While those desperately seeking an all-encompassing vitiligo cure will most likely find themselves disappointed, I do have some different therapies to suggest. I covered some of these on the front page of this site: Vitiligo Treatments. However, in this article I will go into greater detail on the vitiligo cures I’ve found to be most effective.

And because people looking for a cures for vitiligo tend to be a little more desperate I will also describe some more aggressive — though not always recommended — therapies which some people have tried.

I’ll start with the least invasive and move towards the most aggressive possible vitiligo cures.

Topical Cortisone Therapy

This is probably the most common vitiligo cure and it remains a safe and effective way to treat your vitiligo disease, especially if you start this vitiligo therapy early. It is simply a matter of applying a prescription strength corticosteroid cream (or cortisone ointment) to your skin for a few months (sometimes longer). This cream or ointment must be prescribed and monitored by your doctor.

This cortisone ointment or cream therapy became widespread during the 80s and was for a time viewed as the best vitiligo cure available. However, light therapy has proven to be more effective and recent studies indicate a range of side-effects with long-term topical steroid use, including stretch marks, skin striae (streaks on the skin), thinning of the skin, skin shrinkage and dilation of blood vessels.

PUVA Treatment

PUVA Treatment Chamber

Until doctors refined Narrow Band UVB (see below), PUVA treatment was probably the best vitiligo cure available. It may still be the best for obtaining significant and permanent results, however the process is a little more difficult and the side-effects are potentially more severe than those associated with NB-UVB.

PUVA stands for psoralen ultraviolet A. Psoralen is a drug that reacts to ultraviolet light by darkening the skin. Ultraviolet A is the long wave of ultraviolet radiation, which you best know as the type of sunlight that causes us to sunburn (sunlight contains both UVA and UVB).

PUVA is a phototherapy. With PUVA treatments, patients either spread a psoralen cream on their skin (topical PUVA treatment) or take a psorelen pill (oral PUVA treatment), then follow with a controlled exposure to UVA light. This must be carefully monitored by a physician to avoid serious side-effects.

The problem with PUVA is that not only do you risk permanently damaging your skin in a manner similar to the damage frequent, severe sunburns can inflict on your skin (burns, blisters and an increased chance of skin cancer), but proper PUVA treatments must be administered in your doctor’s office several times a week for several months (even years) to achieve the best results. Also, if PUVA treatment isn’t planned and monitored carefully, you can do the opposite of what you were treating and create permanently too-dark skin.

xNarrow Band UVB

Narrow Band UVB (or NB-UVB), is a newer phototherapy and a more hopeful vitiligo cure for patients everywhere. While it has been in use since the 1980s in Europe, it is only 20 years later becoming more widespread in the United States. With NB-UVB, very specific segments of vitiligo are targeted with a light source emitting a very narrow spectrum of UVB. Radiation begins very weak, then is gradually raised about 15 percent per visit. If any sign of burning or blistering occurs, it can be scaled back and still be effective.

While it is assumed that NB-UVB may exhibit long-term side-effects similar to sun exposure, studies haven’t yet revealed an association with increased cases of skin cancer. However, you should still exercise caution when selecting this potential vitiligo cure. You may have difficulty finding a facility capable of performing this new not-yet entirely widespread phototherapy, so one drawback is the possible time and expense of reaching such a facility.

Just this year, scientists have discovered that piperine — a pepper-derived chemical — may function like psorelen with NB-UVB to make Narrow Band UVB even more effective without the side-effects or long-term concerns of psorelen. This is still something being researched, however, so it is unlikely you’ll be able to find it available as a treatment.

Now we’ll discuss some more aggressive (and arguably questionable) approaches to treating your vitiligo.

Skin Grafts

This is a really a dated technique involving taking skin from one part of your body and applying it to the area requiring repigmenting. It is costly, time-consuming and rife with side-effects, so it is now only used as an aggressive, desperate measure. Some people have had some success with it, so you can’t shoot it down completely, but I suggest trying other vitiligo treatments before risking a skin graft.

Micropigmentation

Micropigmentation is basically a specialized form of tattooing. Pigment is carefully applied in small amounts to the light skin areas. It can be effective for small areas, but the pigment still fades over time, doctors have difficulty matching your skin color well, and you still risk infection at the pigmentation location. This is most commonly used around the lips of people with naturally darker skin.

Depigmentation

Depigmentation involves applying a prescription medication called Benoquin (monobenzone) to the affected areas twice a day. Its effects are permanent, so this is a kind of last resort therapy best used by people whose body has already reached a point of 50 percent or higher depigmentation from vitiligo.

When wearing Benoquin, you must not allow your skin to touch the skin of another individual for at least 2 hours after application. You are also at the risk of significant redness and swelling of your skin. Do not think that just because it is only a cream applied to your skin that it is not a serious and aggressive therapy.

A New Vitiligo Cure?

The future for newer, better vitiligo cures appears hopeful. Besides the very recent discovery of peperine and its use with UVB phototherapy, in recent years researchers have also successfully transplanted and cultivated melanocytes (see my Vitiligo Disease page to learn how these are involved in your vitiligo) to successfully repigment portions of vitiligo skin.

Again, these aren’t necessarily available to you right now, but I personally envision a near-future where doctors blend melanocyte-transplantation with peperine UVB therapy to create the ultimate safe and effective vitiligo cure. If you’re still seeking the best cure for vitiligo or you can’t stop asking yourself how to cure vitiligo permanently, hold on to hope. Better methods are coming.

This page will address vitiligo makeup and suggest to you a brand which I believe to be the best available for vitiligo cover.

But before you start covering up your vitiligo with vitiligo makeup, make sure you actually have vitiligo. I know this sounds odd and some may think I sound patronizing, but I’ve lurked in many online forums and on many blogs where people describe symptoms which sound more like a skin fungus than vitiligo but they’ve already self-diagnosed themselves to have vitiligo.

So see a dermatologist and make certain your skin de-pigmentation is a result of vitiligo and not something else. You don’t want to make the mistake of piling vitiligo makeup on to a fungal infection which might need to breathe as much as possible to be properly treated.

Nutrition Before Vitiligo Makeup

Another important note is that you should always try to minimize your symptoms through safe, basic nutritional actions even as you attempt to conceal it with vitiligo makeup. As I suggest in my list of vitiligo treatments, there is significant evidence suggesting that vitiligo patients show a positive response to consuming some kind of vitamin B complex each day.

Additionally, some believe the normal manufacturer-suggested dose of Vitamin E, Folic Acid and Ascorbic Acid each day can make a positive difference in at least slowing the development of vitiligo. These are all safe and common supplements so I suggest you address your vitiligo internally while you search for the perfect vitiligo makeup to apply externally.

So now you’re thinking, “Enough already, let’s get to the vitiligo makeup!” Right. So here we go.

The Best Vitiligo Makeup?

My favorite makeup for vitiligo — and I’m not alone among attentive, analytic skin care enthusiasts — is Kamaflage by Sacha Cosmetics (yes kamaflage is spelled correctly, it’s their clever brand name).

There are two main reasons this vitiligo makeup works so well for so many people. One, it features a much higher pigment content than most vitiligo makeups and two it uses a yellow base.

Most foundations that people use to cover their vitiligo utilizes a very low pigment content. This is because most foundation makeup is designed to let a little light and color shine through from your natural skin. Unfortunately, this is not what you want when you’re trying to completely eliminate the appearance of your vitiligo. You want makeup to cover vitiligo.

Kamaflage is designed to completely cover the underlying skin tone with a much higher concentration of pigment and thus makes it a perfect vitiligo makeup.

Additionally, most vitiligo cover you buy off the shelf is red-based while most human skin (no matter the race or color) is actually yellow-based. This helps this particular vitiligo cover blend more naturally with the rest of your skin.

Just remember that the more natural tone and the more dense pigmentation makes it so you will require less of Sacha Comsetic’s Kamaflage foundation than of a competing foundation. If you try using the same amount of Kamaflage as another major brand foundation, you’ll just make yourself look rather artificial. And that isn’t what we’re aiming for at all, is it? While we seek our vitiligo cure, we want to feel confident going out in public; we don’t want to feel like like plastic dolls.

I urge you to try this brand as I thoroughly tested several different competing brands and this one was head and shoulders above the competition as the best makeup for vitiligo. And no, they’re not paying me to say that. It just really made a difference for me and I was really impressed with how much better this particular vitiligo makeup worked than any other.

Sacha Cosmetics – Kamaflage

There are companies developing a permanent makeup for vitiligo, but vitiligo disease remains mysterious so we’ll just have to see how that proceeds.

I hope this helps and thank you for visiting Vitiligo Treatments.

So what exactly is Vitiligo Disease? Besides having several names (vitiligo disease or just vitiligo; leukoderma or leucoderma), we don’t know as much about it as one would hope.

Since we have some clinical definitions that won’t make sense to most people and yet at the same time we don’t have a real strong understanding of why it occurs, let me start with some examples of some ways vitiligo disease may be misdiagnosed so that at least you can understand what vitiligo is not.

You see, not all white skin patches are vitiligo disease. Several other conditions can be behind those white blotches of skin. Alphos, a form of leprosy was once mislabeled vitiligo.

Other diseases or conditions which should be ruled out when diagnosing vitiligo disease are Tinea Versicolor, Albinism, Melanism, Leucism, and Pityriasis alba.

So it is important that you carefully and accurately diagnose vitiligo before you proceed with any vitiligo treatments. You can obtain an accurate diagnosis with two methods: An Ultraviolet Wood’s Lamp examination and a biopsy.

Under an Ultraviolet Wood’s Lamp, vitiligo disease exhibits a distinct fluorescence absent in the aforementioned skin diseases. In a darkened room, light from a Wood’s lamp reveals vitiligo by the way depigmented skin and pigmented skin reflect this distinct light in different manners. Pigmented skin will absorb the light while depigmented skin will reflect the light.

A biopsy will indicate vitiligo through an absence of melanocytes in the skin sample.

Obviously the ultraviolet light is less invasive and it more consistently provides an accurate and definitive diagnosis.

So what exactly is happening with hypopigmentation (the decreases pigmentation of the skin)?

Currently, researchers associate vitiligo with inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, most specifically and commonly thyroid underexpression and overexpression. This can become highly technical, but essentially a change in amino acids occurs at the genetic level.

The gene believed to be misbehaving is the NALP1 gene. When something influences this gene (it could be an innate genetic pattern, an environmental factor or it could be the results of another autoimmune disease in your system), it causes certain inflammation-oriented amino acids to flourish. When an over-abundance of these amino acids occur, they can cause an adverse reaction in the cells they normally regulate.

This theoretically can lead to a decrease in the amino acid tyrosine, which melanocytes use to make melanin. Hypopigmentation, the phenomenon in vitiligo disease which leads to the lighter skin, is caused by melanocyte depletion.

This is also why I believe individuals suffering from vitiligo should be examined for autoimmune diseases. Some studies indicate a relatively high occurrence of vitiligo with these autoimmune diseases, in particular Addison’s disease.

I hope this provides a little more technical information behind the phenomenon without bogging you down in so many technical details your eyes glass over. As some say, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ve included a basic vitiligo picture in this article.

Thank you for visiting and reading Vitiligo Treatments. I really hope vitiligo disease sufferers leave my site a little more informed and empowered than they felt when arriving here.

Welcome to Vitiligo Treatments!

Vitiligo, also known as leukoderma (sometimes spelled leucoderma) or Vitiligo Disease, makes sufferers persevere a mysterious skin disease that is chronic, complex and still not fully understood. Currently, research indicates it may be caused by a combination of genetic, auto-immune and environmental factors.

Vitiligo Disease

Vitiligo Disease manifests itself through an odd and irregular pale pigmentation of the skin. It is estimated to occur to approximately 1 to 2 percent of the total population. Unlike some people might stereotype, it can occur to anyone of any race, gender or ethnic background.

It most commonly begins in early adulthood and first appears on extremities (fingers and toes). Despite its irregular pattern, it often appears in symmetrical manner. So if you develop pale blotches on a specific left finger, the vitiligo may likely appear very similarly and in a similar location on the same finger on your right hand.

Some de-pigmented skin can re-pigment, so often times the shape and position of a developing vitiligo case can seem nebulous and evolving.

Just as it can change the color of body and facial hair where it occurs, Vitiligo on the scalp can sometimes cause hair color to change over time, creating a streaking effect.

Currently Vitiligo is closely associated with auto-immune and inflammatory diseases, most often thyroid underexpression or overexpression.

Vitiligo Treatments

Vitiligo Treatments are currently a hodgepodge of experiments and cover-ups. For the time being, some of the best and most inexpensive treatments address the appearance without addressing the underlying problem.

Here are some common vitiligo treatments to get you started:

• Some studies indicate vitiligo disease patients exhibit a positive response to taking a vitamin B complex everyday.
• Some theories suggest trying Folic Acid (1mg), Vitamin E (600 IU), and ascorbic acid (1000 mg) each day.
• In some cases, a Vitamin D oinment (obtained by prescription) may assist you to find your vitiligo cure.
• Many doctors prescribe a tacrolimus ointment .1% for 4 to 6 months to help treat vitiligo. Please do not try such drugs without your doctor’s recommendation.
• Topical cortisone vitiligo treatments were more common in the 80s. While it has been shown to help in many Vitiligo disease cases, it also has exhibited some consistent side-effects, so please discuss with your physician before proceeding.
• As I stated before, since there really is no easy vitiligo treatment, you should consider cover-up cosmetics such as Chromelin Complexion Blender, Dermablend and Covermark….

More aggressive vitiligo treatments include the following:

• A PUVA (Psoralen) light treatment has exhibited a high success rate in reason years. But note that this vitiligo treatment can be very time-consuming. For it to be effective, you’ll need to visit the office several times (often 3 to 5 times) per week for 20 to 30 minutes of treatment. You must maintain this for 12 to 16 months to achieve a good response.
• In more recent years, many doctors are moving to a Narrowband UVB (or NB-UVB) vitiligo cure. Some studies indicate it may be as effective as the PUVA light treatment but it may still be simpler and more safe. PUVA light treatments are also being used to treat psoriasis.
• Some more extreme cases of vitiligo won’t respond to light treatment. In this case doctors may treated your vitiligo skin disorer with Benoquin (requires a prescription). However, this aggressive medication will cause a permanent lightening of dark skin and thus you should only rely on it as a last measure.

I hope this provides you a quick yet comprehensive guide to the most common techniques to address your vitiligo disease.

As I develop this site, I will help you learn how to address vitiligo disease in both direct and cosmetic manners. I will also address the common psychological effects of this frustrating and bewildering disease. I hope I can empower you with the knowledge and confidence to face vitiligo with confidence.

Please return soon as I flesh-out our site with the latest and best information on Vitiligo Treatments!