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garlicsalt
04-21-2004, 11:03 PM
My boy is 7.5 months old, and has had eczema for as long as I can remember...maybe since 2-3 months? It's become progressively worse in the last month. His already-red, rough, splotchy face becomes redder on any given day. At times, his torso and back break out into a splotchy rash. He has been scratching his forehead, cheeks, and scalp since the early months, leaving scratches all over.
I've seen several different peds at the clinic about this.
We've switched to All FreeClear, Dove soap, humidifier, air purifier in room, I gave up milk recently.
Skin was so horrible last week that we met with the on-call ped who told me to use VaniCream lotion, which helps to moisten, but he's still breaking out in rashes and face is redder today. His diaper area is perfectly clear and clean. Besides milk, I actually cut out a lot in my diet (nursing) last week, but there were still breakouts. Skipped hairspray on the morning of that ped appt, but still a nasty breakout. He hasn't experienced many solid foods, because we don't know what's causing this. On that same day last week, I reduced his food intake to bananas and rice cereal mixed with apple juice or BM.
I'm incredibly stressed and sad to see my child constantly itching his skin, let alone the nasty appearance.
*So we've been using the VaniCream since last week.
*Doctor told me to eliminate milk, ice cream, and chocolate from my diet.
*Switch back to Dreft (???????????????????? Seems insane to me and I haven't done that yet)
*Bathe with Dove
*Increase my water intake
*Taking Omega-3
*Liquid fabric softener (found one that is unscented)

Doctor told me that if his skin wasn't any better within 14 days, that we must see a dermatologist. Honestly, my child is allergic to something, and I can't FIGURE IT OUT!!!!!!! What the heck is a derm going to do for him?
We've also tried Zyrtec for itching, but that doesn't help...as well as Benadryl.
Also prescribed HydroCort...an Aquaphor and Hydrocortisone blend....but these recent rashes...doesn't help that, and I can't apply it to his face.
We have 2 cats, but baby has become redder while we've been away for the weekend on occasion...away from the cats.
I guess I'm looking for any insight. I'm at my wits-end and extremely sad for my child....it's very depressing.
His face became redder than it already was today, as well as the splotches on his body...when this happens, he has a very difficult time falling asleep at bedtime, when this has never ever been a problem.
Does anyone else have this sort of problem? This has got to be allergy-related, correct??????????????????

bixbie33
04-25-2004, 12:05 AM
Hi there,

Our son was just diagnosed with eczema on his little neck (he's 4 1/2 mos now). It was bright red and even oozing in one area. Strangely enough our ped did not tell me what to do about it other than give some hydrocortisone cream. He did say not to moisturize which runs counter to any advice I have ever read. We thought he had prickly heat and used burts bees diaper cream on his neck to keep him dry here in Malaysia. The ped said that wasn a no no b/c it didn't allow the area to breath, but it did improve the area so I'm confused. At the moment it is clearing with cortisone cream, but I don't want to always use that.

Since I am new to the game I cannot offer any advice other than trying burts bees buttermilk lotion (I read in one of my google searches that it was the only cream that worked for someone). Also get online and join some eczema chat groups. I would see a dermatologist or someone who specializes in allergies, maybe both.

If nothing at all just remind yourself that more than half the cases of eczema in infancy clear by age two. It seems like a long time to see your little one scratch, but there is hope.

Best,
Zev's Mum

garlicsalt
04-25-2004, 11:25 AM
Right, that's strange that the ped told you it needs to breathe, because that's not what I see with my child, and it's obviously not what you see either. Parker's diaper area is completely rash-free, and his face and neck are the worse in terms of rash...the most exposed areas of the body! Ped told me to moisturize, mositurize, moisturize!
Thanks for the reminder to look for eczema groups. I've been meaning to do this!

Kieransmom
05-07-2004, 09:00 PM
My son had the same problem. He was covered from head to toe with it. Our Pediatrician gave us a prescription for Elidel and that seemed to work well. We used that in conjunction with the Children's Benadryl Allergy Liquid Meds.

What worked even better, believe it or not, was Eucerin. I ran out of the Elidel samples and could not find my script so my mother told me to try the Eucerin. She used it for my brother who had terrible Eczema when he was a baby. My father is a Physician and says that he still recommends that to his patients as a non-prescription alternative. I thought it worked better than the Elidel.

We also did the Aveeno Oatmeal Bath for babies. After his bath was when we would put on the Eucerin or Elidel. Our Ped also had us use a humidifier at night. I don't know if that helped at all, but we did it anyway.

Good Luck...let me know what happens.

Michelle
Mommy to Kieran, born 5/9/03

garlicsalt
05-07-2004, 11:48 PM
I'll definitely pick up some Eucerin!
The VaniCream is moisturizing, but it's not alleviating the rash, that's for sure. On top of that, his face feels like sandpaper, is getting redder everyday, and he scratches it more and more.
We have a dermatologist appt in a couple of weeks. Honestly, I don't see how a derm is going to help us when I think that he's allergic to something.

Kieransmom
05-09-2004, 09:54 PM
> Honestly,
>I don't see how a derm is going to help us when I think that
>he's allergic to something.

That's tough...it's so hard to pinpoint what it could be. Keep us updated on what the doc says! Good luck!


Michelle
Mommy to Kieran, born 5/9/03

lums123
05-25-2004, 05:39 AM
Hi,
I'm copying below a letter I wrote which will appear in the newsletter of the Eczema Association of Australasia in June, and the newsletter of the National Eczema Association for Science and Education later this summer. This is not the solution for everyone, but the description of the clear diaper area sounds familiar! If your child's eczema is particularly bad, I would not count on growing out of it. The information I have read gives the stats at less than 50% outgrowing it. My own belief is that most if not all eczema can be solved, but it takes work, and you have to be systematic about it. I know one woman who is still waiting for her 3-year-old to outgrow her severe eczema, and the child has in the meantime been hospitalized for infection, lives on steroids, and has scarred skin on her face.

It's important to try to distinguish between cause and mitigating factors. The CAUSE of our son's eczema was detergent, dryness was a trigger. Every winter, when the heat comes on and dries out the air, his skin becomes more susceptible to breakouts from lower levels of detergent exposure. But absent the detergents, his skin can be very dry with no eczema. With detergent exposure, we can moisturize our hearts out, and it might help, but it won't make the eczema go away.

It's also important to try to distinguish between contact-related eczema and ingestion-related eczema. Anyway, I can't say much more here. I'm not a doctor, I'm just a mom. (And there's far more to this issue than I could write in the letter below -- I really had to oversimplify it to explain it initially.) But if you want to follow up on my letter, please contact me at the email address below. I will do my best to get the web site up in June of 04.

Lastly, whether this is the solution for you or not, I want to add one more thing: if your child's eczema is bad, sit down and list all the things that are ubiquitous in your home environment: detergent? latex? polyester? certain plasticizers (heaven help you if your child is allergic to plastic!)? formaldehyde? - it is possible to do small "tests" short of removing everything to see which might lead you to the right answer. If you can be systematic, and you have the right answer, the breakouts stop seeming random and mysterious. Good luck!!
A.J.

Knowing the Difference Between Soap and Detergent Saved Our Son From Severe Eczema

When our four-month-old son developed small bumpy red patches on his legs, our pediatrician diagnosed eczema. His solution — slather our son’s skin with moisturizers. Instead of getting better, our baby’s eczema went out of control. A painful-looking, blistery red rash blossomed over his entire body and face, even his scalp. Some patches bled, oozed, and crusted over.

At the stage when babies should be smiling and wiggling for the sheer joy of movement, our son stopped. He scratched himself incessantly, even through layers of clothing, leaving long claw-like trails through his already raw, blistered skin. His open rashes became easily infected and stopped healing in that miraculous, rapid way of healthy baby skin. To watch this is truly heartbreaking.

Stopping the “hypoallergenic” moisturizer didn’t make the eczema go away. Our experienced, trusted pediatrician seemed annoyed at our attempts to analyze the breakouts and find the cause. “It’s random,” he said, “You just have to accept that your son gets skin rashes for no apparent reason.” The rashes did seem to fluctuate randomly. It was easy to believe that everything was causing it.

As engineers, my husband and I believed that things happen for concrete reasons, not magically. Fortunately for our son, a friend had given us a copy of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton’s book Touchpoints. In it, we found two short sentences that were the key to ending our son’s misery:

“Pure, mild soaps must be used for his [baby’s] bath and for his clothes. Traces of detergents stay in clothes and can produce skin rashes in sensitive infants.”

Before reading those sentences, we thought of detergent allergies only as individual product, perfume or additive sensitivities. Most books suggested detergents and soaps are equally irritating to infants with eczema, telling parents to avoid both.

Without realizing it at first, my husband and I made a subtle but critical shift in our thinking: we began to make a distinction between soaps and detergents as chemical classes.

When we eventually eliminated all detergent-based products from our laundry and home, and replaced them with different soap products, we were also able to eliminate all of our son’s eczema. His skin cleared and began to heal normally again. It felt soft and supple, like healthy baby skin. Our son began moving again for the joy of it, peddling his legs, rolling and exploring, smiling and giggling constantly.

Before we discovered the cause, we could barely take our son to church without a horrendous rash developing over any exposed skin. Now he could tolerate more and more dry contact with detergent outside the home. He could lead a normal life.

More than two years later, our son still broke out from significant contact with detergent, but we could almost always predict when it would happen, and we knew how to eliminate the breakouts quickly.

Eliminating detergent from our home environment turned out not to be as simple as switching to soap flakes in the laundry. It took four months of careful observation and detective work to track down all the sources of detergent in our home environment, and until we did, even we didn’t see that different detergents were the entire cause of the problem.

Detergents were invented around World War II, and initially at least, were only commonly used in the laundry. The reaction of some infants must have been obvious then, as one of our elderly friends said, “In my day, everyone KNEW to wash baby clothing only in soap flakes.” Most other products, like shampoos, remained soap-based — my husband’s aunts still remember the vinegar rinses they used to get the residues out of their hair.

The use of detergents in home environments has increased every decade since they were invented, especially since the ‘60s. Today, in 2003, few households have soaps in any cleaning products. Even those labeled “soap” are often detergents, such as sodium lauryl sulfate liquid hand “soap.”

Once, the difference between detergents and soaps stemmed from the basic ingredients: soaps were derived from plant or animal fats, detergents from petroleum. Detergent chemistry circumvented some of the problems of soaps, such as the formation of “scum” in hard water. There now seem to be plant-based products with the same cleaning and molecular properties of detergents — commonly available in natural food stores — perhaps more appealing to some consumers, but a complication for solving my son’s eczema, because some of these products are not helpful in the case of his allergy, but they are understandably labeled as soap-based. Finding pure soap products — that didn’t make our son more susceptible to detergents by drying his skin, either — was a challenge.

After solving our son’s problem empirically, I’ve tried to understand it from a biological perspective by talking to chemists, microbiologists, and doctors. Given my present knowledge — which is far from complete — I believe the problem is related to skin membrane permeability. One microbiologist pointed out that detergents can have very different electrical charge properties than traditional soaps, and they increase the permeability of skin in a way that soaps and water alone do not.

Understanding these issues proved essential to maintaining the improvements, because we found that simply washing our son’s skin and clothing in water only — despite Herculean rinsing — was not enough to remove the detergent residues, and in fact sometimes caused an outbreak if he had residues on his skin from contact during the day. Such residues are hard to avoid, as detergents seem to be a major component of household dust: from skin flakes, hair, lint, and washed surfaces.

In a typical household today, the following products are almost always detergent-based or contain detergents: laundry products, including “hypoallergenic” ones for babies (Ivory Snow became a detergent product about ten years ago and is no longer soap flakes, Dreft is a mild detergent, but it is still a detergent); dishwashing liquid; dishwasher powder; liquid and many bar “soaps”; kitchen, bathroom and other household surface cleansers; shampoo and body washes; toothpastes (including “natural” ones); many cosmetic products, creams, and moisturizers; and many processed foods.

To get rid of our son’s breakouts, we had to completely remove all detergent sources in our home — otherwise, the breakouts remained unpredictable and our son’s skin didn’t heal completely. Just touching his skin with water from a clean dish out of the dishwasher, which we hand scrubbed under the tap for good measure, was enough to give him serious contact eczema within 30 minutes. The water direct from the tap did not cause such breakouts. Our son’s face didn’t clear up completely until we began washing our own hair in a soap-based shampoo.

Since solving our son’s problem, we’ve come across others with the same allergy. Helping them has proved to be an involved process. Eczema can be caused by other things, such as foods; removing enough detergents from the home environment to determine that they are the problem requires a significant amount of work, and there are many pitfalls.

For example, in trying to help others, I discovered that detergent residues in clothing must be completely removed by the soaps, or the intermediate stage is actually more irritating. Someone switching to soap flakes only temporarily could easily think their child was more allergic to the soap. Simply eliminating detergents and using only water for household washing wouldn’t lead to this solution, either. Eliminating the residues with water alone is unrealistic. Removing enough detergent residue from our son’s car seat cover to keep him from reacting — it had been washed in detergents only once since we bought it — required six water-only washes in our high quality front loader, over twelve hours of washing, including 24 rinses. Removing equivalent residues with soap requires only one or two washes.

We could easily have confused our son’s problems with food allergies as well. Many prepared foods, especially jarred and canned foods, also seem to contain significant enough traces of detergents to give our son contact eczema and later breakouts from ingesting them. Detergent residues from pots, pans, dishes and utensils can also be significant. When we started feeding our son solids at six months, at first we thought he was allergic to every food, even though we had already switched to soap flakes in the laundry, and soap to wash household surfaces.

If you think this is something that may help you, and you are willing and able to do a lot of work and observation to decide if it is, please send me email through these boards. If I receive only a few responses, I will try to help people individually. I just helped a woman in New Jersey that I met online; we sent dozens of messages back and forth, and it took time. If I get more responses than I can handle individually, I will set up a web page and send everyone the link to it.

This allergy is easiest to identify and clear up before age one — before a child’s exposures become more complicated, and the probable compromised state of the gut (as with the skin) could turn into true food allergies that contribute further to the problem. In Touchpoints, Brazelton writes that prevention is easier than dealing with the allergy: “Once an allergic symptom is out in the open, it is harder to get rid of. At that point, we must eliminate not only the immediate cause but also the milder offenders. [But] if a parent is willing and able to do this, the child may be able to tolerate the more potent stimulus from time to time.”

I believe my son’s problem is not rare; it must be rare to figure out, because I have not found any specific research on the problem. I have helped friends in my immediate circle with it; I’ve read myriad web pages and parenting sites where I see numerous probable cases of this allergy, but not one description of this solution. It’s not surprising — the kind of detailed observations we had to make over an extended period of time in order to determine the cause of our son’s eczema are not really possible to do in a doctor’s office or even a normal research setting.

I think it would help parents of children with eczema a lot if researchers took on one large study in which they resolved to figure out the cause(s) of — i.e., clear up — EACH CASE of infantile eczema100% (which I’m convinced is possible), then charted the range of causes and how much eczema in the population comes from each cause. Then from a study like that, they could develop procedures to give parents to help them figure out their own kids' cases — with the list of possible causes as a guide — because ultimately, pediatricians can't realistically do it from their offices. People have to be their own detectives, but it would make all the difference if they had the information to do it.

Finally, in researching this problem, I've discovered that our solution is consistent with what may be the solution to the overall problem of rising infantile eczema and asthma. The problem has been described as far worse in industrialized countries (up to 20% of children in Japan), acquired at the same rates by people who come from underdeveloped to industrialized countries (detergents are in far greater use in the latter), increasing every decade since WWII (around when detergents were invented), worse in areas that have hard water (with which there is inferior rinsing and less use of soap products). The only theories about it are that we are too clean, the so-called hygiene hypothesis. As for the studies that ostensibly support it, they typically demonstrate a more direct causal link with detergent use than lack of germs.

garlicsalt
01-18-2005, 12:35 AM
Is this poster still around????????
You emailed me in June, and I replied TONIGHT!!!!!! It was returned to me. Perhaps I can find you online through a search of your letter.
>Hi,
>I'm copying below a letter I wrote which will appear in the
>newsletter of the Eczema Association of Australasia in June,
>and the newsletter of the National Eczema Association for
>Science and Education later this summer. This is not the
>solution for everyone, but the description of the clear diaper
>area sounds familiar! If your child's eczema is particularly
>bad, I would not count on growing out of it. The information
>I have read gives the stats at less than 50% outgrowing it.
>My own belief is that most if not all eczema can be solved,
>but it takes work, and you have to be systematic about it. I
>know one woman who is still waiting for her 3-year-old to
>outgrow her severe eczema, and the child has in the meantime
>been hospitalized for infection, lives on steroids, and has
>scarred skin on her face.
>
>It's important to try to distinguish between cause and
>mitigating factors. The CAUSE of our son's eczema was
>detergent, dryness was a trigger. Every winter, when the heat
>comes on and dries out the air, his skin becomes more
>susceptible to breakouts from lower levels of detergent
>exposure. But absent the detergents, his skin can be very dry
>with no eczema. With detergent exposure, we can moisturize
>our hearts out, and it might help, but it won't make the
>eczema go away.
>
>It's also important to try to distinguish between
>contact-related eczema and ingestion-related eczema. Anyway,
>I can't say much more here. I'm not a doctor, I'm just a mom.
> (And there's far more to this issue than I could write in the
>letter below -- I really had to oversimplify it to explain it
>initially.) But if you want to follow up on my letter, please
>contact me at the email address below. I will do my best to
>get the web site up in June of 04.
>
>Lastly, whether this is the solution for you or not, I want
>to add one more thing: if your child's eczema is bad, sit down
>and list all the things that are ubiquitous in your home
>environment: detergent? latex? polyester? certain plasticizers
>(heaven help you if your child is allergic to plastic!)?
>formaldehyde? - it is possible to do small "tests" short of
>removing everything to see which might lead you to the right
>answer. If you can be systematic, and you have the right
>answer, the breakouts stop seeming random and mysterious.
>Good luck!!
>A.J.
>
>Knowing the Difference Between Soap and Detergent Saved Our
>Son From Severe Eczema
>
>When our four-month-old son developed small bumpy red patches
>on his legs, our pediatrician diagnosed eczema. His solution
>— slather our son’s skin with moisturizers. Instead of
>getting better, our baby’s eczema went out of control. A
>painful-looking, blistery red rash blossomed over his entire
>body and face, even his scalp. Some patches bled, oozed, and
>crusted over.
>
>At the stage when babies should be smiling and wiggling for
>the sheer joy of movement, our son stopped. He scratched
>himself incessantly, even through layers of clothing, leaving
>long claw-like trails through his already raw, blistered skin.
> His open rashes became easily infected and stopped healing in
>that miraculous, rapid way of healthy baby skin. To watch
>this is truly heartbreaking.
>
>Stopping the “hypoallergenic” moisturizer didn’t make the
>eczema go away. Our experienced, trusted pediatrician seemed
>annoyed at our attempts to analyze the breakouts and find the
>cause. “It’s random,” he said, “You just have to accept that
>your son gets skin rashes for no apparent reason.” The
>rashes did seem to fluctuate randomly. It was easy to believe
>that everything was causing it.
>
>As engineers, my husband and I believed that things happen
>for concrete reasons, not magically. Fortunately for our son,
>a friend had given us a copy of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton’s book
>Touchpoints. In it, we found two short sentences that were
>the key to ending our son’s misery:
>
>“Pure, mild soaps must be used for his [baby’s] bath and for
>his clothes. Traces of detergents stay in clothes and can
>produce skin rashes in sensitive infants.”
>
>Before reading those sentences, we thought of detergent
>allergies only as individual product, perfume or additive
>sensitivities. Most books suggested detergents and soaps are
>equally irritating to infants with eczema, telling parents to
>avoid both.
>
>Without realizing it at first, my husband and I made a subtle
>but critical shift in our thinking: we began to make a
>distinction between soaps and detergents as chemical
>classes.
>
>When we eventually eliminated all detergent-based products
>from our laundry and home, and replaced them with different
>soap products, we were also able to eliminate all of our son’s
>eczema. His skin cleared and began to heal normally again.
>It felt soft and supple, like healthy baby skin. Our son
>began moving again for the joy of it, peddling his legs,
>rolling and exploring, smiling and giggling constantly.
>
>Before we discovered the cause, we could barely take our son
>to church without a horrendous rash developing over any
>exposed skin. Now he could tolerate more and more dry contact
>with detergent outside the home. He could lead a normal
>life.
>
>More than two years later, our son still broke out from
>significant contact with detergent, but we could almost always
>predict when it would happen, and we knew how to eliminate the
>breakouts quickly.
>
>Eliminating detergent from our home environment turned out
>not to be as simple as switching to soap flakes in the
>laundry. It took four months of careful observation and
>detective work to track down all the sources of detergent in
>our home environment, and until we did, even we didn’t see
>that different detergents were the entire cause of the
>problem.
>
>Detergents were invented around World War II, and initially
>at least, were only commonly used in the laundry. The
>reaction of some infants must have been obvious then, as one
>of our elderly friends said, “In my day, everyone KNEW to wash
>baby clothing only in soap flakes.” Most other products,
>like shampoos, remained soap-based — my husband’s aunts still
>remember the vinegar rinses they used to get the residues out
>of their hair.
>
>The use of detergents in home environments has increased
>every decade since they were invented, especially since the
>‘60s. Today, in 2003, few households have soaps in any
>cleaning products. Even those labeled “soap” are often
>detergents, such as sodium lauryl sulfate liquid hand “soap.”
>
>
>Once, the difference between detergents and soaps stemmed
>from the basic ingredients: soaps were derived from plant or
>animal fats, detergents from petroleum. Detergent chemistry
>circumvented some of the problems of soaps, such as the
>formation of “scum” in hard water. There now seem to be
>plant-based products with the same cleaning and molecular
>properties of detergents — commonly available in natural food
>stores — perhaps more appealing to some consumers, but a
>complication for solving my son’s eczema, because some of
>these products are not helpful in the case of his allergy, but
>they are understandably labeled as soap-based. Finding pure
>soap products — that didn’t make our son more susceptible to
>detergents by drying his skin, either — was a challenge.
>
>After solving our son’s problem empirically, I’ve tried to
>understand it from a biological perspective by talking to
>chemists, microbiologists, and doctors. Given my present
>knowledge — which is far from complete — I believe the problem
>is related to skin membrane permeability. One microbiologist
>pointed out that detergents can have very different electrical
>charge properties than traditional soaps, and they increase
>the permeability of skin in a way that soaps and water alone
>do not.
>
>Understanding these issues proved essential to maintaining
>the improvements, because we found that simply washing our
>son’s skin and clothing in water only — despite Herculean
>rinsing — was not enough to remove the detergent residues, and
>in fact sometimes caused an outbreak if he had residues on his
>skin from contact during the day. Such residues are hard to
>avoid, as detergents seem to be a major component of household
>dust: from skin flakes, hair, lint, and washed surfaces.
>
>In a typical household today, the following products are
>almost always detergent-based or contain detergents: laundry
>products, including “hypoallergenic” ones for babies (Ivory
>Snow became a detergent product about ten years ago and is no
>longer soap flakes, Dreft is a mild detergent, but it is still
>a detergent); dishwashing liquid; dishwasher powder; liquid
>and many bar “soaps”; kitchen, bathroom and other household
>surface cleansers; shampoo and body washes; toothpastes
>(including “natural” ones); many cosmetic products, creams,
>and moisturizers; and many processed foods.
>
>To get rid of our son’s breakouts, we had to completely
>remove all detergent sources in our home — otherwise, the
>breakouts remained unpredictable and our son’s skin didn’t
>heal completely. Just touching his skin with water from a
>clean dish out of the dishwasher, which we hand scrubbed under
>the tap for good measure, was enough to give him serious
>contact eczema within 30 minutes. The water direct from the
>tap did not cause such breakouts. Our son’s face didn’t clear
>up completely until we began washing our own hair in a
>soap-based shampoo.
>
>Since solving our son’s problem, we’ve come across others
>with the same allergy. Helping them has proved to be an
>involved process. Eczema can be caused by other things, such
>as foods; removing enough detergents from the home environment
>to determine that they are the problem requires a significant
>amount of work, and there are many pitfalls.
>
>For example, in trying to help others, I discovered that
>detergent residues in clothing must be completely removed by
>the soaps, or the intermediate stage is actually more
>irritating. Someone switching to soap flakes only temporarily
>could easily think their child was more allergic to the soap.
>Simply eliminating detergents and using only water for
>household washing wouldn’t lead to this solution, either.
>Eliminating the residues with water alone is unrealistic.
>Removing enough detergent residue from our son’s car seat
>cover to keep him from reacting — it had been washed in
>detergents only once since we bought it — required six
>water-only washes in our high quality front loader, over
>twelve hours of washing, including 24 rinses. Removing
>equivalent residues with soap requires only one or two
>washes.
>
>We could easily have confused our son’s problems with food
>allergies as well. Many prepared foods, especially jarred and
>canned foods, also seem to contain significant enough traces
>of detergents to give our son contact eczema and later
>breakouts from ingesting them. Detergent residues from pots,
>pans, dishes and utensils can also be significant. When we
>started feeding our son solids at six months, at first we
>thought he was allergic to every food, even though we had
>already switched to soap flakes in the laundry, and soap to
>wash household surfaces.
>
>If you think this is something that may help you, and you are
>willing and able to do a lot of work and observation to decide
>if it is, please send me email through these boards. If I
>receive only a few responses, I will try to help people
>individually. I just helped a woman in New Jersey that I met
>online; we sent dozens of messages back and forth, and it took
>time. If I get more responses than I can handle individually,
>I will set up a web page and send everyone the link to it.
>
>This allergy is easiest to identify and clear up before age
>one — before a child’s exposures become more complicated, and
>the probable compromised state of the gut (as with the skin)
>could turn into true food allergies that contribute further to
>the problem. In Touchpoints, Brazelton writes that prevention
>is easier than dealing with the allergy: “Once an allergic
>symptom is out in the open, it is harder to get rid of. At
>that point, we must eliminate not only the immediate cause but
>also the milder offenders. [But] if a parent is willing and
>able to do this, the child may be able to tolerate the more
>potent stimulus from time to time.”
>
>I believe my son’s problem is not rare; it must be rare to
>figure out, because I have not found any specific research on
>the problem. I have helped friends in my immediate circle
>with it; I’ve read myriad web pages and parenting sites where
>I see numerous probable cases of this allergy, but not one
>description of this solution. It’s not surprising — the kind
>of detailed observations we had to make over an extended
>period of time in order to determine the cause of our son’s
>eczema are not really possible to do in a doctor’s office or
>even a normal research setting.
>
>I think it would help parents of children with eczema a lot
>if researchers took on one large study in which they resolved
>to figure out the cause(s) of — i.e., clear up — EACH CASE of
>infantile eczema100% (which I’m convinced is possible), then
>charted the range of causes and how much eczema in the
>population comes from each cause. Then from a study like that,
>they could develop procedures to give parents to help them
>figure out their own kids' cases — with the list of possible
>causes as a guide — because ultimately, pediatricians can't
>realistically do it from their offices. People have to be
>their own detectives, but it would make all the difference if
>they had the information to do it.
>
>Finally, in researching this problem, I've discovered that
>our solution is consistent with what may be the solution to
>the overall problem of rising infantile eczema and asthma.
>The problem has been described as far worse in industrialized
>countries (up to 20% of children in Japan), acquired at the
>same rates by people who come from underdeveloped to
>industrialized countries (detergents are in far greater use in
>the latter), increasing every decade since WWII (around when
>detergents were invented), worse in areas that have hard water
>(with which there is inferior rinsing and less use of soap
>products). The only theories about it are that we are too
>clean, the so-called hygiene hypothesis. As for the studies
>that ostensibly support it, they typically demonstrate a more
>direct causal link with detergent use than lack of germs.
>

lums123
03-17-2005, 03:08 AM
Hi,
I still remember you! I'm sorry about the email address, I don't know why it was returned, it should still be valid.

I finally put up a web site (it took forever to do) to explain my son's eczema, how we figured it out, how to judge if your child might have the same problem, and what to do if you think he does.

The solution that helped our son will not help everyone with eczema, but it is a complete solution if you son has the same problem. I also give general information on how to track down the irritant(s), whether it's the same as this or not.

The site is at: http://www.solveeczema.org It's a lot of information, but it's very important to read it and not to just hunt out the list of products and make switches. I should reiterate that I am just another parent interested in helping others, I am not a medical professional. You should talk over any major changes you want to make with your son's pediatrician.

Good luck, and please tell me if it helps. I hope this email reaches you, I did not know you had replied!!
Anne

lums123
03-17-2005, 03:10 AM
Oops, I forgot to include the link to my site with the last message! You can read about how we solved our son's eczema, and if the same steps might help you at:
http://www.solveeczema.org or http://www.solveeczema.com .
Anne

garlicsalt
03-17-2005, 02:09 PM
>Oops, I forgot to include the link to my site with the last
>message! You can read about how we solved our son's eczema,
>and if the same steps might help you at:
>http://www.solveeczema.org or http://www.solveeczema.com .
>Anne


hi there!
Thanks for repsonding. At 18 months, Parker's eczema is not AS terrible as it used to bed, but he still has minor flare-ups, which occur on the face. It's good to have your site info, because after I did some Googling, I just assumed that you were at moogoo.com.au. LOL!!!

lums123
03-18-2005, 01:19 PM
Hi,
Thanks for clueing me in about the moogoo thing! They actually contacted me after I printed the letter in the EAA newsletter, and I said they could link to my letter. I did not want my letter to be excerpted because people need to know they can't just buy soap products instead and get the answer, things could actually get worse if they don't make the switch right.

It's also a little misleading to have my letter on there like that, since they kind of take the common reactionary perspective that anything made from vegetables or animal products is "natural" regardless of what is done to it chemically, and anything that comes from petroleum (which, when you think about it, also comes from plants and animals) is inherently dangerous. I think unscented Dove and Aquaphor are very good products for this allergy, for example. Petrolatum, in particular, is in all the good barrier moisturizers, I haven't found a good substitute, and it is very hypoallergenic.

I also expressed concern that parents be given a heads up about products with almond oil, because too much exposure to nut oils on the skin can also lead to nut allergy. I did not want what I wrote to encourage people to make changes that might expose them to developing this allergy.

That said, they probably make a good superfatted soap that is appropriate for this allergy, so long as people are careful about any allergenic ingredients. I have not tried it, I don't live in Australia. I try to cover in my site how people can choose products that are not on my list, because there are still many committed soap makers out there, it's just not that easy to find the products on the store shelves anymore.

I'm all for soapmakers linking to my site, but I don't want the information quoted in part -- both the EAA and the NEASE made space so they wouldn't have to shorten those letters, there are pitfalls in making the switch that people have to know about. Thank you for giving me the heads up, I will contact them.

Good luck. Please read the info on my site, if Parker has this sensitivity, one would expect his skin to look a little better over time just as it becomes naturally less permeable with age. The issue then becomes asthma as he gets a little older. I would be realy interested to know if it helps. Usually when people read the material, they get a good sense of whether it applies to their situation or not.

BTW, my site is completely non-commercial, and I am not affiliated with any companies or products mentioned. I don't endorse any products, either. I say the site was "a labor of love" in my good moments; putting it up was a real pain LOL!! It costs me money to maintain it, too.

I hope it helps!
Anne