Psoriasis
What is Psoriasis?
It is a common skin condition that at sometime and to a varying extent, affects well over a million-and-a-half people in the United Kingdom and Ireland and approximately eighty million people Worldwide.
Psoriasis is in simple terms only a vast acceleration of the usual replacement processes of the skin. Normally a skin cell matures in twenty one to forty days during its passage to the surface where a constant invisible shedding of dead cells, as scales takes place. Psoriatic cells, however, are believed to turn over in two to three days and in such chaotic profusion that even live cells reach the surface and accumulate with the dead ones in visible layers. It appears as raised red patches of skin covered with silvery scales. It can occur on any part of the body, although knees, elbows and the scalp are usual sites. There is often accompanying irritation.
It cannot be caught from other people, nor can it be transferred from one part of the body to another.