[sarbar]

My youngest has had severe eczema since birth but is now mostly controlled (meaning you rarely see it happen). Before it was controlled at 16 months he clawed constantly. He looked like a cooked lobster. The prescription ointment should be the "get it under control" and then only used when you have a bad flareup. It is easy to have to use it every day That you had a flareup swimming says a lot. The chemicals are harsh on skin. My youngest looks like he was burnt after pool swimming, unless it is a mineral pool. So....how do we control his? Diet. Environment. Meds. I can only use one brand of laundry detergent. NO laundry dryer sheets. Only 2 brands of body wash (nothing else). Even the cleaning chemicals used are minimal in our house. Nothing scented. Nothing dyed. He also has severe food allergies. Due to ending up in the ER with anaphylaxis twice between 14 and 16 months (first for peanuts, then for cashews), he had a full back panel at 16 months (he is now nearly 4). Once we removed out everything he was allergic to - all tree nuts, peanuts, wheat (not gluten mind you, but wheat - and we found he can tolerate small amounts of high quality heirloom wheat, just not cheap all purpose flour and cheap wheat products), dairy (huge trigger for eczema) and eggs. He is also allergic to yellow peas (pea protein is in everything now) and Lupine. Recently we had a severe set of weeks which made no sense. His eczema came back, he was in severe pain in the gut, etc. After watching it carefully we realized he was being "poisoned" by oats at his preschool. He can eat oats at home, so my theory stands the preschool is buying cheap oats in bulk bins. If you have eczema, do NOT EVER buy or eat out of bulk bins. The cross contamination is horrendous. His preschool won't admit to it, so I can't prove it, but once I made sure he wasn't eating anything there....gee, his eczema cleared up Anyhow, I can't say it enough: Get an allergy back panel if you can afford it or convince your insurance you need it. Which leads to....I had eczema and so does my husband. Once I changed our diets for kiddo....all of us have better skin. PS: If you can tolerate coconut, virgin coconut oil on skin is heaven. Instead of lotions! It really, really works. PS2: Don't use anything that contains jojoba oil or is heavily scented.

[melc]

Sar bar has a lot of good info. Spend some time on the EWG website and learn what chemicals are in the products you use and understand the ones that will flare eczema. Keep hands moisturized! Don't use lotions. Most have irritating ingredients even gold bond. Aquaphour is a good conventional product but plant based oils work too. There are lots of oils the absorb very quickly so you don't have to be greasy. Rosehip seed, red raspberry seed are fast absorbing and good for daytime. Other oils are good for night. Wear organic cooton gloves over oiled hands at night. Olive, coconut, jojoba, etc. Always use cold pressed since solvents may be used in some oils. Make sure you use the right laudry detergent and always do an extra rinse. Never never never use fabric softener or dryer sheets. Once you stop you will realize how nasty that stuff is. If you use it currently it will have left a residue in your laundry machine. If you read up on cloth diapering you can find info about how to strip your machine and clothes of the residue. Always keep gloves on your hands when it's cold outside. Even just a couple minutes of exposing hands to cold will flare my eczema. Last tip, never never wear fleece. So scratchy! Remember, eczema is the itch that rashes.

[boot up]

if people want to ignore recommendations from a professional that actually studies ingredients and how they interact with the skin physiology and chemistry....fine. But 2 recommendations for coconut oil for eczma...that is getting to be tough to ignore that terrible and obviously uniformed advice. Coconut oil is about the worst thing possible for eczema, due to one of its constituents, that my wife rattled off, but escapes my memory. As an aside, for most skin types, coconut is a terrible thing to put on your face, and will do really weird things to the surface of your skin, which would not be what most people are trying to achieve on their face. Do you even know what is in Gold Bond, and how it interacts with the skin? Or is that a knee jerk "anything with natural in the label, must be good", reaction? Yes there are better products than Gold Bond or Eucerin, but my wife will generally recommend those two products to people for something like this, because the average person can easily and cheaply obtain them, and is therefore more likely to use them, instead of slapping something really bad like coconut oil on eczema. Now, if you want to go to her in her professional capacity, and pay accordingly for customized supervised high-powered ingredients, that is an entirely different person than someone that will pick up Gold Bond at their local drug store and slap it on regularly. But to each their own. Just because you read it on the internet, doesn't make it true. Do your research thoroughly or listen to someone who has.

[sarbar]

[Hiker Mama]

Eliminating dietary allergens cleared up my eczema. My kids', too. We each had different allergies. My hands would blister, crack and bleed. Once I took out gluten and corn, they stopped and healed, and haven't bothered me since. I also have worked really hard at healing my gut. An elimination diet, while not easy to do, is a non-obtrusive thing to try. You might find it helps, you might not. But give it 8 weeks, IMO. Then add things back in one at a time, with a few days in between. I wish you the best of luck, it's miserable to have skin problems.

[tmatlack]

Thanks for all the tips, folks. I learned a lot. Things look pretty good right now using good lotion, anti-itch ointment, and the prescription stuff when I know I can keep it on for a while. Spend 5 days in desert dryness too and no big flare ups. I would hope for the New Year we can all understand that for chronic, intermittent, mostly non-specific conditions like excema there will be a variety of opinions and treatment options. Tom