Living with Psoriasis: My Personal Journey and Why I Joined Nopsor

I have lived with psoriasis for most of my adult life. I know what it feels like to be misdiagnosed, dismissed, and told that expensive medications with serious side effects are the only option. I also know what it feels like when something finally works — and when that something comes from your own father's hands. That is the story of how I ended up here.

It started when I was fifteen

The first lesions appeared on my legs when I was fifteen years old. Our family doctor dismissed it as a temporary rash and prescribed something that helped for a while. The problem didn't go away — it just went quiet, waiting.

In college, the stress of exams brought the itch back. I would scratch my calves until they bled, not understanding what was happening to my body. In my early twenties, stress from work pushed lesions onto my face. A doctor misdiagnosed it as herpes and prescribed antiviral medication. It did nothing, obviously.

All the while, my father — José Luis Aguilar Sánchez — was living with something similar. Neither he nor his doctors had a name for it yet. It wasn't until a physician started connecting my skin symptoms with my father's that the possibility of psoriasis came up for the first time. But it would still be years before I had a formal diagnosis.

The crisis that changed everything

In 2008, during the financial crisis and a stretch of intense pressure at work, my condition escalated in a way it hadn't before. My hands were covered in lesions. I was seeing a dermatologist in Florida who diagnosed me with dyshidrotic dermatitis — a type of eczema. He gave me a cortisone shot, and the next morning my skin was completely clear. It felt like a miracle.

Days later, it came back.

When I asked why, he explained that cortisone was only a short-term solution — repeated use could damage the liver. He prescribed a topical steroid that cost nearly a thousand dollars per treatment, with a fine print warning about cancer risks. That was my breaking point. I left that office and started looking for something else.

I tried elimination diets. UV therapy. Holistic treatments. Nothing held. The worst part wasn't the treatments failing — it was that I still didn't have an accurate diagnosis. I was managing a condition I couldn't name.

The question that changed my life

The turning point came through a UV technician — Gabriel Vaserstein, PA-C, at Skin and Cancer Associates in Florida. During one of my sessions, he asked about my medical history. I mentioned my father had psoriasis. He looked at me and said: "Have you ever had a biopsy?"

I hadn't.

That single question led to the correct diagnosis. I had psoriasis — palmoplantar psoriasis, affecting the palms of my hands and soles of my feet, one of the most functionally disabling forms of the condition. I had been living with it for years under the wrong name, being treated for the wrong disease.

At a follow-up appointment, Gabriel asked how my father was doing. I told him he was doing well — his skin had been clear for years. Gabriel said: "Why don't you try what he's doing?"

I knew about Nopsor. My father had been using it for years. But because I had been following dermatologist diagnoses — dyshidrotic dermatitis, not psoriasis — it had never occurred to me that his product was relevant to my condition. The correct diagnosis was the missing piece. Once I knew I had psoriasis, the answer had been in my own family the whole time.

What happened next

I called my father and asked him what he had been using. He told me about the formula he had developed — a two-step nighttime system built on coal tar, salicylic acid, and a blend of eight plant-based ingredients he had spent years refining after decades of suffering from psoriasis himself. He had developed it in his garage in Querétaro after conventional medicine had nothing left to offer him. By the time I called, it had been working for him for years.

I started using it. After three months, my skin was clear.

I went into remission in 2016 and have remained there. I still use the product. That is not a marketing line — it is the reason I am here at all.

The part no one talks about enough

The physical symptoms are only part of what psoriasis takes from you. The part that stays with me longest is the social weight of it.

I remember reaching out to shake hands with a colleague at HP in Boise. He pulled his hand back and asked, "What is that?" That one gesture — the flinch, the withdrawal — made me feel contagious. Like something to be avoided. I have thought about that moment many times since.

I remember sitting in a customer briefing in Palo Alto, waiting to present to executives from HP and Kaiser Permanente. I was scratching absently, the way you do when it's been years and it's become involuntary. When I stood up to present, I looked back at my chair. There was a ring of flakes on the floor around it, white against the dark carpet, that looked like a small snowfall. No one said anything. I gave the presentation. But I have never forgotten how I felt in that moment.

Those experiences are not unique to me. They are part of the daily reality of psoriasis for millions of people — the constant management of how others see you, the pre-emptive explanations, the places you don't go and the clothes you don't wear. The condition is visible. The decisions it forces are invisible.

Why I said yes to this role

When the opportunity to lead Nopsor as CEO came up in late 2024, it was not a difficult decision. This is my father's company. His formula. His life's work. And it is the product that put my psoriasis into remission after years of failed treatments.

I spent 35 years at HP and HP Inc. — a career I am proud of. But when my father asked if I would come lead the US expansion, the answer was obvious. I know this product from the inside. I have watched it work on his body for decades. I have lived what it does. I understand what it means to finally have something that works after years of expensive medications with serious side effects and no lasting results.

Nopsor had been successful in Mexico for more than twenty years. Thousands of people had used it and found relief. The US market had no equivalent — a steroid-free, coal tar and salicylic acid system with a meaningful herbal component, at a price that doesn't require insurance negotiation. The gap was obvious. The product was real. The founder is my father.

I became CEO on February 1, 2025. I am still in remission. I still use the product every night.