[Soma]

(10-25-2014 02:22 PM)Seamus Wrote:  

But you know what, fuck it. I'm going to deal with it for the rest of my life anyway, so I might as well just buck up and make the best of it.

No, you won't have to deal with it the rest of your life. That is what physicians and clinical medicine will tell you, because they focus on symptoms and (expensive) treatment, not causes and cures.

(Note: I've never had psoriasis and the following is not medical advice.)

You developed psoriasis because you took antibiotics to heal your strep throat. Antibiotics wiped out a large portion of your gut flora, leading to dysbiosis and permanently deleting bacteria necessary for the correct functioning of the suppressive component of your immune system, specifically a deficiency in regulatory T cells. (70-90% of your immune system is located in your large intestine and closely integrated with your gut flora.) The combination of a malfunctioning overly-aggressive immune system and chronic inflammation led to the autoinflammatory disease of psoriasis. This is fixable.

To understand psoriasis from the biochemical perspective (as opposed to the clinical perspective) start here: Psoriasis, IL-17, Cathelicidin, TLRs, NFkB, Inflammation and Heparin Therapy and then go through the rest of the site, including the author's comments, to understand chronic inflammation, autoimmune diseases, repairing gut flora, anti-inflammatory diet, etc. It's written by a retired ex-Harvard biochemist and is the best reference you will find on understanding health and diet and fixing problems that mainstream medicine is unable to.

As a quick summary of what you'll need to do:
1) Lower inflammation: Eat an anti-inflammatory diet (see Anti-inflammatory Diet) similar to paleo, focused on meat, fish, eggs, leafy vegetables with little sugar (especially fructose) or vegetable oil. Take vitamin D supplements, 5-10K IU/day.
2) Repair gut flora: Eat lots of fermented vegetables, e.g. sauerkraut, kimchi, to restore deleted bacteria. Take probiotic with C. Butyricum, e.g. AOR ProBiotic 3.
3) Suppress immune system: Take resistant starch to promote suppressive component of immune system. Primary lactic acid bacteria L. Plantarum in fermented vegetables is also beneficially temporarily immunomodulating.

You can find a lot more details about the above in http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com as well as searching around with Google. Start with these 3: Health in Diagrams I - Gut Flora and Diet, Health Diagrams II - Curing Autoimmunity and Allergies, Health Diagrams III - Inflammation from Cell to Tissue.

Good luck.