Dr. Barbra Paldus, founder and CEO of Codex Labs, gives us more insight into natural psoriasis skin treatments. Codex Labs is a clinical research lab that also produces its own lines of skincare products to treat conditions like acne, eczema, rosacea, and psoriasis. This means that Dr. Paldus and her team do the majority of the research of their skincare products themselves. They are currently working on learning more about what causes psoriasis and what worsens symptoms.
Your Skin and Gut are Connected
Dr. Paldus and her team aim to “restore skin from the inside out” by using plant-based biotechnology that focuses on skin, gut and immune system health. Dr. Paldus and her team asked the question, “What does the gut microbiome look like for someone with psoriasis vs. someone with eczema vs. someone with acne?” They found out that “a lot of them have leaky gut” syndrome.
Psoriasis Causes Leaky Gut?
This begs the question, “Why do they have leaky gut?” Dr. Paldus answers truthfully, saying that the real answer is “we don’t know.”
However, the Codex research team analyzed psoriasis causes and symptoms and found more evidence to back up the theory that “psoriasis is an inflammatory disease.” The gut microbiome “controls your immune system. If you have dysbiosis in the gut, you get weird immune responses, and those then generate chronic inflammation” Dr. Paldus explains.
When the gut triggers these inflammation pathways, it can affect many other parts of your body, such as your joints and even your skin. A malfunctioning and inflamed gut affects “the way you absorb nutrients. If you have dysbiosis, you may not be getting enough antioxidants being absorbed. If you don’t have enough antioxidants, your inflammation is going to get worse” and proves that “we do know that the gut and the skin are connected,” Dr. Paldus confirms. “There are now studies…where basically people have seen changes in the gut microbiome cause the severity of psoriasis.”
Besides gut malfunction, psoriasis symptoms also include itching and burning, which can lead to sleep dysfunction, and “that leads to psychological stress that leads to cortisol.” Cortisol is known as the stress hormone because more of it is released in the body when someone is stressed. “When more cortisol is released, your inflammation gets worse” Paldus confirms. So, it is a cycle of inflammation. If your gut is inflamed, then your psoriasis symptoms worsen which causes more stress, leading to even more inflammation.
So, Dr. Paldus and her team pondered the question, “How can we seal the gut…and what can we do to general systemic inflammation?”
How to Seal the Gut
“People are now beginning to study…the role of the gut microbiome in the pathogenesis of psoriasis.” Dr. Paldus states. “The gut microbiome makes certain things like short-chain fatty acids…like butyrate.” These fatty acids are what keep the “tight junctions between cells,” and you need that bacteria to keep your gut tight, so you don’t have leaky gut. “This is common among acne, rosacea, psoriasis, and eczema” patients. Their “guts are wiped out.”
Dr. Paldus highlights that you can especially see early onsets of leaky gut syndrome in children due to antibiotics. “They have a balanced diet… and no microbiome,” because they’ve been on many courses of antibiotics. This then causes the gut cells to starve “because they don’t have…short-chain fatty acids, so they get leaky gut.” If you have long-term leaky gut, “you lose your ability to tolerate the bacteria because you’re constantly stripping them” Paldus warns. “Then even the good bacteria become something your immune system” thinks are bad, and that starts causing the inflammation. “Psoriasis onset used to be in the late 20s and 30s,” but it has “come down to the early 20s, late teens in the last 20 years. It makes me wonder if our diets and the overuse of antibiotics are causing leaky gut earlier in people” Dr. Paldus remarks.
Codex Labs plans to launch a formal clinical trial in the next year, aiming to learn how to treat psoriasis symptoms through inflammation and gut health. This will hopefully begin to formally answer the questions that Dr. Paldus and her team are asking. They want to “figure out what are these inflammatory pathways, what plants can act on them, and how do we shut this down with a plant-based ingestible or topical versus antibiotics and biologic drugs. That’s exactly the research that needs to be done, and that’s what we’re doing at Codex Labs,” Paldus finishes.
In the meantime, Codex Labs has already released a supplement that is technically meant to treat eczema, but her team observed that “it’s reducing leaky gut” and “it’s reducing gut inflammation.” So, people with psoriasis took the supplement as well, and it caused their psoriasis to get better. With their continuing psoriasis research, Codex Labs plans to release a psoriasis cleanser and Olayo serum that uses ground-up cranberry husks to gently exfoliate skin cell buildup and penetrate skin plaques. Paldus insists that many skin conditions are related in some way and that even though a product “was designed for eczema, not specifically for psoriasis, doesn’t mean you can’t cross boundaries with these products.” She states, “A lot of people with psoriasis love our eczema lotion because our eczema lotion downregulates the itch inflammation marker.” So, keep an eye out for more psoriasis research from Codex Labs as their clinical trial commences and for the new release of psoriasis-focused products. But if you want more immediate skin relief, try out some of their eczema-focused products to see if they also treat your psoriasis.
