Friction: A Friend Or An Enemy To Psoriasis?

Friction is the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another. How can this be applied to psoriasis? Well, for those who are unaware, psoriasis can appear on your hands and feet. When wearing socks, shoes, gloves, and basically, perform any activity you can do with these important body parts, friction and irritation can occur.

Friction feels inevitable when it comes to psoriasis management

Your hand and feet become scaly with patches, experience excessive itching, not to meeting the pain of bleeding and cracking of the skin on top of it all. This makes it difficult to do daily tasks. Not being able to move anything is the worst part of psoriasis on the hands and feet.

Some days, when the skin on my hands and feet was particularly painful, I used to have trouble moving around. My hands were all bruised and looked like someone poured acid on them. They would bleed excessively. Luckily, I never had blisters on my hands and feet - that's called pustular psoriasis. Can you imagine not being able to touch yourself with your hands or put your feet on the ground? This would be difficult for me.

What can we do when our skin experiences friction?

If psoriasis ever attacks your hand and feet, I have a piece of friendly advice for my psoriasis warriors. Avoid anything that causes friction. Don’t scratch. You should avoid touching your own self unnecessarily. There is one straightforward rule for psoriasis: The more you disturb the affected area of the skin, the more it will worsen.

Try and avoid causing friction to your palm and feet. You must be wondering how one can avoid friction? Do few activities for a few days. Stop trying to walk around the world with dried and torn skin on your feet. It won’t do any good for your psoriasis.

Let's talk friction treatment options

Try and rest. Get a good night’s sleep. Apart from that, you can help your hands and feet with vitamin D ointments and moisturizers. Back in the day, we couldn’t afford moisturizers. Please don’t laugh. I grew up on a farm. My parents would use lard and a salve that was used on cows to put on me. Do you know what? It gave me some relief.

Try sealing the cracks with a liquid bandage and moisturize throughout the day. Thick moisturizer worked best for me. Vaseline has been in my life for over 50 years.

Be kind to your psoriasis skin

Don't be harsh to your skin. Be very gentle. Most importantly, keep an eye on observing what causes flare-ups. Find products that can help your body. We don't want to add to our own misery. Keep fighting.