This £18 cream is the one thing I can always count on to soothe my psoriasis

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When I was first diagnosed with psoriasis, I assumed I would need a ton of expensive prescription treatments or to overhaul my unabridged life in order to manage information technology. Simply I learned over time not to underestimate the power of simple drugstore creams and lotions.

Psoriasis is idea to be an autoimmune condition that causes the body to push button pare cells through their natural life bike too quickly, leaving them to build up on the skin'southward surface. That can result in a diversity of skin symptoms, about commonly plaques, which are inflamed areas of ruddy, dry skin, often covered with argent scales.

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I have one of these stubborn plaques on each of my elbows, one of which developed years before the other. For a long time I thought it was merely a dry patch of pare that wouldn't get abroad. And I guess substantially that'southward what information technology is. Merely it was finally diagnosed as plaque psoriasis about ii years ago. It was smashing to finally have an answer for what was going on with my poor dry, itchy elbow — and an explanation for why it wouldn't completely disappear no matter how much moisturiser I gave it.

But it was even amend that I didn't really have to change what I was doing to manage it. I'chiliad lucky that my psoriasis isn't unremarkably astringent enough that I need a prescription treatment, and I've always used a drugstore moisturiser with a off-white amount of success: I started with the Aveeno Skin Relief moisturising lotion, £ix, which I liked but it felt as well thin. Then I graduated to the Skin Relief moisture repair cream, £17.99, which is thicker and contains ceramides, and I've never looked dorsum. (To be fair, I do still continue the lotion at my desk-bound because the tube is a piffling less conspicuous than the tub that the cream comes in.)

I honey that both of these products are fragrance free (they just have a mild oaty olfactory property) and are just so, so gentle on this incredibly sensitive patch of pare. When it starts to look cracked or feel itchy, I apply a thin layer over that area of skin and rub it in until it's absorbed. Almost immediately I feel some relief from the dry out itchiness. And then within a day or and then the plaque usually calms downwardly, leaving just a reddish patch behind.

Buy it: Aveeno Active Naturals Skin Relief moisture repair cream, £17.99, Amazon

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4 women share their skin status stories so y'all don't accept to suffer alone

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