Willow Water from England
from Mark M.

Hi Ed:  In early December my good wife (not to say that I also have a bad wife) brought my attention to a newspaper article. It claimed great benefit for psoriasis sufferers if they drank a certain bottled water.  Not very widely available in Ireland, yet, we traveled to buy some.

Skeptic that I am after 25 years of many and various “cures,” I was indeed just going ahead to prove the pointlessness of it.  

However, after about six weeks I am approximately 50% clear. As I always drank in the region of 1.5 litres of water a day, I have had to admit the only answer is this particular water.

The water is Willow Water, from a spring in England. Details are available on its website at www.lakelandwillowwater.com.  It appears that the main difference from other waters is a natural trace amount of salacin.

I did a search of your archive but willow turned up zilch. Has anyone heard of salacin in this form affecting psoriasis?

Keep up the great work Ed and regards from Ireland, -Mark M.

PS — I have no connection with this water, just wondering has anyone else had results similar?

*****

Ed’s Response:  

http://50.1911encyclopedia.org/S/SA/SALICIN_SALICINUM.htm

“Salicin is used in medicine for the same purposes as salicylic acid...”

Now my first inclination is to go “oh sure,” because salicylic acid has been used as an exfoliant by psoriatics for a long, long time.  But I’m not going to go “oh sure” because the only actions of salicylic acid I am aware of are topical.  Would salicylic acid help our flaking if we drank it?  (Well, you’re not going to catch me ingesting T/Sal shampoo or some Wart Remover anytime soon!)

Salicin is NOT salicylic acid.  My reference, at the beginning of my response, just says it “is used in medicine for the same purposes as salicylic acid.”  I don’t even know if the medicinal grade of salicin is used as a topical (but I would guess so by the way the sentence is worded). 

Perhaps other FlakeHQ readers have heard of Willow Water or know about salicin and P.  Hopefully they’ll read this and drop me a note.

In the meantime, Mark, I’d sure like you to stay in touch.  We are very interested to learn how much improvement you experience — over what amount of time — and all the other details of your Willow Water experiment.  (If things continue to look good, could you find out if Lakeland Willow is a publicly traded company? <grin>)  -Ed

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