On Camera with Psoriasis: Lidia Barón's Story

Every morning before going to work, Lidia Barón applied her makeup — the quiet, personal ritual of a television journalist who spends her days in the field, covering stories, conducting interviews, appearing on camera in reports. Foundation, concealer, the careful preparation for a day in front of the lens. What no one around her knew was that underneath the makeup, her skin was in crisis. Red patches on her face, an abdomen and torso covered in inflamed, cracked, intensely itchy plaques. A condition she did not yet have a name for. A year of not knowing what was happening to her own skin.

Lidia Barón is a television journalist based in the United States with deep roots in Mexico. In early 2018, she began noticing small red spots on her face — around her nose and cheeks. What followed was a year of misdiagnosis, three specialists across two countries, a treatment quote of $35,000 to $40,000, and eventually one conversation with a friend that changed everything. Eight years later, she uses Nopsor twice a year. This is her story.

It Started With Something Small

The first signs appeared in early 2018 — small red spots on Lidia's face that she assumed would go away on their own. She loved chocolate and wondered if that was the culprit. Maybe it was a minor breakout. She waited. The spots did not disappear. Instead, a thin transparent crust would form, fall away, and then the redness would return. The cycle repeated itself again and again, spreading to new spots each time.

A friend finally said what Lidia had been avoiding thinking: this was unusual, and she should see a dermatologist. The word that the friend was careful not to say out loud was the one Lidia's mind had already gone to anyway — something serious. She went.

The dermatologist prescribed ointments. The ointments contained cortisone. The cortisone worked — while she used it. When she stopped, everything came back. And then the condition did not stay on her face. It moved. To her torso, beneath her breasts, across her abdomen, around to her back. The itching became something she describes as unbearable — and the more she scratched, the more it spread.

Three Specialists, Two Countries, One Wrong Diagnosis

Lidia consulted a second specialist. Then a third — this time in the United States, where she was living. The third doctor told her she had rosacea. He then told her the treatment: a full biologic protocol, annual injections, insurance pre-authorization required. And then he told her the cost.

Thirty-five to forty thousand dollars per year. With no guarantee it would resolve in twelve months.

She left that appointment devastated. The doctor had tried to soften the news with a joke — she would have skin like Thalía, he said. She laughed in the moment. She did not feel like laughing on the way home.

She began researching. She has a journalist's instinct for questions and a journalist's discipline for following them until something makes sense. The rosacea diagnosis did not hold up against what she was experiencing. Her symptoms were different. And the cost of the proposed solution was not something she was prepared to accept as inevitable without understanding what she was actually dealing with.

One Lunch, One Name

The conversation that changed things happened over a meal in Mexico City. Lidia was visiting — she had lived with one foot in Mexico and one in the United States for years, which meant she crossed back regularly, a privilege she acknowledges not everyone has. She was at lunch with Eduardo Torreblanca, her first boss in television, someone she describes as one of those people who will always hold a space in her heart.

She told him what she was going through. She showed him the spots on her face, described what was happening on her torso and abdomen. He listened. Then he said: I just interviewed someone who I am certain can help you. I interviewed him a week ago. His name is Aguilar — Ingeniero Aguilar. He has psoriasis. Your symptoms sound like psoriasis, not rosacea. Call him.

Lidia was skeptical. She had already been through three specialists and a near-catastrophic treatment cost in one of the most medically advanced countries in the world. Another recommendation felt like another dead end. Eduardo picked up his phone before she could say no and called on her behalf. Within moments he had arranged for her to meet with José Luis Aguilar Sánchez — the man who had developed Nopsor after decades of living with severe psoriasis himself.

The Man Who Arrived With the Treatment

José Luis came prepared. He did not arrive to listen and schedule a follow-up — he arrived with his formula, ready to assess her symptoms directly. He asked her to walk him through everything: how it started, where it spread, the itching, the cracking, the dryness, the pattern of the cortisone working and the symptoms returning.

He told her she had psoriasis. Not rosacea.

And then he told her something that the three specialists had not: it would get better. He showed her his own hands, his own nails — the places where his psoriasis still lived, controlled but present. He had had this. He knew what it felt like. He had spent years developing something that worked. And he was not going to tell her it would disappear permanently — he was going to tell her the truth.

That honesty was what made her trust him. Not the authority of a title or the confidence of a specialist — the straightforwardness of someone who had been where she was and came back from it. She decided on the spot to try the treatment. She felt — in the way she describes as a woman's intuition — that this was the right path.

He also told her, without softening it, that the product had a distinctive smell. She would notice it. She should prepare her family. She should use old dark shirts she did not mind ruining. She should protect her pillowcases. He wanted her to know exactly what she was committing to.

October to December: The Three and a Half Months

Lidia returned to the United States with the Nopsor treatment and two things she says were essential: hope and a promise to herself to be consistent. She started in October 2018.

• October 2018 — Treatment begins

  Lidia follows José Luis's instructions exactly. Nightly shower, even in the cold of an early autumn. Old oversized shirts she will never wear again. Protected pillowcases. The distinctive smell of the coal tar pomade filling the room — what her husband joked smelled like a mechanic's garage. Her daughter would check in and say: it doesn't smell bad, Mami. Her husband said the same. Whether they were being kind or honest, she says, it was the support she needed to stay consistent.

• Mid-November — First changes

  At roughly six weeks, the plaques begin to respond. The thickness starts to reduce. The edges of the inflamed patches start to soften. The itching — the constant, maddening itching — begins to quiet. The changes are subtle at first, but they are there. She keeps going.

• December 2018 — Cleared

  By December, the plaques on her torso and abdomen are gone. What remains are faint marks — the traces of months of scratching — but imperceptible compared to what was there before. No redness. No cracking. No scaling. Nothing like what she had been living with since January.

• January 2019 — A different person

  Lidia enters the new year describing herself as a different person. Not a cured person — she is careful about this distinction, because José Luis had been honest with her about what psoriasis is. But a person who is no longer defined by her skin. She does not return to the doctor who quoted her $40,000. She does not need to.

The Follow-Up Calls Nobody Else Made

What Lidia describes as one of the most meaningful parts of the experience is something that has nothing to do with the formula. Throughout those three and a half months, José Luis called her. Personally. To ask how she was doing. To hear about her progress. To answer her questions. To encourage her when she was uncertain.

She contrasts this explicitly with the medical experience that preceded it — doctors who treated her as a number, who handed her a prescription and moved to the next patient. The human dimension of the Nopsor experience — the founder's personal involvement, the honesty about what to expect, the follow-through after the sale — mattered to her as much as the clinical result.

The Stress Connection She Made Herself

Eight years after starting Nopsor, Lidia uses the product roughly twice a year. She knows her skin well now — she knows when a flare is beginning and she responds immediately. What she has also observed, without anyone telling her, is the relationship between her internal state and her skin.

This is not a claim she makes as a medical authority — she makes it as someone who has paid close attention to her own body for eight years. Research on the psoriasis-stress connection supports what she observed: stress activates immune pathways that overlap significantly with those driving psoriatic inflammation. Her instinct aligns with the science.

What She Would Tell Her 2018 Self

When asked what she would say to herself at the beginning of this journey — before the dermatologist visits, before the misdiagnosis, before the $40,000 quote — her answer is immediate and specific.

She also says something about the smell that she wants people to know before they talk themselves out of starting. Yes, it smells like a mechanic's garage. She said exactly that to her family, and they said: it's not that bad. And she says: when you know it is going to do something good for you, the smell stops being a problem very quickly. José Luis himself told her: the human being gets used to everything except not eating. She has never forgotten that.