Psoriasis on Face- Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment

The symptoms of psoriasis involve patchy skin with a scaly texture. Additionally, there are painful symptoms to it like constant skin irritation and a fair bit of redness. While these can happen practically anywhere on the body, the symptoms tend to be a lot more pronounced on the face. Now, when we are talking about psoriasis on face, we are not merely talking about its physical ramifications. There are some social and mental ramifications to it as well. Therefore, we should know as much about it as possible.

What makes psoriasis on face different?

Just like we stated in the introduction, psoriasis on the skin is a lot more pronounced. However, there are some reasons for this. For once, they are a lot more visible. Secondly, the skin of the face is a lot thinner than the rest of the body. Additionally, it constitutes most organs of expression. Therefore, many organs are affected in this particular case. These organs include:

1. Skin that exists between the nose and the upper lip.
2. Skin that the eyebrows grow out of.
3. The upper forehead, also arguably the most visible part of your face
4. Hairline as well.
5. Your eyelids as well.
6. Your eyes.

Now, physical aspect aside, the occurrence of psoriasis in such regions is bound to cause some anxiety issues as well. This is what makes face psoriasis different from the rest.

Symptoms of Psoriasis on Face

More often than not, face psoriasis tends to be the result of scalp psoriasis. The psoriatic lesions that are around the scalp can extend to the face with time. Also, more often than not, due to the overproduction of keratin, a chalky substance accumulates in the scalp, a psoriatic individual can mistake this accumulation for dandruff. Face Psoriasis causes the skin to be dry, and the dandruff-like substances is a result of that. You can call this symptom of psoriasis to be the one that can be mistaken for something else.

Moving on to more apparent symptoms, they are going to depend upon the parts of the face that psoriasis happens.

1. If your eyelids become psoriatic, you are going to observe the following symptoms:
   1. The lashes develop scales.
   2. There is an appearance of sort of breakage around the edge of the eyelids along with a reddish texture.
   3. If the psoriatic symptoms have been allowed to persist for a long enough time, then their rims either turn down or up.
2. This autoimmune disorder does not spare your eyes (psoriasis). The symptoms that one can observe are:
   1. There can be issues with the visual fidelity of eyes. As a result of that, your vision can become poor.
   2. Inflammation of the eye, with dryness and a lot of irritation.

Note: Eye Psoriasis is also a condition that might develop during face psoriasis. That being said, it is quite rare.

3. The ears suffer the following:
   1. The skin around the ear can develop a scaly patch that with time, can become more and more irritating.
   2. If you let the psoriatic conditions to persist, these scales can develop into the inner year. To be precise, they can evolve into the ear canal and eventually can lead to hearing loss. However, chances of this to happen are fairly low.
4. The mouth can develop some lesions:
   1. Grey and white lesions on the gums
   2. Lesions on the inside of the cheek
   3. Lesions on the inside of the nose, causing you constant irritation and if you are not careful,can cause nosebleed as well.
   4. Lesions on the gums and the tongue.

Note: The reasons for the symptoms on the lungs and the cheek to be of such a texture is because of the thickness of the tissues involved.

Causes of Psoriasis on Face

Psoriasis is a condition that is an autoimmune disorder as well as an entropic one. The reason for the latter part is till this day, scientists are still working towards providing the right answers for its cause. That being said, many of these researchers have agreed to come to at two conclusions- psoriasis is not contagious and psoriasis might be related to genetics! This information becomes more prevalent when you look at the empirical evidence that suggests that there is a 10% chance for a child to have psoriasis if any one of the parents has it. This percentage can escalate to 50% if both the parents have the condition. That being said, this suggestion does not conclusively push psoriasis into the category of being strictly hereditary.

Furthermore, researches and recent evidence have suggested that following are the trigger factors of face psoriasis:

1. Smoking: Smoke inhalation tends to activate a degree of your immune system. Now, if the smoking is intense, this activation can make the immune system hyperactive. Consequently, face psoriasis might trigger.
2. Obesity:There are physical aspects of obesity that you should not ignore at any cost, “curves” or skin folds due to excess fats can accumulate a lot of germs. While infection cannot itself cause psoriasis, it can trigger the immune system to the point of hyperactiveness, and this hyper activeness might lead to psoriasis.
3. Medications: There are certain medications like beta blockers and lithium that can have a certain bad reaction from the immune system of the body.
4. Alcohol: Alcohol is also one of the trigger factors of psoriasis
5. Stress: as a response of stress, a hormone is produced call corticosteroid. While corticosteroid, in its synthetic variant, is useful in managing several symptoms, in the case of stress, these hormones are produced in an imbalanced fashion. Consequently, it can severely alter your immune system. As an indirect consequence of that, psoriasis can be triggered.
6. Deficiency in Vitamin D: Now, this particular risk factor is based on accumulating many years’ worth of data that suggest that one common factor that the patients with plaque psoriasis is lack of vitamin D. The year that this study was done was 2010. Several dermatologists have enforced the evidence by doing researches around this fact.

Treatment for Psoriasis on Face

Fortunately, as inept as face psoriasis is, there are treatment options available to deal with its symptoms. These treatments are specific to face psoriasis as the potency of the chemical used are set accordingly:

1. Synthetic Vitamin D: Ointment based on synthetic vitamin D, such as calcipotriene, can help with the growth of skin cells. That being said, it can also be irritable to the skin. Therefore, doctors have come up with a new variant of Vitamin D drug to deal with the sensitive nature of face psoriasis.
2. Low potency Corticosteroids: There are several lotions, gels, creams as well as sprays available where the potency of corticosteroids present is kept at a lower Applying these creams are good for you in case of face psoriasis. That being said, do not apply it explicitly. While it would make your skin a bit shinier, it would also compromise its integrity, making the skin more prone to bruising, and even bleeding.
3. Retinoids: this ingredient is present in tazarotene gel, and it can help prevent inflammation of the skin.
4. Coal tar: Coal tar is a keratoplastic. It means that it can help with shedding the topmost layer of the skin cells. Ointments with this chemical can help you lose the dry skin cells that are still hanging to the face.
5. Salicylic Acid: You can either avail these as over the counter medication, or you can take some prescriptions for them. If you want to get rid of the scales, then this chemical, along with coal tar form the perfect combination of keratolytic and keratoplastic. Eventually, you would feel relieved from the symptoms of face psoriasis.

These are some of the treatments of face psoriasis. However, if you have only taken these at face value, then you would not be aware of their side effects. To that end, there are alternatives or home-based remedies to calm the symptoms of face psoriasis that you should watch out for as well.

Living with face psoriasis

There are social aspects of face psoriasis, and all of them are ugly. However, your perception can beautify these aspects if only take into account the following tips:

1. Move beyond superficiality: Your face doesn’t define who you are.
2. Find people who you can share your feelings: A pain when spread can lower in its intensity. It a pseudo-scientific talk to say, the more you share your pain, the more you feel less of it.
3. Befriend your dermatologist.
4. Look in the mirror and repeatedly say “I am beautiful”. You say it not only to feel better, but you also say it because you should always believe it to be true.

Face psoriasis can be ugly, but only if you let it. Therefore, look for treatment and don’t forget, you are always beautiful.

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