I set up this website after much thought and deliberation. The idea had been floating around in my mind for about a year. During those 12 months or so (2010-2011), I had been steadily re-pigmenting for the first time in my life. So I felt strongly that I had something valuable to share with others who have this distressing condition called vitiligo .
However, I have been cautious about sharing my story for three reasons:
1. I am a very private person
Only my closest family members even know that I have vitiligo. This is because – in common with many vitiligo sufferers – I have preferred to hide the condition from others. Even to the point of hiding it from myself as much as possible too.
2. What if my “cure” did not work for others?
There are so many bogus sites out there on the internet that prey on the desperation many people feel for a cure. They offer ineffective, even dangerous, products with unspecified ingredients and inflated prices. So the risk that my experience might give anyone false hope was a very real concern. (After all, who knows if my “treatment” will work for everyone?)
3. What if my recovery is temporary?
My recovery is still ongoing, so I can’t guarantee to myself, or others, that it will be 100% successful. Nor that it will be permanent. (But, since first writing these pages, I can report that I am almost completely re-pigmented and have had no relapses.)
I will briefly explain below why I decided to overcome these three concerns and “go public” anyway.
Why I came out of the vitiligo closet
- In my particular case I can feel my almost paranoid desire for secrecy lessening in direct proportion to my re-pigmentation. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have felt (for absolutely no logical reason) embarrassed about having this condition. But now that I feel like vitiligo is almost a thing of the past, it doesn’t embarrass me any more. (It was obviously irrational to feel embarrassed in the first place, but logic doesn’t seem to come into it.)
- The risk of raising false hopes is something I want to avoid. All I can do is honestly share my own personal experiences. And make it clear that there are no guarantees that what is working for me will necessarily work for others. I spent around 45 years of my life trying to remain cautiously optimistic about a cure. I recommend the same attitude to you as you read this information. If my story helps you to regain your natural skin colour, I will be ecstatic. (So please, please contact me to tell me). If not, I hope it will at least reinforce the message that you are not alone. There are others who understand what you are going through. I also hope it will encourage you to continue looking for safe treatments to try. But without putting your life on hold in the meantime. If I had done that I would have wasted 45 years!
- As regards the fact that I am not yet totally “cured”, my re-pigmentation has been remarkably steady. And – so my doctor tells me – remarkably fast. This means I have gone from zero expectations at the start to fully expecting to get all my skin colour back.
[2021 update: my recovery has remained almost total during the past decade since it began. I had one localised setback following a bad sunburn a couple of years ago. But that soon recovered with the aid of the supplements and Vitix Gel. I now only have a few minor patches on my hands and feet. And these are just paler than my normal skin, as opposed to completely de-pigmented.]
Sharing individual vitiligo success stories is important because the establishment won’t share them.
In the course of sharing my story, I have learned that not everyone wants to hear about people who have found successful ways to treat themselves. You would think that everyone concerned with vitiligo would be happy to hear any good news. But the fields of medical research, therapy, fundraising and support that evolve around an “incurable” condition like vitiligo are not as transparent as most of us would like to think.
The drug companies, health professionals, and even perhaps some of the charities involved, do not all have the same agenda. Inevitably, profit motive, empire building, professional politics, bureaucracy and an understandable fear of litigation all play a part in muddying the waters. This is not to say there is some sinister plot to obstruct the free flow of information. Or to keep potential vitiligo remedies secret. It’s just the way things are.
This means that the official bodies that you would turn to as a first resort are subject to all kinds of financial, legal and ethical restraints and pressures. And these all too often prevent them from recommending the use of natural, nutritional treatments as opposed to drugs.
My conclusion is that it is naive to expect this situation to change. So I think that the more of us who share our vitiligo success stories direct with the vitiligo community, the better for us all.
If my story helps you to regain your natural skin colour, I will be thrilled… If not, I hope it will at least reinforce the message that you are not alone in coping with vitiligo… and that there is always hope of improving it.