Leucoderma and its treatment - 2
After the juice fast, the patient may adopt a restricted diet consisting of fresh fruits, raw or steamed vegetables and whole meal bread. Curd and milk may be added to this diet after a few days. The patient may thereafter gradually embark upon a well-balanced diet of seeds, nuts and grains, vegetables and fruits. The large proportion of the diet should consist of raw foods. Seeds and beans such as alfalfa, mung and soya beans can be sprouted. This diet may be supplemented with cold-pressed vegetable oils, honey and yeast. Juice fasting may be repeated at intervals of two months.
The patient should avoid tea, coffee, alcoholic beverages and all condiments and highly flavored dishes. He or she should also avoid sugar, white flour products, denatured cereals like polished rice and pearled barley and tinned or bottled foods. Certain home remedies have also been useful in the treatment of leucoderma. The best known of such remedies is the use of seeds of psoralea. Seeds should be steeped in the juice of ginger or cow’s urine for three days. The fluids should be renewed every day. The seeds should then be rubbed with hands to remove their husks, dried in the shade and powdered. One gram of this powder should be taken every day with fresh milk for 40 continuous days. The ground seeds should also be applied to the white spots.
Seeds of psoralea, combined with tamarind seeds are also useful. Equal quantity of both the seeds should be steeped in water for three or four days. They should then be shelled and dried in the shade. They should be ground into paste and applied to the white patches for a week. If the application of this paste causes itching or the white spots become red and a fluid begins to ooze out, it should be discontinued. If there is no itching or reddening, psoralea seeds should also be taken for 40 days.
Another useful remedy for leucoderma is red clay found by the river side or on hill slopes. The clay should be mixed in ginger juice and applied over the white spots once a day. The copper contained in the clay seems to bring back skin pigmentation and ginger juice serves as a milk stimulant, facilitating increased blood flow to the spots. Drinking water kept overnight in a copper vessel also helps.