What is Vitiligo?

Vitiligo is a skin disorder that causes patches of white skin to appear on different parts of the body.  It can occur in anyone, and affects all races and both genders equally. Worldwide, about 100 million people suffer from this condition and its prevalence in the United States is estimated to be around 1%.

What Causes Vitiligo?

In vitiligo, the cells responsible for giving the skin's its color (the melanocytes) are destroyed, hence the appearance of white patches. There may be several factors that can cause these cells to be destroyed, and sometimes the exact cause is unknown. It is believed that vitiligo may be an autoimmune disease, which causes the immune system to start attacking the melanocytes. It can also arise due to a disorder in the melanocytes themselves, causing them to trigger pathways that result in 'cell suicide'. Some researchers also believe that sunburn and chronic stress can cause vitiligo.

Symptoms of Vitiligo

The main symptoms of vitiligo are white patches on the skin. These patches often spread and become larger with time. The rate of spreading is highly variable - some people report very quick spreading while in others they spread slowly over several years. These patches tend to be found mostly on the areas that are exposed to the sun, such as the hands, feet, face and around the lips. However, they are also commonly found in the armpits and groin, at the navel, in the genital area, and at the nostrils. In addition, people with vitiligo often suffer from early graying of the hair.

Diagnosis of Vitiligo

White patches of skin are tell-tale signs of vitiligo, but there are other factors that confirm  
this diagnosis. These include whether the patient has a parent who suffers from vitiligo, whether autoimmune diseases run in the family, and whether the patient experienced grey hair before the age of 35. Sometimes, a biopsy and a blood test will be used to rule out other medical conditions.

How is Vitiligo Treated?

Treatment for vitiligo is still a highly-researched and changing area. Treatment will depend on the extent of the condition, and also how much the patient can afford, as many treatments tend to be very expensive. In addition, even the most specialized treatments are not always effective and are associated with a number of side effects.

Usually, one of the first treatment options recommended is steroid therapy and/or immunomodulators. However, both these pharmaceutical treatments can only be used in the short term and are notoriously ineffective and suffer from a high incidence of side effects. Another treatment option involves the use of ultraviolet light coupled with medications. However, this involves bi- or tri- weekly visits to a specialized clinic for weeks or months, is very expensive, and side effects include eye damage and an increased risk of skin cancer.

Yet another treatment option involves surgical skin grafting, but sometimes this causes skin trauma that ends up aggravating vitiligo even more. For very small patches of white skin, tattoos are sometimes used to cover these up.

It is interesting to note that as early as the 1980's, medical researchers had reported that they cured people of vitiligo using herbal extracts, mega doses of vitamins or a combination of herbs and vitamins. Several such reports were also published in the 1990s; for example, there was a group of Swedish doctors who cured patients of their vitiligo in just 3 weeks using only vitamin supplementation. However, nowadays such research has been hidden both from the general public and from the scientific community itself. This is because there is too much money involved in the more expensive treatments, and indeed vitiligo accounts for a large chunk of the pharmaceutical and medical industry's annual revenue. Doctors who know about the natural cures for vitiligo will not mention it as doing so will cause them to miss out on thousands of dollars from each patient. Worse, young doctors may never know about the natural alternative, as this research has been removed from all modern medical textbooks.

Due to the pharmaceutical and medical industry's wide-reaching influence and the money involved for all health professionals who deal with vitiligo, very few are willing to publicize findings that vitiligo can indeed be treated naturally, safely, extremely cheaply and in just a few weeks. One of these few medical researchers who dares to go against the current is Michael Dawson, a UK-based researcher and certified nutritionist who is doing a lot of work to try to make these findings available to the general public. He is the creator of the "Natural Vitiligo Treatment System™", a step-by-step guide to self-curing vitiligo holistically using an amalgamation of all the research done in the area together with his own research and self-experimentation.

Vitiligo Treatment

Vitiligo is a skin disorder affecting about 100 million persons worldwide. It is characterized by white patches of skin on different areas of the body, caused by a destruction of the melanocytes, the pigment-producing cells. Current medical treatment for vitiligo includes medications and surgery. Unfortunately, all treatments are notoriously ineffective, associated with a high risk of side effects and are often unaffordable for most people.

Medical Treatments

Medical treatments include topical steroid therapy, psoralen photochemotherapy, and depigmentation therapy.

In topical steroid therapy, you are required to use steroid creams on the white patches of the skin, and this is supposed to help the skin re-pigment itself. Doctors recommend that you use these creams at least for 3 months before any improvement can be expected to be seen. However, these creams are associated with a number of side effects and are not generally recommended for children or for patches of white skin occurring on the face, armpits or genital region.

In psoralen photochemotherapy, ultraviolet light is used to re-pigment the white patches, in conjunction with psoralen cream or oral medications. This is extremely time-consuming and you will need to undergo bi- or tr-weekly sessions at a specialized clinic for several weeks or months. This type of treatment is associated with a number of severe side effects, including an increased risk of skin cancer, severe sunburn, blistering of the skin, and eye damage.
If your vitiligo is extensive, you may opt to have the rest of your skin de-pigmented, so that it matches the colour of the vitiligo-affected parts. De-pigmentation involves the use of chemicals that basically bleach the skin. Side-effects include inflammation, itchy and dry skin, and extreme sensitivity to sunlight.

Surgical Therapies

If medical therapy proves ineffective (as it often does), surgical therapies may be opted for. Unfortunately, these are not generally paid for by insurance carriers, hence making them unaffordable to most patients.

A common surgical therapy for vitiligo is the autologous skin graft, wherein a doctor takes some skin from an unaffected area (e.g. the buttocks) and attaches it to a de-pigmented area (e.g. on the arms). This operation suffers from complications such as infection, scarring, and cobblestone appearance of the skin.

Another type of surgical therapy is special tattooing. Effectively, the doctor will try to find a dye that matches the natural color of the person's skin, and apply this dye into the skin. Obviously, it is hard to find a dye that matches the natural color perfectly. In addition, whilst normal skin changes in color according to different levels of sun exposure, tattooed skin won't.

A Better, Safer Option

Although very few doctors will know or tell you about it (there is too much money involved in conventional treatment methods), you can actually cure yourself of vitiligo at home using only herbal and vitamin supplements, combined with some dietary and lifestyle changes. Indeed in the past, a number of doctors and scientists had reported such successes in medical journals, but this research is now kept hidden by the pharmaceutical industry.

For the first time ever, this research has been dug up and used to compile a comprehensive step-by-step guide on exactly what you need to do to naturally and safely cure yourself of vitiligo in just a few weeks - without any medications or surgical interventions.