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.
My VITILIGO leaves after 35 years, I want to recommend how , This is my Story!!
Hello Dear Friends, my name is Martin Aldana from Mexico, I am 57 years old, and I have suffered Vitiligo for over 35 years, I have to say I’ve tried all the recommended creams, therapies, pills, and commercial stuff in the market and home made remedies, i even tried with skin transplants, which are so painful and expensive and finally didn’t work, nothing did work for me. I also traveled to Cuba to try with melagenina, and it didn’t work for me, nor the friends that i meet there, none of us got any results,
I finally gave up all my hopes after that and i did let pass some years trying to accept and forget about cures, until my dermatologist recommended me to take photo therapy with ultra violet b Narrow band, and that my friends gave me for the very first time clear results and until now i remain impressed with my progress.
It makes you so so happy when you slowly see the color coming back to your white skin and the best is that it does not fades away or looses color.
I started going to photo therapy 3 times a week, for the first 2 months, at a local hospital and i paid around 25usd per session, that makes the treatment expensive once you do the math it comes up to 7200usd for the 2 years i have been following now daily 4min exposures. the suggestion I make to all of you is to buy a lamp but not those very expensive big cabins, those are very expensive and built for hospitals.
my dermatologist found a good supplier that ships this low cost lamps, and the size they sell is great because it can cover your body being small and cheap they are called uvtreatment and my doctor has been recommending them for the use at home and office to all the affected patients he knows, i know 4 people that also purchased this lamp and all of them are seeing results, but i think i am among the best result having now like 80% of repigmentation back, i cant believe it if i don’t see it! so my strong suggestion to all of you, if you are willing to be constant is to buy this lamp and start the treatment, they give you a exposure table to follow and they give 2 years warranty i think that is a very good deal, they are in the US and south America so i think they can ship them anywhere. the email is uvtreatment at hotmail dot com. ask them for information they sell them for less than a thousand dollars and ask them for a discount because i got discount when i got mine, another advantage i see on buying your own is that i was feeling very ashamed to go to the phototheraphy and get naked in front of the nurse every third day, plus it was much more expensive than buying the portable lamp. I am a testimonial that they are very effective, my e mail is igualqueahora at hotmail dot com,email me if you need support I encourage you to gain back the lost hopes if you have tried it all,and nothing has worked for you, and do not waste a lot of time as I did because the longest you have had vitiligo the harder it is to heal fast. and most important is maintain positive attitude.
With affection, Martin Aldana!
I’ve had vitiligo for 21 years. I’ve tried a few creames, oils and pills and they didn’t work. I finally stopped trying and tried to learn to live with it. Then one day I noticed my pigment coming back. They were small spots the size of a salt grain but after a year the small dots have grown and have join together kinda like vitiligo starts. I tried to figure out what I was doing different to cause my pigment to come back. I finally figured it out. My doctor told me I was deficient in vitamin D and wanted me to start taking 4000 IU of vitamin D. I bought the liquid form of vitamin D and started taking 4 drops every morning. I believe this is what’s helping me regain my pigment. I have a friend that has a sister that has vitiligo and she just found out she’s also dificient in vitamin D. I was curious to know if anyone of you are also dificient in vitamin D?
I have also just recently been told by my Doctor that I am deficient in Vitamin D. Why is this?
I’m not sure why? I told my doctor about it( not a dermotologist) and she said she’d put it on her notes. She was excited about it. I’m still getting pigment back. It’s slow but a least it stopped spreading and I’m regaining it.
Hi Patty…Which type of Vitamin D did you take and how many milligrams per dosage?..Is it a particular type or are all Vitamin D’s the same?..Thank you in advance for your feedback.
I’m not sure if all vitamin D is the same, I’ve been taking vitamin D3. It has 1000IU(10ML)per drop. I’ve been taking 4 drops every morning.The small bottle is about $23. You get about 360 drops.I’d show you pictures of my hands but this site doesn’t allow you to. Good luck I hope it works for you to.
all this info is very promising,I was curious (to patty) as to where you purchased your D3 vitamins.
I have this vitiligo for the past 15 years.I tried alot of treatments but to no avail.Can you find D3 vitamins in natural foods?Thank you.
I tried the uvtreatments.com lamps and they work fine for me. got the small size and i cuold see results only after 3 months.
this is the first time i really see changes with this
ultraviolet narrow band lamps on my vitiligo.
What i would like to know is what other alternative should i take to combine it in order to get a faster result, i am getting the color back slowly i wonder if i could improve the speed of my healing process.
thanks, any comment or suggestion please email me at benjaminy2k@hotmail.com
thanks Ben!