Within Reach: You Deserve to Feel Good with Reena Ruparelia

Coming to you live from iHeart HQ, Imani Futrell joins Holly to introduce us to a condition that we’ve never covered before on Our Skin: hidradenitis suppurativa. Imani has lived with HS since she was a kid, and she's turned what once felt like isolation into an entire community — HS Warriors who get together to support one another. And the community keeps growing! Imani talks with Holly about the parts of HS nobody prepares you for: the mental toll underneath the physical one, learning to give herself grace, and what she wants every newly diagnosed person to know. Plus, Holly traces HS all the way back to 1839 Paris and a surgeon who got the diagnosis right but the name wrong — and asks why it took medicine more than a century to catch up to reality. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brian Lehrschall was thirteen when psoriasis arrived, and it moved fast — from a single scalypatch on his arm to more than ninety percent of his body in six months. Psoriatic arthritisfollowed soon after. What he did next set the pattern for the next thirty years. He asked hisdoctor at Duke to explain exactly what was happening in his body and why, and Brian hasn’tstopped asking the hard questions ever since. In this episode, Brian talks with Holly about self-advocacy, from the exam room to capitol hill, where Brian has campaigned for Step Therapyreform and other legal protections for his community. Plus, Holly tells the story of how psoriasisstopped being filed under "cosmetic" — a fight the psoriasis community has waged, one denialletter, one Capitol Hill meeting, and one state law at a time. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joel Nelson spent his childhood being discussed in his doctors’ appointments, rather than conversed with. He was ten when the joint pain started, and for the next eight years the conversations about his body happened over his head, behind a curtain, between the adults in the room. He was poked and prodded and left in pain while a plan was made without him. This inspired a deep urge to speak for himself, and to empower others to do the same. To that end, Joel is the founder of Psoriatic Disease UK, an IFPA ambassador, and the administrator of a peer support community of more than forty thousand people. He talks with Holly about the self-advocacy skill nobody handed him, what it cost to learn it in his twenties, and how he tries to hand it to the next person. Plus, in our history section, what the research says about why autoimmune disease is rising worldwide. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most of us have left a doctor's appointment with the thing we actually needed to say still stuck in our throat. Dr. Anna Chacon — board-certified dermatologist, psoriasis patient, and one of the few dermatologists working in rural New Mexico and Alaska — has spent her career thinking about exactly that problem. In this episode, she and Holly talk about how to prepare for an appointment, how to actually say the hard thing once you're in the room, and what it looks like when doctors genuinely try to meet patients where they are — and when they don't. Plus: the story of a 1977 FDA policy that excluded women of childbearing potential from early-stage clinical trials, and the sixteen years it took to change the law. Holly traces the downstream effects — wrong dosing, missed symptoms, psoriasis presentations on darker skin that looked nothing like the textbook — and talks to Dr. Ana about what it means to be a dermatologist trying to fix, from the inside, a system with a very long institutional memory. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hannah Williams was twelve years old when what everyone assumed was dandruff turned out to be psoriasis — and by sixteen, it had covered nearly 95% of her body. For years, she wore long sleeves in summer and avoided mirrors. Then, slowly, in small steps, something shifted: a kids' camp in America, a cross-country trip, a decision to start an Instagram — and eventually, tattoos as acts of deliberate, joyful self-decoration on the skin she'd spent a decade trying to hide. In this episode, Hannah talks about what it actually takes to stop hiding, what it means to build community around visibility, and what she wants every newly diagnosed twelve-year-old to know. Plus, Holly traces the word "stigma" all the way back to its ancient Greek roots — where it literally meant a mark burned into skin — and follows the long, complicated history of how tattooing traveled from punishment, to shame, to one of the most powerful forms of self-reclamation we have. Including what happens when psoriasis decides to have its own opinion about the process. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.