Is There a Link Between Food and Psoriasis?

• Psoriasis is an annoying itchy skin condition with links to autoimmune dysregulation and possibly diet. While many PTs don't see this condition as relevant, recall that nearly 25% of those with psoriasis also have joint inflammation or arthritis!
• We know that psoriasis can improve on whole food plant based or Mediterranean style diets.
• Now, a new JAMA study is out highlighting how psoriasis could be linked with ultra processed foods -- and it's something physical therapists need to check out!

Link to full article here, transcript of video is below.

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 Transcript:

Good morning, everyone. This is Dr. Wells from St. Augustine Beach. I'm here with Nutritional Physical Therapy Research Update.

This one is from JAMA Dermatology, Ponzo et al, published last month, so November 2024. And the focus on this article was looking at ultra-processed food and psoriasis. Several of our patients in physical therapy practice present with psoriasis or psoriasis-related conditions like psoriatic arthritis.

And a lot of times we provide them guidance on stretching, range of motion, strengthening, and things. But according to this study, we should also be looking at diet a little bit more closely. So this is a French study.

They took the NutriNet cohort of individuals from that study and analyzed them. It was about 60,000 subjects. And when they looked at it, they looked at those that had active psoriasis and those that did not have active psoriasis.

And then they compared their dietary patterns and really honed in particularly on ultra-processed foods. They did it based on like tertial, so highest tertial, highest 33%, middle 33%, and lower 33%. And what they found is those consuming more ultra-processed foods, so in that higher tertial versus the lower tertial, had about a 36% chance of being within the active group.

Interestingly, those that also had psoriasis also had slightly higher chance of having a higher BMI, which kind of matches because we know that higher BMIs are associated with more inflammatory-like conditions. The authors went further to analyze the subject group into factoring out certain other factors like alcohol, tobacco use, and even activity. And when they factored all of those things in, they found that still the ultra-processed food was probably not the strongest association, I should say, but was associated by about 36%.

In other words, those that were consuming ultra-processed foods had an odds ratio of about 36% higher than those that were in the non-active group eating lower amounts of ultra-processed foods. So anyhow, interesting study. We thought you'd find it fascinating and another sort of thing to keep in mind as we're talking to our clients about food, diet, and holistic lifestyle.

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