Skin Dye To Cover Up Vitiligo
Vitiligo is a common pigment disorder of the skin. It occurs when your immune system attacks your melanocytes, the pigment making cells. This results in splotches of lightened or white areas. The darker a person’s skin color, the more obvious the vitiligo will appear.
There are several ways to treat vitiligo. Applying potent topical steroids or other immune suppressing creams day after day can slowly repigment the skin.
A second way to treat vitiligo is with light therapy. Exposing the skin to ultraviolet light, specifically narrow band UVB, can suppress the immune response and allow the melanocytes to start making pigment again.
Some patients opt to bleach their skin totally white (as has been famously reported of Michael Jackson) rather than try to repigment the skin. This is tricky, though, because often few splotchy brown spots stubbornly remain.
A fourth option is to use skin dyes to cover-up the vitiligo areas. One dye that a few of my patients have had good results with is Dyoderm (Dy-O-Derm). The active ingredient in it, dihydroxyacetone (DHA), is the most common ingredient found in sunless tanners. DHA interacts with the dead cells on the surface of the skin leading to a brown color. It does not affect the pigment producing cells or treat the vitiligo. The brown color only lasts only for about a week before it fades, so it has to be reapplied every few days.
If you have dark skin, then it is unlikely that a dye like dyoderm can create a color dark enough to match your normal skin color. Dyes can, however, minimize the contrast between dark brown skin and white skin, making vitiligo less obvious.
It is also worth noting that DHA can cause a significant increase in skin-damaging oxidizers when it is exposed to sunlight. As a result, you have to be careful to not be in the sun for 24 hours or so after applying; otherwise, you could be exposing yourself to high levels of oxidizers in the dyed areas.
This post is written by Jeffrey Benabio, MD
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I just ran across your blog and it’s great! Very nice having a health-conscious dermatologist blogging about skin issues. I’m a nutrition therapist (with an additional degree in exercise science) and I also have DH and celiac so I’m into the whole food-skin connection. There are so many skin disorders that may be connected to gluten intolerance — vitiligo, eczema, and alopecia being a few.
I’ll be back!
In good health,
Melissa
Hello Dr.Benabio,
I was injected with kenalog 11 months ago. 1 month after the injection the surrounding skin developed a white spot, it grew for a week then stopped. The Dr. says the color will come back, but it’s been a long time and no change. Two other Dr. said there’s no change of the color coming back. What should I do?
Vitiligo is pigmentation disorder and the treatment of vitiligo is not a simple matter. because the real causes of this condition is not fully know to any one.
fine info about skin condition vitiligo, although there are many treatment option to treat vitiligo but about non of them one may ask with confidence that it is successful treatment of this skin condition.
Skin dyes never worked for me, the color was so far off from my pigmented areas it always looked strange.
I find I need to use makeup. I’ve used ColorTration, Covermark and Dermablend. For me anyway ColorTration worked the best as long as you use their sealing spray.
Skin dye are suitable only for a short period of time to hide your vitiligo macule but could not bring back your pigmentation and nor create new pimentation cell melanocytes.
Can you advise on a suitable hair dye for me. I have vitiligo skin condition. I currently use just for men.
Ta
@Rashid valli
I read that just for men can cause vitiligo because of the phenol contained in it. Stop using it.