Kim Kardashian West has been quite open about her battle with psoriasis, and she continued that transparency on Instagram last night. The beauty mogul posted three deeply relatable photos of her psoriasis flare-ups, and fans are praising her for it.
“Psoriasis is the shits,” Kardashian West captioned one selfie, which shows her flare-ups covered in an herbal healing ointment. She shared a second photo to show her followers how she’s treating the issue, and a third of the flare-ups on her legs, which she jokingly captioned, “Sexy.”
Psoriasis, for the unfamiliar, is a condition in which skin cells build up and form scaly, itchy dry patches on your body. They often show up as red, itchy spots and can pop up anywhere where you have skin (so that includes your scalp, eyelids, knees, face, you name it). According to statistics from the National Psoriasis Foundation, around 8 million people in the U.S. have psoriasis, and it has a greater impact on quality of life in women—especially because trying to cover it with makeup is difficult and treatment can be costly.
Check out Kardashian West’s selfies for yourself, below.
And here’s the snap of her leg:
“I actually really appreciate that Kim Kardashian talks about her psoriasis so publicly. It makes me feel loads better about it,” one fan wrote, praising the reality star for her recent uploads. “You know what,” wrote another, “I applaud Kim K for speaking openly & showing her psoriasis. She gets so much shit from people about this & that but that’s something I really appreciate about her.”
And there are more positive tweets where these came from. Here are just a few people commending Kardashian for her candor about psoriasis:
Just last week Kardashian West had to shut down a tabloid for calling one of her psoriasis flare-ups a “bad skin day.” “It’s psoriasis all over my face,” she tweeted in response to an article from the Daily Mail.
“Sometimes the rashes are itchy, sometimes they’re flaky,” Kardashian West wrote on her app in 2016 about living with psoriasis. “Mine flares up from time to time for different reasons…. Scientists are constantly researching and developing new medications to help treat it, but for now, I use a topical cortisone ointment every night before bed. I’m always hoping for a cure, of course, but in the meantime, I’m learning to just accept it as part of who I am.”
