Ichthyosis

Your skin feels like terrain that never sees rain. Rough, dry, taut — covered with scales that layer over one another like plates, as if your body had decided to armour itself. The surface cracks, tightens, itches. Creams help for hours, then the dryness returns, stubborn, unimpressed by any amount of care. It is as though your skin refuses to stay soft.

Medically, ichthyosis is a genetically based keratinization disorder — the skin produces horn material too quickly or in too great a quantity and does not shed it in time. The scales are the visible result of a process anchored deep in the cell structure. From a psychosomatic perspective, a different question arises: what does it mean when your body covers itself with layer upon layer that no one can penetrate? What are you protecting — and from what?

Ichthyosis is not a cosmetic problem. It is armour that grows from within.