In what could only be described as the most revealing glimpse into her struggles with psoriasis yet, Kim Kardashian just shared an essay on big sis, Kourtney’s Poosh website.
Kim Kardashian has never shied away from sharing her struggles with the autoimmune disease, psoriasis.
If you didn’t know, it’s characterized as a skin condition that speeds up the life cycle of skin cells, resulting in red scales or patches that can be itchy or painful.
This past week, the reality star got super personal with a revealing essay on Kourtney’s lifestyle website, Poosh.
In the essay, titled “Kim Kardashian West shares Her Journey with Psoriasis,” she began by saying that she grew up seeing her mother struggle with the disease.
She knew how it affected Kris, and how she treated it.
Even so, the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star wrote that she “had no idea what my life would be like dealing with an autoimmune disease.”
While getting UV rays at a tanning salon helped mama, Kris, it was the opposite for Kim.
“For me, however, that remedy would burn the areas and cause them to itch, so I always felt helpless. I am the only child my mom passed down her autoimmune issue to. Lucky me, lol.”
Her first psoriasis flare-up happened when she was just 25. It was a common cold had triggered it, causing her to develop symptoms all over her legs and stomach.
“Luckily, in my apartment complex at the time, my neighbor was a dermatologist. I showed it to him, and he said to come into the office and he would give me a shot of cortisone.”
Kim and her neighbor were hopeful.
She wrote, “Then hopefully it would go away (since it was my first big outbreak). I did this and my psoriasis completely went away for about five years.”
Sadly, the disease did eventually come back when she was in New York for the DASH store opening. This is when her “real psoriasis journey began.”
“I was wearing this glitzy sequin dress from our store to the opening and I came home afterward and was itching,” she said.
Kim thought there was a reasonable explanation.
“It seemed like it came out of nowhere, but I thought that my skin was just sensitive toward the dress’s material, so I didn’t think too much about it.”
“And then I came home to LA for Mason’s first birthday party and my mom looked at my leg and said it was definitely psoriasis.”
A lot of her struggles with the disease have been captured on the family’s reality show and also on social media.
During the past eight years, Kim has noticed that while her spots are unpredictable, she can “always count on my main spot on my right lower leg.”
She wrote: “I have learned to live with this spot without using any creams or medication—I just deal. Sometimes I cover it up and sometimes I don’t. It doesn’t really bother me.”
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Surprisingly, her psoriasis fully went away when she was pregnant with North and Saint (Chicago and Psalm were both delivered via surrogate).
But then, it came back.
One night she even discovered that her hands “felt weird,” so much so that she couldn’t even pick up her phone.
“I woke up that morning and I still couldn’t pick up my phone. I was freaking out—I couldn’t even pick up a toothbrush, my hands hurt so badly.”
Since she had worked out the day before, she thought that maybe one of the exercises had strained her hand.
“As the day went on, I got a bit more movement in my hands, but they really hurt from the inside—I felt it in my bones. Everyone assumed it was just my workout, but I knew this felt different.”
She then recalled being in so much pain when she had to fly to Vegas for Jimmy Kimmel .
She did what no one should do: She Googled her symptoms and became “beyond scared” at all of the possibilities.
Things took an even scarier turn when she had blood work done and the results came back positive for rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
“I immediately started to cry and felt so lost. You really can get in a crazy headspace when you think you have something. My doctor said I could have a false positive, and he wanted me to come back.”
Thankfully, that turned out to be the case.
The pain she had experienced was due to psoriatic arthritis, which she explained as being “similar to arthritis that can stem from psoriasis” and that “can come and go.”
Kim detailed a scary situation her psoriatic arthritis put her in.
“I just couldn’t take it anymore, and I physically couldn’t move my hands. I remember I had a press day for my Carolina Lemke sunglasses and I was wearing these purple boots and snake-print pants…”
“…and I couldn’t get my pants down to go to the bathroom.”
“I couldn’t even get my bra on that day, and I had to have someone dress me because the pain was so unbearable.”
That was how Kim learned it wasn’t just her hands.
“With the boots I was wearing, my ankles started to feel it in those joints. That’s when I knew it wasn’t just an issue in my hands, it was a bone problem.”
She then explained the lengths she has gone to treat her psoriasis naturally.
This included taking every “ointment, cream, serum, and foam you can possibly imagine,” as well as drinking herbal tea that “tasted like tar” and drinking celery juice for eight weeks.
She also changed her diet to one that’s plant-based, which is something that she still follows.
Today, Kim says that she’s “extremely comfortable” with her psoriasis.
It’s even the reason why she developed her own KKW Body Makeup, which she uses to cover her flare-ups.
If there’s a silver lining to all of this, it’s that her struggles with psoriasis have helped her take care of herself better as she lives a healthy life and makes lots of time for self-care.
“I hope my story can help anyone else with an autoimmune disease feel confident that there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Fans are grateful to Kim for sharing her story.
Like this Twitter user, who hadn’t known anyone else besides her own mother who had struggled with psoriasis and related joint pain.
It has allowed people to ‘rebrand’ their disease in their mind.
Everything Kim does is so glamorous that it has to also apply to her psoriasis treatment.
Thank you for sharing your story, Kim!
