Eczema

This is the story of Mr. M's eczema and links to helpful websites.

Mr. M as we sometime call him started his journey with eczema around four months of age. Our other two had very mild eczema that we improved through changing diet, so I thought this would be no biggie. I was really wrong.

At six months of age, a friend of mine did a food sensitivity text using reflexology. Next time I do that sort of test, remind me to pay close attention. Had I done so I could have saved Mr. a lot of pain and suffering. For the next few months I was a good dooby and steered clear of cheese, peanuts, and coffee. His patch of eczema went away and he was happy, until about nine months when it returned viciously. Several things happened around nine months. I became pregnant and lost quite a bit of milk. His teeth were coming in. And since he needed calories I was letting him eat more than his sisters did, so his variety and volume of food was probably more than he was ready for. And I gave him dairy. (Adding whey into his smoothies for probiotics.) Not that it was totally my fault, poor genes came into play, as several relatives on my husbands side have had eczema and dairy intolerances.

 I miscarried, but right after Mr. M turned one, I became pregnant again. So there went the milk supply again. By this time his eczema was spreading all over his legs and becoming more than a nuscience. So in the spring we did a hair test to check for food sensitivities. Many foods he ate were on the list so it was a huge undertaking to change his diet. But change it we did, with one exception. I was still nursing him and did not change my diet. Granted, he was getting little to no milk since I was quite far along in the pregnancy but as the summer progressed it kept getting worse instead of better, even with all the food restrictions. We were already careful to not use soap, keep cream on his legs, etc. I was even trying things like probiotics and enzymes. Finally we took him to a dermatologist.

That was the largest waste of money I had spent in a long time. The sappy young doctor told us the shea butter we put on his legs was "pure crap" and then proceeded to give us all sorts of trial size creams with, yes, "Shea butter" as one of the main ingredients. She didn't do food allergy tests at her office and didn't think it was necessary. This was just a condition M would have all his life and we needed to "learn how to manage it".  We stuck to her protocol for several weeks with little change. Some recommendations she gave helped, to her credit. Oatmeal and olive oil baths really brought about some relief.

Then, it hit me. Things had gotten progressively worse the more my milk came in, and after I gave birth that summer, things got really bad. Of course, my diet! So I made the biggest change in my life and cut out dairy, beef, and barley to name a few things, while tandem nursing. It was difficult. But Mr. M finally started to improve. By the fall his legs were almost all the way healed. I thought for sure WE DID IT and was already dancing a victory dance. And then it came back, with a vengeance.

By winter poor M's legs were entirely covered. It even spread to his waist, wrists and elbows. We did more problem solving. I rubbed evening primerose oil and sometimes cod liver oil on him to get efa's into his system, as well as increased my intake to get through the milk. We did another hair test and cut out all gluten and soy on top of all the other foods we had already cut out. We even bought soy free eggs in case it was getting through to him that way. I found a safe detox spray called TRS and did that. It detoxed him, alright, and just spread the eczema up his belly. I stopped nursing him, even though that was the only way to get him back to sleep at night when he itched and itched for HOURS. Finally we found a natural doctor in the area who gave us some decent advice.

He told us that we were over thinking the problem. He though we should give M more vitamins, particularly A, D and zinc, as there are immune boosting. Very interestingly, he parroted the words of the sappy young dermatologist: eczema is a skin barrier problem. But his advice was to supplement, and stay away from known food triggers. The dermatologist told us to live with it, this doctor told us try to heal it and to come back if this first idea didn't solve things.

Vitamin D worked right away. Smoother skin overnight. The naturopath's protocol did not eliminate the eczema, but things did turn a slow corner. I became obsessive about food triggers. My husband noticed that he itched when he was hungry or sad, not just because something was causing him to itch. So we fed him lots and lots of food, and kept him as happy as possible. And spring came. With that came lots of outside time and sunshine, which is otherwise known as "Vitamin D" around our house. And by the summer his legs actually cleared up for the first time ever. You could still see where the lines were, at his ankles and tops of the thighs, but there was no raised skin. No rough skin. No patches, and no redness. Then I was a booger and gave him hot dog buns that had barley in them. What a mistake. All of July his legs were bad again. But here we are again July 31 and they are mostly smooth again, no redness, almost back to ground zero. The naturopath was right, Vitamin D supplementation, but a LOT more than he had been giving us. Or maybe in direct skin format, I am not sure. I'm not even sure how to keep this going in the fall. Last September was when we stopped getting lots of sun and that is just around the corner.

So here we are, he's almost three and we have been dealing with this for basically his entire life.  It's not over yet, but I feel we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Below I will put links of pages I found helpful in our journey and products that we have used with Mr. M.

Best overview of many causes of eczema:
https://www.higherlivingjourney.com/single-post/2016/01/02/The-Ins-Outs-of-Healing-Eczema

Shea butter: https://thesheabutterlady.org/

Probiotic: https://www.corganic.com/products/gutpro

Enzymes:Now Chewy Enzymes

Vitamin D Drops: Super Daily D Drops

Zinc: Good State Zinc Drops

Detox: Detox Advance TRS Zeolite

Tights: Jefferies Seamless Organic Cotton Tights   (can be found on Amazon)