To The Person Who Posted A Comment on My Blog 22nd Jan

Apologies, I meant to publish your comment and respond. I somehow hit the delete button although was pretty sure I hit the "Publish" button. Okay so now I dither on uncertainty and wonder if it is something to do with Blogger.

Anyway back to the commenter and from what I remember of your comment. I have a couple of questions for you
- Where do you live?
- How would you rate the healthiness of your diet and your surroundings?

I also would like to remind you that I am not a doctor and that my comments are from my long experience with eczema.

Stuff What The World Thinks!
Yes eczema looks wrinkly when we have been scratching our skins excessively and we look older because of it. My skin was bad and I could have been depressed and hidden my skin but I am also very "thick skinned". I also believe we are all too self conscious about how we look due to media focus and what is beautiful and therefore we are all far more self critical than what is reality.

Here is my reasoning. Fit people who look well and healthy and do a lot of running, tell me they they are fat. Either they have been looking at themselves in their "fat" mirror or they found they could not fit into an old skirt or I have such bad eye sight that I cannot see the roll of fat they imagine they have. I thus knew that although I thought my skin looked bad, it was probably not as bad to others and if it was, I was happy to explain what I was suffering from which I did sometimes when my skin was busy falling off my face or I was having a bad itch attack and trying to remove the skin off my body.

What About Those Who Are Important?
It sucks that you've suffered from eczema since a wee baby. However now that you are older, I can understand that you will be more sensitive to passing remarks but these are from ignorant people who perhaps are not important.

Does exposing your skin to sunlight help your skin? It certainly does for me, so my attitude is:

My condition is not contagious and I have every right to expose my skin as the next person. They don't own the space I am in! So on go the shorts and t-shirts for me. In my mirror, my skin looks wrinkly and parts are scarred but as I move away from the mirror and the further I get from it, my skin looks okay.

So I don't bother to look in the mirror otherwise so that I cannot be so judgemental on myself and we are so much harsher when our critical eyes are on ourselves.

Physically my body shape is okay although I have a little "noise" from my skin but overall compared with many others, it is okay and I am thick skinned! I have found most people I have met have been sympathetic to my symptoms.

Visualisation
When my skin was bad all over my body and everytime I started to get down about it, I focused on the good bits, the smooth bits and when there where no smooth bits I kept my mind mentally occupied and thought of happy thoughts or prayed and read my bible and reading what the prophets went thru, my condition is a speck in the ocean. I believe when we allow ourselves to be emotionally down about ourselves, that will affect the chemicals that are released within our body. Just as a lack of sleep will also affect our ability to heal.

Sporting Help
Sport really has helped me, although at one time everytime I sweat the itching was insane. But after sport, the itching calmed down and I would not itch for at least one night. I have now discovered that as long as I have rehydrated enough the day before and before the time I play sport, the itching is mostly not there or bare-able. It has been weird to find I am not trying to dig my skin off my neck, arms, torso and legs whilst doing sport.

Being Aware
My skin is constantly finicky about what it likes and does not like. If I find I am constantly itching now, I look for the environmental factor first such as the cream I have put on or the soap I have used rather than simply blaming it on food. Having stopped some of the emollients I was using that were prescribed to me, and that were once okay I thought, my skin condition has improved so much. Now a days my friends have been remarking how good my skin looks.

I still get eczema rash wanting to grab a hold of an area of skin and I now keep calm about it and try to cool it down. I still get dry patches of skin and thus have to be more attentive to those areas.

Apologies if I have not answered all your questions as I do not remember the exact content of your comment. If I have not answered everything and you have found my post useful, then please do comment again.

All the best to you and hope you regain the confidence you have lost.

The Basis For Life

Our planet is energised by the sun and watered by the rain. For the last month my skin has also been given more light and I have drunken at least 2 litres a day. Plus with lots of moisturising and having had better rest, my skin is looking waaaayyyy better. It is feeling smoother.

- Winter suppliments = vit D and vit E
- Moisturisers = a thick cream + a layer of Epiderm smoothed on at the end
- Drinking water = 2 litres per day
- Sleep/rest = at least 6-8 hrs a night

Observed: clothes that I've not worn for sometimes can cause me to itch. Might be to do with dust mites. A rinse off and washing the clothes helps to return clothes to okay wearing :-)

Tropical Heat

Those in the tropics are lucky. They can have cold showers. Those in the colder climes find this much harder to do. I certainly do, due to suffering from raynauds condition. Thankfully have been able to enjoy some tropical heat and some skin healing from cold showers and sunshine.

One thing I have not been consistent with is my drinking habits. This year I want to wake up and drink at least 500ml to start the day. I have observed that if I drink enough water the day before and in the morning, any sport I play later does not cause me to itch. I must make drinking more of a habit. I also wonder how many of us eczema sufferers also have swollen tonsils?