly restores the skin appearance.
Avoid Long Hot Baths
Long, hot baths and showers are relaxing, but they can make your psoriasis symptoms worse. To avoid making your hand psoriasis symptoms worse, limit your baths and showers to approximately 5 to 15 minutes. When you do bathe, make sure you are using a soap that is fragrance-free and uniquely designed for sensitive skin. Avoid injuring or damaging your skin by using a washcloth instead of harsh, scratchy loofas. No matter how long you take a shower or bath, always make sure to moisturize immediately after drying off.
Keep Your Hands Warm and Dry
Gloves can help prevent your hands from drying out when you're outdoors during chilly weather. If you can, choose a style made of natural, soft fibers like cotton. They're less likely to make psoriasis worse. Wool gloves can sometimes irritate the skin causing psoriasis to flare up.
Choose Creams with Right Ingredients
There are hundreds of over-the-counter products available. How do you know which one to use? Look at the ingredients and make sure it has one of these:
Coal Tar for Psoriasis
Coal tar works, but it has a downside — it smells terrible. It's either made from a petroleum distillate or pine bark and it smells worse than diesel fuel. Because of the strong scent, people don't like to use it for long — which means they need a new option for psoriasis treatment.
Salicylic Acid for Psoriasis
Salicylic acid tends to be a great choice for helping people with psoriasis on the hands. It's anti-inflammatory and lipid-soluble (meaning that it goes into the skin easily and treats the inflammation). Plus, it doesn't have the bad smell of coal tar.
Salicylic acid also helps exfoliate the dead skin cells away and allows new skin to replace them. So not only does it alleviate psoriasis, but it also helps to create new healthy skin in its place.
Creams with Turmeric
Creams that contain natural botanicals such as turmeric curcumin have powerful anti-inflammatory qualities that can help suppress the activity of inflammatory markers responsible for psoriasis.
Avoid Harmful Ingredients
There's a long list of ingredients you could potentially avoid in medications, but here are some of the main ingredients to avoid:
Preservatives – Try to avoid specific preservatives that affect the endocrine and reproductive systems and those that could be cancer-causing. If you plan on using the product daily, you may want to try to avoid parabens.
Fragranced Medications – Your chance of experiencing a skin allergy increases with the use of fragranced products.
Steroids – Studies show that both prescription and over-the-counter steroids when overused cause the skin to thin permanently. This leads to spider veins, easy bruising, and stretch marks. Understand the potential risk of overusing steroids.
Take Special Care of Your Nails
About a third of people with psoriasis notice changes in their nails. You might see pitting, holes, or color changes. Your nails could also start to loosen. Keep them short to protect them. Wear vinyl gloves when you clean, cook, or wash dishes. If you already have nail issues, wear cotton liners underneath gloves for extra care.
Avoid Scratching and Itching
It might be tempting to want to itch or scratch that tiny bug bite or small scab but don't. Itching, scratching, or picking scabs can cause damage to your skin which results in psoriasis flare-ups. If the itching gets too annoying, apply a cool compress to the area. This can help relieve the itching without damaging your skin.
Keep a Consistent Daily Skin Regimen
Staying consistent with your skincare routine is the best way to reduce psoriasis flare-ups. People love Prosoria because it is simple and easy to use. It is a once-daily 2-step psoriasis treatment system that does everything from treating, moisturizing, exfoliating, and hydrating. The best part about using Prosoria is with consistent daily use, you will not only notice an improvement in your psoriasis symptoms, but you may notice a decrease in the reoccurrence of flare-ups.
Add a Daily Turmeric Supplement to Your Routine
Think of a daily turmeric supplement as an enhancement to your psoriasis daily skincare regimen. Turmeric, the main ingredient of this natural supplement, is proven to be a powerful anti-inflammatory. It is known to suppress inflammation and helps to speed up the recovery process which helps psoriasis sufferers.
It won't do to just take any turmeric supplement. You want a supplement that is safe, all-natural, and high potency. Nuvothera uses micro-particle technology for rapid and maximum absorption. This technology makes Nuvothera 100 times more potent than competitor brands.
Finding a psoriasis maintenance regimen that works for you will help you take control back of your life. Start today by making simple lifestyle changes and creating a consistent skincare routine that is easy-to-follow and designed for sensitive skin areas on the hands. With just a few changes, you will notice a dramatic difference in the number of psoriasis flare-ups you experience.
Learn more about how Prosoria and Nuvothera are essential remedies to help keep psoriasis from flaring on the hands.
