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Chloe Muir, now 20 years old, has suffered from a skin condition called psoriasis since she was a teenager.
Psoriasis is a skin condition where the skin cells begin turning over and multiplying much faster than usual. As skin cells reach the surface of the skin and die, they leave red and white flakey patches because there are simply too many of them for the body to effectively handle.
This condition can be caused by genetics, medication, or cuts and infections.
For Muir, her persistent skin problem began when she was 13 and on vacation in Cyprus. A cat broke her skin when it scratched her, triggering Muir’s psoriasis problem.
Muir has spent the last seven years searching for a treatment, but has come up short. “I’ve tried so many different forms of treatment over the years, steroids, injections, creams, but nothing has really worked,” she explained.
Her condition only progressively got worse, forcing her to dust and vacuum her room almost every day, just so she could keep it clean of her skin flakes.
Over the years, Muir has only been able to find one makeshift solution – sunbeds.
The intensified UV light from sunbeds is the only thing that calms her skin and eases her constant discomfort, itching, and pain for an extended period of time. “My skin instantly feels better afterwards, I itch less, the redness goes down and the pain is tolerable,” she explained. “I use the sunbeds for 12 minutes up to four times a week sometimes now.”
She acknowledged that her situation is a bit of a “catch-22” right now, seeing as sunbed use raises a person’s risk of developing skin cancer in the future – but without this danger of skin cancer, Muir finds her condition almost unbearably uncomfortable.
“It’s literally been a last resort for me,” she admitted. “My advice to other psoriasis suffers [sic] is to exhaust all other avenues.”
