Atopic eczema is very common and often environmental factors or certain foods trigger it. This means that your immune system maybe over reacting to some irritant such as washing powder, dust mites, animal dander etc or you may be having an allergic reaction to some food you are eating.
This sometime happens spontaneously for no apparent reason. People who have other allergies like hay fever can be more prone to this than others. The conventional approach is steroid creams to help reduce inflammation along with anti-fungal cream and antibiotics if there is infection. Alternatively you could try and identify the offending substance and exclude it from your diet or environment.
You can help yourself by taking evening primrose oil and omega 3 along with Zinc and a whole B complex as a dietary supplement. Fish oils have been shown to help reduce inflammation in eczema so eat more oily fish. It will help if you can exclude all dairy produce, margarine, vegetable oils, meat and refined and processed foods from your diet for at least a month. Drink plenty of water with a squeeze of lemon juice in it to help alkalize your system. Sometimes an over production of Candida can make you more susceptible to eczema so take some high potency pro-biotics and remove sugar from your diet as this will reduce yeast growth and will in turn benefit your immune system.
Homoeopathically Sulphur is a good remedy for warm people who have itchy skin worse heat so try some 3 times daily in the 12x strength. This may help in the short term but in order to address the deeper issues you would need constitutional treatment from a homoeopath.
Chickweed cream applied to the skin is both healing and anti-itching and nettle tincture taken in water can help clean the blood and reduce allergic reactions.
Primrose oil with a few drop of Ti Tree essential oil is anti-fungal and antiseptic so use this mix after washing.
Calendula tincture diluted with water is a great cleanser and antibacterial so can be dabbed on to broken skin before applying oil or cream. It is important to keep the skin supple and nourished to prevent dehydration. Breathing and meditation exercises will help you relax, de-tox and energize the body so practice for 10 minutes twice daily.
Besides self-help measures you may like individualised treatment with professional homoeopathy. In our practice we work with homoeopathic remedies and some herbal preparations, using creams and oils to alleviate where appropriate, while healing is going on.
Skin symptoms can be stubborn and take some time – often the symptoms will get worse and better for a while before really clearing up. However there are many exceptions to this and I have seen dramatic improvements sometimes. Usually though we would need a few consultations with progress reports.
It is sometimes difficult to be definitive about the name of a skin eruption – I see many people who are given combinations of steroidsand anti-fungals because the symptoms are so similar. In homoeopathy the diagnosis is not so important as the actual symptoms which will include the factors that aggravate and ameliorate – i.e. heat/hot/water/night aggravates itching.
There is also the predisposition which is often connected with family history and personal medical history ie eczema in the family + whatever illness/meds/vax your son experienced previously and his reactions. Then again there is the exciting cause which is not always obvious but may include weather changes, emotional changes, food reactions and other things. it helps to be a bit of a Sherlock Holmes here to intuitively discern patterns and connections.
In homoeopathy the personality and constitution is very important for prescribing purposes. Hot hungry restless people get different sets of remedies from chilly anxious sleepless people for example. Stressful responses to life situations, changes etc. can be a subtle influence on the fluctuation of irritating symptoms.
The skin is like a barometer showing internal reactions. Many aggravating factors come from inside a person, not just from outside and also many reactions and symptoms are the internal response to external situations. In homoeopathy we investigate the balance, the sequence of events and the response.
Best of Health
Nigel