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Hopkins Health
The "Mind-Skin" Connection
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| Francisco Tausk, M.D., studying stress and skin disease in animal models. |
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Psychodermatologist Francisco Tausk, M.D., describes his decision to dedicate his career to the understanding of the relationship between the mind and the skin as a serendipitous one. It all began, he says, after he took a training course in hypnosis during medical school.
“I tried it on a patient with dermatologic disease and the result was so impressive that I stayed interested,” Tausk says.
Indeed, years later Tausk would lead a study that found that psoriasis patients who were susceptible to hypnosis responded quite well to the mind-body therapy. “They essentially cleared their psoriasis,” Tausk says.
Recently he’s been targeting another dermatologic disease, skin cancer. In animal studies he’s shown that mice stressed by exposure to fox scent developed tumors far earlier than mice not stressed in this way (Archives of Dermatology, January 2001). “We have shown for the first time that a natural stressor increases the development of tumors after exposure to UV light,” Tausk says.
Such findings, Tausk explains, are moving dermatologists closer to drug and stress-reduction therapies to reduce the risk of skin cancers for certain patients. “We’re only beginning to explore this phenomenon,” Tausk says, “but it holds much promise for patients vulnerable to stress.” |
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