Turkey Diet Regime in the Treatment of Psoriasis

Psoriasis, an autoimmune disease that affects the skin, is ordinarily treated by topical creams and ointments. A number of dietary treatments are advanced as being good supplemental treatments. Eating turkey meat is one of those suggested diets.

Alternative medicines

Estimates vary, but as many as one third of Americans are believed to use alternative and complementary medicine, including altered diets, to fight psoriasis.

Clinical Studies of Eating Turkey

A 1914 study by Dr. J. Schanberg concluded that a high protein diet made psoriasis worse. Eating turkey is a high protein diet. The improvement of psoriasis symptoms among Dutch prisoners put on a forced low-protein diet by their Japanese captors during World War II is advanced as proof of this theory.

In a 1971 article published by the American Medical Association and widely quoted by turkey-diet supporters, Drs. H. Spiera, A.M. Lefkovitz, and I. Oreskes reported dramatic improvement by four patients suffering from psoriasis when they ate a diet of turkey meat. They were given the turkey meat on the assumption that it was low in tryptophan. When the patients stopped the diet, their symptoms returned.

The researchers later discovered that their original calculations were in error. Turkey meat is high, not low, in tryptophan. The size of the study was so small that the change in the source of protein could have been responsible for the improved symptoms.

In 1993, Dr. Janet H. Prystowsky and Dr. Susan Taylor of the Department of Dermatology at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center of Columbia University studied the effect of diet on dermatology. They concluded that severe psoriasis may lead to depletion of nutrients, including protein, iron and folate. The did not address the question of whether or not a turkey diet would improve psoriasis symptoms.

In 1999, Dr. David McMillin and associates at the Meridian Institute of Virginia Beach in a review of studies conducted on the subject concluded that the evidence does not support diet as secondary treatment of psoriasis, although the data are complex and open to interpretation.