Mild, Moderate, or Severe - Which Are You?

Are you newly diagnosed with psoriasis? One of the biggest problems with identifying the severity of your psoriasis is that doctor’s offices do not tend to have pamphlets that explain psoriasis. It took me a long time to know that there are 3 levels or degrees at which your psoriasis can be at. However, trying to figure out which of those levels you are at is another thing entirely.

My psoriasis journey has seen my psoriasis run the gamete of each of these. Hopefully I can try to explain it more to you in a way that makes it easier to understand. I am going to break each level down one by one. Let’s go in order of the title and start with mild first.

What is mild psoriasis?

My psoriasis started out mild. It started with one patch on my left leg. How was it determined to be mild? The severity of psoriasis is actually determined using one person’s hand. Sounds shocking and simple, doesn’t it?

A doctor will take their palm of their hand and start covering your patches. If the palm of his hand can cover one patch that is counted as 1. Mild is considered when a person has anywhere from 1 to 3 palm areas of plaque psoriasis. Since I only had the one patch it was considered mild. Over time, my psoriasis has changed. It has only been at mild maybe twice in the 20 years I have had psoriasis.

What is moderate psoriasis?

This is the point my psoriasis is at currently. I have active patches of plaque psoriasis on my elbows, one ankle completely wrapped and one section of toes. When using the palm method it covers 6 palms. Anything that is 3 to 10 palms is considered moderate psoriasis.

It has taken 6 different biologics to get my psoriasis to the point of being moderate. They were not taken all at once. I don’t want to get you confused. That is how many I have taken in the 20 years of living with plaque psoriasis. Some didn’t work at all while others worked relatively well. As all biologics do though, they tend to stop working at some point and then you must switch.

What is severe psoriasis?

My psoriasis has been severe more than any of the other two levels. When I first developed psoriasis, it was mild but within months it went to full blown severe in the blink of an eye. At my worst I was 80% covered in plaque psoriasis. That means that the palm count was well over 10 which classified it as severe. It took one biologic in particular that took my psoriasis down to 20% coverage knocking it down from severe to moderate.

Explaining severity

Now that you have a general idea of how psoriasis is determined to be mild, moderate, or severe what level are you at? 1 to 3 palms mild? 3 to 10 palms moderate? Hopefully your psoriasis is not over 10 palms which makes it severe.

There is no other level besides these 3 unless you are in remission and currently clear. That is where I long to be or better yet cured. I honestly think we all want to be able to say that one day.