What You Should Know About Vitiligo?

Have you been looking for vitiligo remedies? If you do, it is easy to assume that you are being bothered by these worrisome skin disease. Vitiligo is not painful nor a serious consider that can threated someones life, but in our society where looks and a good skin is highly valued, this can be a bothersome situation for many of its victims. The skin is the largest organ of the body, not to mention the most visible. Any imperfection of the skin can affect a person’s self-esteem, a reason that a person who suffers vitiligo should never stop looking for cure.

What is Vitiligo?

Vitiligo (vit-ill-EYE-go) is a condition that causes patchy changes in the color of the skin. This occurs because the cells that makes the skin color (called melanocytes) are being destroyed, thus losing the ability to provide the body with skin color. It tends to progress over time with larger areas of the body losing skin pigment. Some people who experiences vitiligo can also see visible effects in their hair and scalp.

Who Suffers Vitiligo?

In the United States alone, there are 1 to 2 million people suffering from the skin disorder. Most people develop it when they reach 40, and it affects both races and sexes equally. Moreover, people who suffer from certain auto-immune diseases are more likely to suffer from vitiligo than those who do not. There is no recent study to prove why vitiligo is connected with these diseases, but most people having vitiligo have no other auto-immune disease.

Vitiligo can also run in families, studies have suggested that variations of number of genes affect the risk for the disorder. However, most of these claims were not confirmed. About 30% of people who experiences vitiligo have family members who are also affected, so this means that genetics has something to do with it. One perfect example is Michael Jackson, who is just one of the famous personalities who experienced this health problem. His case was a generalized vitiligo or losing pigments in overall parts of the body. Recently, his son Prince Michael appears to have white patches of skin under his arms that rose speculations that the King of Pop’s son inherited the disease.

What Causes Vitiligo?

The exact cause of the destruction of melanocytes is still unknown to researchers in the field of medicine. There are some theories suggested to be reasonable causes such as genetics, autoimmune disease, genetic oxidative stress imbalance, stress, harm from a sunburn or skin cut, chemical exposure, and neural causes.

Vitiligo Symptoms

Signs of vitiligo can be spotted by the patient himself through the presence of the white patches that appears in some areas of the skin. Most of the time, these patches becomes more noticeable when exposed to the sun.

At first, vitiligo starts just a simple spot just a little paler to the regular color of the skin. However, gradually the spot becomes lighter until it reaches the white color. The shape of these patches are irregular and can sometimes be itchy and inflamed.