Psoriatic Arthritis with toenail invovlement

[vinny]

It is fairly common for people with PsA to have nail involvement. My toenails separate from the bedplate and die. I soften them with ointment and remove the dead part so they don’t get ingrown. Although my fingernail are longitudinally ridged, they don’t cause a problem. Maz, has your MIL found a way to get her toenails to grow back normal.
vinny

Psoriatic Arthritis: 100mg Minoz Minocycline TABLET daily; twice daily 400mg Pentoxifylline;125mcg Levotyroxine: Have been using some level of Minocycline since 2008

[Maz]

@vinny wrote:

Maz, has your MIL found a way to get her toenails to grow back normal.

Hi Vinny,

My MIL is 83, fiercely independent and has chosen to live alone in UK. She is now, however, unable to bend over due to her spondylosis (she’d tip without her walker), so self-care has become a very big problem for her and she is having to look into either home care or assisted living now. Bending over to care for her feet, which are severely deformed, with very poor lower extremity circulation and infected psoriatic toenails, has been a serious issue for her. She’s fairly ‘old school’ and just follows her doctors orders, which usually involves visiting a podiatrist who bandages her toes, telling her to keep them dry, and taking meds for the infections (usually a combo of an abx and an antifungal) when needed. At her age and in her condition, she’s chosen just to palliate symptoms as they arise. For her now, it’s a needs-must situation, as she lives alone and is never without pain somewhere in her body.

I think for psoriatic toe-nails, I’d personally try ozone therapy – prolozone injections (and also ozone sauna and insufflation – because of gut involvement/dysbiosis in PsA) to increase oxygenated blood supply to toes and, thus, support natural healing from within. For home care, I’d probably try topical manuka honey and/or tea-tree oil preparations, along with foot soaks of epsoms and hydrogen peroxide. Nails take several months to grow back in, so these would be longer-term treatments until it was evident healthy nails were growing back in.

http://www.progressivemedicalcenter.com/prolozone-therapy/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si2eQ0qaRB4

I don’t have PsA (though I have researched prolozone therapy extensively) and so these are just things I’ve read about and would want to try, myself. Additionally, I’d probably go all out to get diet in shape, eliminating all sugars, starches, gluten, etc., to keep fungal overgrowth in the gut from occurring (especially important after an acute oral thrush infection).

I hope others with PsA will be able to share what has worked for them, Vinny, to give you some more ideas.

[vinny]

Thanks, Maz. I tried to send you a private PM, but was not successful in accomplishing that function. 2 messages went to other people, but not you. They are scratching their head trying to figure what I am talking about and the system won’t let me reply to their answer.
I’ve been lucky with my toenails so far and have not got infected yet. But it is a daily process to keep the edges dug out so they don’t get ingrown. Maybe once I get this yeast overgrowth under control I will be able to get some nutritional help from my gut. I think the oral thrush is just the tip of the iceberg and my gut has been involved for some time. The other thing that we have just started treating 2 weeks ago is my thyroid function. My TSH had gone from 5.58 to 12.84 in 2 months. I am not sure how this enters into my total problem.
vinny

Psoriatic Arthritis: 100mg Minoz Minocycline TABLET daily; twice daily 400mg Pentoxifylline;125mcg Levotyroxine: Have been using some level of Minocycline since 2008

[Maz]

@vinny wrote:

Thanks, Maz. I tried to send you a private PM, but was not successful in accomplishing that function. 2 messages went to other people, but not you. They are scratching their head trying to figure what I am talking about and the system won’t let me reply to their answer.
I’ve been lucky with my toenails so far and have not got infected yet. But it is a daily process to keep the edges dug out so they don’t get ingrown. Maybe once I get this yeast overgrowth under control I will be able to get some nutritional help from my gut. I think the oral thrush is just the tip of the iceberg and my gut has been involved for some time. The other thing that we have just started treating 2 weeks ago is my thyroid function. My TSH had gone from 5.58 to 12.84 in 2 months. I am not sure how this enters into my total problem.

Hi Vinny,

Can you remember what you did when you sent me the PM? Did you add something like, “Registered users,” when adding my user name in the recipient field? It also looks like it was cc’d to Sunny22 in addition to the “Registered users” group.

What you can try to do is to go to the PM you sent me in your OutBox and then just delete it. It should then delete it from every account it went to (if it hasn’t already been opened by all who received it). If already opened, then it can’t be deleted by those users.

If this doesn’t work, then we may need Lynnie to shed some light on how this PM can be deleted in another way. This hasn’t happened before to my knowledge.

Yes, thyroid dysfunction can definitely be an issue with the body’s inability to fight infections and yours is pretty hypo right now. A slow metabolism affects everything, systemically, including slow gut, and you’re probably right on that it lies at the root of this. Candida in the gut is a normal part of gut flora, but if the gut is moving slowly, then overgrowth can certainly occur, creating leaky gut and systemic infections. I have always wondered about psoriatic nails, because to all intents and purposes they look like toenails with a fungal infection. Another angle is that when one endocrine goes out, often others in the orchestra are imbalanced, too. Adrenal function can seriously raise cortisol levels, which increases sugar/glucose levels that also feed candida. Elevated cortisol can also knock out thyroid function, so getting the thyroid back in balance in one part of the puzzle, but also checking adrenal function can be critical. There is an informative website that you might find interesting to browse and search through for these types of topics -in fact, on their brand new site, they have a whole information tab dedicated to “adrenal problems” – worth checking out:

http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/

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