How many vitiligo sufferers have a leaky gut?

Last Updated on 23rd November 2019 by Caroline Haye

I have suffered with digestive problems ever since I was a baby and started developing vitiligo from toddler age onwards. From early adulthood I also developed arthritis.  Either I’m unlucky or there is a link!  Interestingly, the nutritional supplements I have been taking for the past two and a half years have not only improved my vitiligo by about 98% but my digestion is better than it ever was. And I have less arthritic pain too.  Again, I doubt that this is coincidence. It makes me wonder how many vitiligo sufferers have a leaky gut and don’t even know it.

I am certainly not the only person to have effectively treated their vitiligo using nutritional supplementation and UV light.

Swedish vitiligo researchers Lennart Juhlin, M.D. and colleagues at the University of Uppsala conducted a two year study find out if oral supplementation of vitamin B12 and folic acid, plus sun exposure would help to repigment vitiligo. Significant repigmentation occurred in 52 out of 100 patients. Six of the patients achieved total repigmentation and vitiligo stopped spreading in 64% of the patients following treatment. The combination of folic acid and vitamin B12 combined with UV exposure produced better re-pigmentation than sun exposure or the vitamins alone.

Vitamin B12 and folic acid are both key ingredients in the Xenca Boost supplement that I used for my repigmentation. And, in accordance with the research I mentioned above, I found it worked best in conjunction with sun exposure or phototherapy.

As far as I can tell, this study did not look at the possible reasons for the success of nutritional therapy for vitiligo. But one explanation might be that a significant proportion of vitiligo sufferers have nutritional deficiencies (B12 and folic acid in particular). This seems to have been true in my particular case. And digestive problems (specifically, leaky gut) may have been the reason for this. Given the results of this study, I’d be interested to know how many of the patients who responded to nutritional therapy also had digestive problems.

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