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?

Winter Suppliments

With the lack of daylight and being able to get out in time to soak the skin in some sun I am now supplimenting my diet with Vit D, vit E via Oil of Evening Primrose and thought I might throw in some bacteria since it was going cheap at the health food shop - Probiotic Acidophilus.

Still amazed at how parts of my skin can show dryness symptoms. Although I have been told that eczema is the over production of skin and hence the dry flakiness we experience. Thus just keep moisturising........*sigh*

Sleep Illusions

Last year, I managed to have smooth skin for the first time after a very long time and this was with very little usage of steroid creams. I did not suffer itchiness for at least 5 months before I began using an emollient that I have used countless times and that reacted to me. My skin deteriorated.

Since stopping the emollient usage, the itching greatly reduced however the skin hovers about being okay to not okay. When I reflect about what I was doing last year, I was able to focus on getting well, drinking much more water than I am now, eating a healthier diet, moisturising myself about every 1-2 hours and more importantly getting plenty of healing sleep.

This year I have lacked discipline coupled with a never ending stream of work. Sleep is poor and I feel I can attribute any itching to a lack of sleep. It seems simple that when I am tired my skin itches. When I have had good sleep, I itch very little even when I play sport. Yet good sleep is eluding me which means poor skin. Unfortunately, every month my hormones give me 3 nights of sleeplessness. Top that off with work pressures, and my month to month needs a lot of improvements.

And so I understand when they say "stress" can cause eczema......or in my case - the lack of sleep. I steer towards taking an antihistamine when itching is bad.

Hope all you eczema sufferers are blessed with better sleep than myself and if you are not able to get that "beauty sleep" then try to do something about it.

Back to Natural Ways

Burn up completed.....yes I know the darn stuff thins the skin, but either I dig the bad skin off or burn it off with steroids.

Think my spiritual self must be in an imbalanced state. Work and dealing with politics can leave one feeling very aggressive about life. All very unnecessary but there are horrible people in this world who are jealous of any success you might have, who seek to undermine and discredit you.

It is really pitiful how greedy these people can be and how they can stab you in the back and try to turn the knife. Life can be hard if one were to allow these people to get to you, to change the core of you to bitterness. They want you to be ugly with them. My skin may be bad but I don't have the same heart as them and I am glad......

I am so glad I have God and sport in my life. Both of these keep me sane. I am running a marathon a month over 10 months and have just completed my 6th one. I have discovered beautiful parts of the UK so close to home and watching the seasons change from winter, to spring to summer and now to autumn has just been magic.

Burning Off the Skin

Skin continually flaking even when I've not scratched for some days. Decided to hit it with some Fucibet (cortesoid cream) for the next 3 days. Doc had given me this last year when the body was infected and only managed to use it for a week before contracting Shingles! Then I didn't use it again and managed to sort out other external factors to heal the skin.....sleep.....drinking more water......eat more fresh veggies......

However work pressures are not allowing me to sort out sleep and am constantly picking the flaking skin off. I forget to drink at times. I know it's bad and at the moment am weak willed and have poor discipline. Perhaps I should stop working.......and I will take a rest from it all in a couple of months!!!

But in the interim, am burning off the dead skin - either that or I exfoliate it off - but don't think that is good either as it also can pull off good new skin. Got to work/sleep.....