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15/1/2018 6 Comments

My son's story - when Vitiligo runs in the family

Happy New Year! I hope it isn’t too late to say that now it’s mid-January. I promise I’ll spend a bit more time on my blog and talking to you all about what’s happening with Vitiliglow™ but the start of the year has been very busy finalising the last two shades – Light and Ebony – more on that soon!

This blog is a guest post from my son Nike, who also has Vitiligo. The British Skin Foundation state that one in five people with vitiligo know of someone in their family with the condition, but the exact type of inheritance isn’t clear. As it’s not life threatening, vitiligo isn’t the worst thing to pass on to your child, but as Nike’s mum I’m obviously very upset that he also has the same condition that has affected me and my confidence so much. Luckily, Nike has dealt with it really well and I’m really proud of him for sharing his story with you all.

Nike’s story
My vitiligo started just over a year ago when I found my first patch. As I’m now in my early 20’s, I hadn’t thought I’d inherit the skin condition from my mum. The first patches appeared on my hands and arms and mum and I are surprised at how quickly the patches are spreading – they’re now on my neck, face and my legs.

I guess because I’m mixed race and my skin is fairly dark, it’s a lot more noticeable on me than it is on my mum who’s got white skin. Mum’s had the condition for most of her adult life and it’s affected her confidence a lot. I'm determined to make sure that having vitiligo doesn’t affect my confidence and stop me from doing anything.

Until fairly recently, my patches didn’t bother me too much. But as they’re more noticeable and appear in more places now, I felt the time was right to have a go at using Vitiliglow™. Luckily, the dark shade is a really good match to the patches on my hands and arms. I went to see mum and we played around with the dark shade and tried different ways to apply it. The best way to cover all the small patches on my hands was to apply it in thin layers over my entire hand. Once it is dry, it doesn’t really feel like 'make-up' – to the extent that I forgot I had it on when I went out that evening.

It was trickier to apply it to my face and neck because the dark shade is a bit too dark for me. Like lots of people, my skin is darker on certain parts of my body so I had to play around with the shades to make sure it looked natural and realistic. We mixed a bit of the tan and dark together and managed to get a good shade to suit my skin. Mum showed me that it was better to apply it to the whole of my neck area, but on my face it looked better to put a small amount around my nose and the corner of my mouth. We just dabbed a bit of Vitiliglow™ on with my fingers to get the most natural look. It’s definitely worth trying different techniques until you find the one that works best for you.

I’m not sure I’ll feel the need to cover up every day, but it’s nice to know that if I do get more patches, I’ve got the option to cover them up if I want to. Vitiligo can really affect people’s confidence and it’s a shame that people feel that way. It’s important to talk about how you feel and I’m really lucky to have mum to talk about it as she’s got loads more experience of the condition than me. I’m really proud of what she’s achieved with Vitiliglow™ as it’s important that people have the option to cover their patches if they want to.

I hope that sharing my story will help other young men who might feel funny about using something that might be thought of as “make-up” but hopefully it might make other people feel better about their patches and using a product if they want to. I’m not going to let vitiligo affect me personally or stop me doing the things I like doing. It’s a part of me and I’ve learned to be comfortable with it.

Good luck,
Nike