As I continue my own journey into fully healing my psoriasis, and indeed my body as a whole, I am discovering more and more fascinating facts about how my body works; mostly with the help of some incredible Functional Testing options which are now available to us.
I stumbled across Pyroluria when I was a student and although the symptoms rang some bells with me, there was so much else going on that I didn’t have the time to investigate any further.
However, I went to an ANP Conference in London last weekend and the fabulous Mark from Biolab mentioned again the test which they perform for Pyroluria. At only £36 I felt like now was the right time to see once and for all whether this could be behind some of my health issues.
So what is Pyroluria?
Ask me a few weeks ago and I would have given a very brief answer, but believe me I have done a LOT of research into this topic lately and if you have the time and inclination I will give a run down now as I really do believe that there is a link between this and psoriasis.
Pyroluria was discovered by Carl Pfeiffer in the 1970s. He found it to be an underlying cause for various conditions such as fibromyalgia, skin conditions, ADHD, depression, epilepsy and thyroid disorders. Despite this it was never really widely accepted as a condition and there is still very little research into it on pubmed or in general. However, anecdotally, on forums and facebook groups, people are reporting feeling amazing results with some fairly simple life tweaks and supplementation.
Kryptopyrroles (also known as pyrroles) are a natural by product of haemoglobin synthesis. However, in some people they are not synthesised in the body correctly and they are then excreted in the urine – this is what the urine test looks for. The main point here is that Kryptopyrroles bind to B6 and Zinc in our bodies meaning that sufferers can be very low in these vital nutrients.
Now to get to the interesting bit – my results! Using the Biolab reference range, 0.8 or below is normal, however my results (after corrected for osmolality – basically how much water I had drunk that day) was 0.17 which is clearly quite high.
I felt such a sense of relief for having an answer and to be honest after reading all the list of symptoms, I would have been surprised if it was negative as I felt it was me to a T!
List of symptoms can be found all over the internet but include:
-Pale Skin
-Rash in sunlight
-Itching and skin conditions, eczema and psoriasis
-Issues with histamine
-Morning nausea
-Anxiety
-High Sensitivity to lights and noise
-Fatigue
-Food sensitivities including caffeine and alcohol
-Blood sugar disorders
(Source: Joachim Strienz, Leben mit KPU Kryptopyrroluria (Living with Kryptopyrroluria, only available in German)
So what’s my next move? This result means that my body is low in Zinc and B6, possibly some other important nutrients too. Some people start supplementing straight away (it is important to go low and slow and not to supplement unless you have a positive pyrroles test as these supplements are dangerous in too high amounts if you don’t need them.) I have decided to go and get a full nutritional status blood test taken next week and will base the amount of supplementation which I need on these answers. It’s going to be very interesting to see the results, I’ll blog as soon as I have them.
If anything in this blog has resonated with you please contact me for more details on how to get tested.