Living With Eczema

In the U.K., the incidence of eczema has risen at a remarkable rate: since the 1960’s the number of children with eczema has risen from 4 percent to 24 percent of the population. Some experts attribute this to changes in our environment and lifestyle and suggest that educating the general public about these changes and how to cope with them will improve the statistics.
One of the major recommendations is a change in skin care products, which includes a dry skin conditioner such as jojoba oil and eczema treatment that allows the condition to heal instead of exposing children to powerful and dangerous steroid drugs.
Dr. Michael Cork, a skin care expert at the University of Sheffield and head of the Specialist Atopic Eczema Unit at the Sheffield Children’s Hospital, was featured in a recent documentary regarding the great strides the unit is making in treating and preventing the condition.
According to Dr. Cork, changes in our environment and lifestyle in the last 50 years are largely to blame for the vast increase in eczema. Examples include more households with wall-to-wall carpeting and central heating – both of which harbor dust mites - and washing ourselves more frequently with increasingly harsh soaps and detergents that damage the protective surface layer of the skin and allow chemicals and allergens to penetrate.
Fortunately, remedying these problems is fairly easy and is definitely recommended as the first step in effective eczema treatment. Vacuuming and dusting frequently and washing bed linens in hot water to kill dust mites will help handle the environment. Preserving the integrity of the skin’s protective layer can be done by switching to very mild natural soaps and detergents that don’t cause dry skin and eczema.