Excema
E has always had it super bad, but recently it has gotten so bad she is scratching to the point of bleeding. We put hydrocortisone on it and coco butter. We have now taken her off of all dairy, but it is still there. What else do you remove. Poor noodle the sores are so so bad. All over her body. And then she will scratch in her sleep as well.
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My father was a horrible diabetic with extremely bad eczema, and this is what his PCP recommended:
1) Oatmeal baths. The Aveeno kind are great.
2) Slather the sores in Crisco. I really dunno WHY Crisco, but the doctor WAS Southern born and bred and older too...but it worked. I think the moisture helps with the crusties and the itch.
3) Socks to cover the Criscoed areas (clothing or gloves too, of course, depending on where the sores are).
It worked for my dad, but he was a older man when he did this, so I dunno if it'll help your babe, but it may be worth a shot. And, as side note, my dad's neuropathy was so bad he couldn't feel the deep scratches he used to inflict on himself. After this was prescribed, the scratching stopped. Good luck to you!
"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush
My 12 yo son has had it bad since he was a baby. He used to scratch until it bled too, especially on the insides of his elbows and knees(which we call his elbow-pits and knee-pits). Doctors said to give him allergy medicine which didn't help, and to put vaseline on it which made it worse, and oatmeal baths which just made a mess.
Last year I had him try my soap, which is this:
http://www.chandrikasoaps.com/ChandV01/products/
and it helped so much, so fast. I looked up the ingredients an it's coconut oil based. I read up and coconut oil is supposed to be very good for eczema. Now I keep a jar of plain old coconut oil in the bath for him to use while he's in there, and he still uses only the chandrika soap (regular soap will make it worse). The itching, bleeding and redness are gone, but it was so bad for so long that he has scar tissue in the entire elbow-pit and knee-pit areas.
Nolen has it bad. He's finally scabbed over right now- he had a virus last week that flared it and he scratched his skin raw...
The key is getting moisture in and keeping them from itching it- either with covering it with clothing or treating itching with hydrocortisone.
The best luck we've had with treating it is vaseline slathered on his entire body within 3 minutes of getting out of the bath, then hydrocortisone on the bad spots once a day. Avoidance of triggers can be tricky, but we've definitely seen an improvement since we started avoiding nuts (he has confirmed allergy to all nuts except walnuts, and had a bad systemic reaction). He's got an egg allergy, but we don't avoid baked eggs, and that doesn't seem to be a problem, nor does dairy.
Often they grow out of it, but some kids suffer longer than others- they sometimes need antihistamines or other treatments...
hey there. bella is two and she has it really bad. the hardest thing about eczema is narrowing it down to what the heck is the child reacting too? it could be anything. dairy, wheat, gluten, corn, soy, oats, tree nuts, coconut and eggs are the most common big food triggers. then there is the possibility of environmental triggers... bella is still rashy, but nothing like oozing with clear liquid rashy like she did her entire first year of life. dairy takes a week to clear out of the system, so after a week, if you see no difference, take out the wheat and eggs. millet bread is tasty and can be found at any health food store it she eats a lot of breads. topically, i've never heard the suggestion of crisco, and i have heard it all! we used vasaline for a while and have switched over to cetaphil, as it hydrates her skin (to our surprise) better than vasaline. a bath for about 5-10 mins in tepid water (every night, faithfully) and put the lotion on while her skin is still damp. you can also use over the counter children's benadril, we have a script for it but were told the script is essentially the same as the OTC. bella can take 1 - 1 1/2 tsp in morning and night and if it is bad, in the middle of the night or afternoon... in other words, up to 3 x's a day. i went without any medical help her first year and thought the medicine was a goddess send by time i tried everything else to no avail and gave it to her. you should talk to her ped about it for more info and to see if it would be right for her, first. we have not give bella dairy, tree nuts, or eggs, yet. but she'll eat other things in moderation. if you have any more questions, feel free to ask! eczema is the bane of our existence around here. i feel ya. but bella is growing out of it, slowly but surely.
I'm surprised so many Dr's still recommend vaseline. It's nothing but refined petroleum(crude oil)and it's a carcinogen. And it blocks the skin from breathing which slows healing.
I know everyone thinks they know just the thing to fix it (we had more advice than we wanted...), but really the coconut oil is worth trying. It has the same viscosity as vaseline and healed up my sons eczema so fast without having to change his diet.
The vaseline is to try to trap in moisture- I usually recommend that because it's 1)cheap, and 2)readily available- most of my patients have a limited income and resources, so suggesting anything that can't be bought for a dollar or so at the Walgre*n's next door to my clinic is not going to happen. Coconut oil may work as well, but for kids with food allergies, it can be tricky to use nut-based oils. (Coconut has some cross-reactivity with tree nut allergic kids). My kid is also allergic to peaches and apricots, so the B*rt's Bee's apricot oil is out, too... I disagree with the comment that blocking the skin from breathing slows healing, but, as you said, we all have our own opinions based on our own experiences- and each kid is different and will respond differently to various treatments.
Oh crap, I didn't notice that you had recommended vaseline just above my comment, or I wouldn't have been so harsh on it. No challenge to what works for you intended at all. People do respond to different things.
the vaseline worked really well for a while, better than anything else we tried (and bella also had a coconut allergy so we were not willing to give that a try, tho it was also one of the many recommendations we got) then we got tired of dealing with the thickness of vaseline and tried the cetaphil again (which also has petroleum in it) and it worked better. i am thrilled that now, we can also use aveno with the same results - so her skin is def improving, despite using the vaseline for about six months. i had a friend who sent me all this stuff about vaseline being bad, i did lots of research on it, too. i felt that while i wouldn't want to use it for the rest of bella's life, it was working for her, and the concerns seemed a bit alarmist to me. both the dermatologist and ped suggested using it. i tried the no-troleum but its super expensive for the amount in the container - so stuck with the vaseline even after i knew more about it. it worked. it was so helpful in hydrating her skin and repairing it as well. and she had a REALLY severe case of eczema. more severe than our ped, who's been a ped for 30 years, has ever seen. yeah, that bad. anyhoo, that is our story. 
and have for 21 years. Mine comes and goes with the seasons and sometimes stress makes it worse.
What has worked for me in the recent past:
Neem oil
Emu oil
Coconut oil
Being in the sun (can maybe be tied to vitamin D deficiency?)
Aveeno oatmeal bath (in relatively cool/luke warm water)
Of course, short showers and patting dry or air drying afterwards
Drinking lots of water
Good luck Mama
Bleach in Bath Can Ease Child’s Eczema
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
Published: April 27, 2009
For children who suffer from eczema, relief may be as close as the nearest laundry closet.
Researchers said Monday that adding a small amount of bleach to a child’s bath water significantly reduced problems associated with the skin disease.
Eczema is a chronic condition that can cause children serious distress, as well as absences from school. In response to the irritation and itchiness, children often scratch themselves until their skin is crusty and raw.
The researchers tried using bleach because they believed it might work against the bacteria that play a role in the disease, said the senior author of the study, Dr. Amy S. Paller of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern. (The lead author is Dr. Jennifer T. Huang, now of the University of Colorado in Denver.)
Eczema is often treated with antibiotics, but the more they are used, the more they contribute to the problem of resistant bacteria.
For the study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics, researchers took two groups of children with eczema, ages 6 months to 17 years, and asked that they be bathed in either plain water or in water with about half a cup of bleach.
The study found big improvements among the children who had the bleach baths, but only on the body, not the face, because they were not submerging their heads. Children who take the baths should close their eyes and mouths and put their heads in the water, too, the researchers said.
that is insane! i can't imagine every doing that. it seems like it would burn their skin, no?
In comparison to a 35-40 gallon tub. Swimming pools typically have 2/3 parts per million chlorine, even drinking water has chlorine in it.
that's true! i guess i just can't see myself doing that, seems strange, i mean, i wouldn't bathe my kids in the pool either. and they don't swim every day in chlorine. but if there was some really good research on it or it was widely known to help, i can say that when bella was in the thick of it, the way i was feeling so depressed about her suffering, i may have considered it, i was considering everything at that point. i wonder if it would burn? or what the average length of time would be.
yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
from the journal Pediatrics:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/123/5/e808?maxtos...
This is how they did it:
Study Design
A 3-month, investigator-initiated, single-center, randomized, investigator-blinded, placebo-controlled, clinical trial was conducted. Patients were assigned randomly, through block randomization generated by the statistician, to the treatment or placebo study arm. All patients received cephalexin at 50 mg/kg per day (maximum of 2 g/day), divided into 3 daily doses, for 2 weeks to treat their staphylococcal infections. Patients were instructed to add either 0.5 cup of 6% bleach (final concentration: 0.005%; treatment arm) or water (placebo arm) to a full bathtub of water (40 gallons); the amount of administered bleach solution or water was adjusted by the family on the basis of the bathtub size and estimated height of bathtub water. Patients were instructed to bathe in the dilute bleach bath or placebo bath for 5 to 10 minutes twice weekly. The frequency and number of baths without bleach (or placebo) were not restricted. Patients and their household members also were instructed to apply mupirocin ointment (Centany [OrthoNeutrogena, Skillman, NJ]) (treatment arm) or petrolatum (placebo arm) intranasally twice daily for 5 consecutive days of each month. Each patient maintained a stable regimen of topical antiinflammatory medication and emollient therapy throughout the 3-month period.
And this is interesting:
Tolerance of the Bleach Baths
No significant difference in compliance was noted between the study arms. No patient withdrew from the study because of intolerance to the baths. One patient from the treatment arm (see above) reported itching and irritation of the skin with the use of bleach baths and failed to comply with the regimen. This patient subsequently developed a CA-MRSA skin infection between the 1-month and 3-month study visits, which required hospitalization and intravenous antibiotic therapy. After discharge, the patient resumed the use of bleach baths without adverse effects. He remained in the study, with follow-up evaluation at 3 months.
very interesting! eczema is a huge mystery to the medical world in terms of how to effectively and successfully treat it. i remember hearing about some facility that opened in cali that solely focuses on eczema (and maybe some other skin infections in the same family), we are in such dire need for a solution to it. i'm happy that western medicine is taking a need for a cure or treatment seriously. though, i wonder if something is missing from western med that is present in eastern med that would help? i dunno. i can say, i won't be throwing my kids in a chlorine bath after reading that limited amount of study results anytime soon! LOL!
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She absolutely refused to sleep all night. Then when I gave her a little bit of tylenol last night and put hydrocortisone on her skin and coco butter. She slept all the way until 6. Our 12 year old had it as well, and he has severe asthma. So I know these two things are tied in together. Off dairy for just 24 hours. So we will play the waiting game. Her spots are so bad I am embarrassed to let her put dresses on, I am afraid someone will think I am beating her. And then she looks like a cat attacked her from her scratches all over. I hope the dairy takes care of it. Thank you everyone!!