I decided to post my reply to another, first of all, since it was so long and people started pm me and it would be better to share all this info with anyone else suffering from eczema. Hopefully we can gather a lot of comprehensive info, since it is such an elusive disease and difficult to treat. By no means do I have a complete answer yet.
Here it is:
Long reply!
My dd, now 14 months, has eczema, basically since she was 10 weeks old.
Over time it has gotten worse and now it's gotten better in the last two months, since I've done a food diary. I really feel I can write a book on eczema...we've been through eczema-hell and back. No scars though, so far.
So this is what I'm doing now...
She is only mildly allergic to milk, so she gets her morning raw organic milk with Probiotics, incl. Culturelle which is supposed to help eczema get about 30% better.
Then I make her organic basmati rice with rice milk, water and seabuckthorn or borage oil, I sometimes add chlorophyl and other various things I try out. She is allergic to fish and fish oils.
Lunch/Dinner is the occasional chicken baked in ghee butter, sweet potatoes (as of yesterday she seems ok with sweet potatoes, yaaay!), peas, rice, rice pasta with raw cream sauce, broccoli, swiss chard, avocado or any other green veggies. Zucchinis baked in ghee butter is good too. She's also ok with cheese (Mozzarella).
Desert is whole milk organic yoghurt or cottage cheese.
That's it. She can't eat anything else right now. Today she wrapped her little fingers around a wheat cracker and ate a few bites in complete happiness and tonight she was breaking out and is really fussy.
At one point she lost weight, since my doc suggested to take her off milk to see if she would clear up, it didn't make much of a difference. Then I found out it was the carrots that I kept feeding her almost every day! And I only found this out by keeping a food diary and checking it every day of the week to see what the pattern was.She got really skinny, since she could barely eat anything at all, it was horrible, since I felt that I needed to feed her, but everything I tried made her scratch herself bloody! I was in tears every day, really, really desperate.
So here is what I do with lotions and creams (after I even spent a bunch on making my own creams!):
I bathe her 2-3 times a week in water treated with a 'bath ball" that takes chlorine out. It's warm water and I use a soap-free gel from Germany by a company called Lavera to clean her. I'm sure there are products here in the US that are just like it. I take her out after 10-15 min. of playing and butter her up real good before she even gets dry.
If she has no break-out I use California Baby Calming Botanical Moisturizing Cream, it came highly recommended and it works well for us. It's pricey though.
If she is itching lightly at different spots I use a homeopathic cream called Florazone first and then put Cal Baby over it to give it extra moisture. Sometimes I also use Aquaphor. I've tried just about EVERY product out there and also like the Weleda line, but the only one to keep enough moisture on the broken and dried skin is NOT the Calendula baby product, but a green tube called Weleda Skin Food, it's a thick paste. Good stuff!
Ok... so if she has an eczema attack, I put on a light cortizone paste that is mixed with Aquaphor (or something like that) to lock in the moisture. Somebody brought it to me from Canada, it comes from a little pharmacy in Montreal. It works well. You can probably mix your own if you feel you have to have a power cream so the itching doesn't get bloody. Then I put Cal Baby Cream over everything.
Most importantly, you need to keep the spots moisturized externally (creams, pastes, also water-based lotions) and internally (with omega-rich olis).
Her is a list of her allergens for your reference, (it's the same with every baby though):
wheat/gluten
ALL FRUITS! Literally ALL!
corn
sugar
caffeine (not that I would give her this anyway)
chocolate
turkey, pork
tomatoes
vitamin C in ALL forms
vitamin supplements
Olive oil, all typically used oils
soy (which is in sooo many products if you check labels!)
nuts
carrots
bell peppers
fish
potatoes
beans
juices of all kinds
lentils
etc..., etc,...
the list is so long.
So, what I do now is stay with the "safe" foods so she doesn't suffer and then introduce a new and nutritionally complete food to see what her reaction is. Only introduce one thing at a time within a 2-3 day period.
We also did spend A LOT of money for NAET treatments. It was helpful in determining the allergies, but failed to give us any lasting results in "eliminating" them. We don't do much "conventional" doctoring, so I've never taken her to do the allergy tests. It has dubious results anyway, from what I've heard.
The hardest moments are when she begs for apples, strawberries or bananas, it breaks my heart not to be able to feed her healthy fruits and she wants it so bad too! :-(
Oh, clothing is another important thing! Cotton! Nothing but cotton on her skin. Sweating can aggravate eczema, as does dry air, as you know. I've also had to bandage her wrists and ankles sometimes, so she couldn't reach her skin to scratch. But that's reserved for only desperate moments...sad as it is.
I hope this helps a bit in this jungle of this mysterious atopic helplessness.
Hugs to all you mamas who have to deal with this too. It's hard, but it can and will evetually get better, as you determine the causes, whether environmental or food-related.
Here it is:
Long reply!
My dd, now 14 months, has eczema, basically since she was 10 weeks old.
Over time it has gotten worse and now it's gotten better in the last two months, since I've done a food diary. I really feel I can write a book on eczema...we've been through eczema-hell and back. No scars though, so far.
So this is what I'm doing now...
She is only mildly allergic to milk, so she gets her morning raw organic milk with Probiotics, incl. Culturelle which is supposed to help eczema get about 30% better.
Then I make her organic basmati rice with rice milk, water and seabuckthorn or borage oil, I sometimes add chlorophyl and other various things I try out. She is allergic to fish and fish oils.
Lunch/Dinner is the occasional chicken baked in ghee butter, sweet potatoes (as of yesterday she seems ok with sweet potatoes, yaaay!), peas, rice, rice pasta with raw cream sauce, broccoli, swiss chard, avocado or any other green veggies. Zucchinis baked in ghee butter is good too. She's also ok with cheese (Mozzarella).
Desert is whole milk organic yoghurt or cottage cheese.
That's it. She can't eat anything else right now. Today she wrapped her little fingers around a wheat cracker and ate a few bites in complete happiness and tonight she was breaking out and is really fussy.
At one point she lost weight, since my doc suggested to take her off milk to see if she would clear up, it didn't make much of a difference. Then I found out it was the carrots that I kept feeding her almost every day! And I only found this out by keeping a food diary and checking it every day of the week to see what the pattern was.She got really skinny, since she could barely eat anything at all, it was horrible, since I felt that I needed to feed her, but everything I tried made her scratch herself bloody! I was in tears every day, really, really desperate.
So here is what I do with lotions and creams (after I even spent a bunch on making my own creams!):
I bathe her 2-3 times a week in water treated with a 'bath ball" that takes chlorine out. It's warm water and I use a soap-free gel from Germany by a company called Lavera to clean her. I'm sure there are products here in the US that are just like it. I take her out after 10-15 min. of playing and butter her up real good before she even gets dry.
If she has no break-out I use California Baby Calming Botanical Moisturizing Cream, it came highly recommended and it works well for us. It's pricey though.
If she is itching lightly at different spots I use a homeopathic cream called Florazone first and then put Cal Baby over it to give it extra moisture. Sometimes I also use Aquaphor. I've tried just about EVERY product out there and also like the Weleda line, but the only one to keep enough moisture on the broken and dried skin is NOT the Calendula baby product, but a green tube called Weleda Skin Food, it's a thick paste. Good stuff!
Ok... so if she has an eczema attack, I put on a light cortizone paste that is mixed with Aquaphor (or something like that) to lock in the moisture. Somebody brought it to me from Canada, it comes from a little pharmacy in Montreal. It works well. You can probably mix your own if you feel you have to have a power cream so the itching doesn't get bloody. Then I put Cal Baby Cream over everything.
Most importantly, you need to keep the spots moisturized externally (creams, pastes, also water-based lotions) and internally (with omega-rich olis).
Her is a list of her allergens for your reference, (it's the same with every baby though):
wheat/gluten
ALL FRUITS! Literally ALL!
corn
sugar
caffeine (not that I would give her this anyway)
chocolate
turkey, pork
tomatoes
vitamin C in ALL forms
vitamin supplements
Olive oil, all typically used oils
soy (which is in sooo many products if you check labels!)
nuts
carrots
bell peppers
fish
potatoes
beans
juices of all kinds
lentils
etc..., etc,...
the list is so long.
So, what I do now is stay with the "safe" foods so she doesn't suffer and then introduce a new and nutritionally complete food to see what her reaction is. Only introduce one thing at a time within a 2-3 day period.
We also did spend A LOT of money for NAET treatments. It was helpful in determining the allergies, but failed to give us any lasting results in "eliminating" them. We don't do much "conventional" doctoring, so I've never taken her to do the allergy tests. It has dubious results anyway, from what I've heard.
The hardest moments are when she begs for apples, strawberries or bananas, it breaks my heart not to be able to feed her healthy fruits and she wants it so bad too! :-(
Oh, clothing is another important thing! Cotton! Nothing but cotton on her skin. Sweating can aggravate eczema, as does dry air, as you know. I've also had to bandage her wrists and ankles sometimes, so she couldn't reach her skin to scratch. But that's reserved for only desperate moments...sad as it is.
I hope this helps a bit in this jungle of this mysterious atopic helplessness.
Hugs to all you mamas who have to deal with this too. It's hard, but it can and will evetually get better, as you determine the causes, whether environmental or food-related.
