Combating The Plights Of Eczema With A Day-To-Day Guide

Our skin is the barrier to the physical stresses and strains of the outside world. It’s also the largest organ of the human body. It’s a complex system of nerve endings, membranes and hair follicles. The natural oils secreted by the skin are like the mechanics on a car, keeping it regulated, and operating smoothly. However, not everyone has these oils in abundance or working normally. Eczema affects many people around the world and all too often gets swept underneath the carpet because it’s not seen as a fatal disease. But, it’s a force to be reckoned with and if it’s not properly managed, can make an everyday living, an extremely uncomfortable experience. Everybody is different, and that’s where the issue lies with eczema because unlike more narrow illnesses, the cause of the skin condition is subject to the individual. There a few ways that can guide you through your day-to-day living, to help you improve your health regarding this severe skin condition.

Know the triggers of Eczema

Many things around you can be triggers that cause skin irritations. It’s almost like searching for a needle in a haystack, but it truly could be anything. If your bed has woolen or even cotton sheets, it can give your skin a prickly feeling, which can lead to a tingling, then slight itch. Slowly if you’re lying or sitting on this kind of material, you can suffer from a flare up where your skin turns hypersensitive, and any little scratch or minor friction can set you off into an itching frenzy. You can see what triggers your skin via touch, by noticing what materials cause your skin to become red, extra dry or perhaps a little swollen.

Food can trigger a sudden flare up as well. Products like eggs, fish, dairy and spicy food have been known to cause dramatic changes in your system that have effects on your skin. Clothes that you wear may also have an irritable reaction on your skin because certain pH levels in clothes cleaning products react to the oils negatively.


Bodily caused irritations

Your own body can have an adverse effect on the health of your skin in ways you may not have thought about. Overheating when walking, sitting in a public place and sweating can cause a stinging sensation on the surface of your skin. If the skin is dry and hasn’t been moisturized, the sweat will try to be reabsorbed into the skin. However, sweat has salt in it, and the salt has a slight but constant, acidic reaction to the skin because the molecules cut and scrape across the skin; especially when wearing layers.

Hair also poses a threat also because it saps any and the little moisture you have on the surface of your skin. Coupling this effect is, how it rubs on your skin like small barbs, frictions the skin cells making your skin feel abrasive. The hair on your face may have an increased intensity because the face is one of the most sensitive parts of the body. Having scratch marks, or signs of itching such as red or dry skin can be embarrassing when being in public. There are some proven facial hair removal techniques and products that can pluck the hairs out of the follicles and leave no trace of their existence behind. Trimming or shaving leaves behind razor burns and causes hyperpigmentation. Unwanted facial hair can be removed with a cream or at-home DIY practices. There’s lots of advice online on how you can remove the hair cleanly and without damaging your upper lips area.


Image credit: Quinn Dombrowski

Washing and bathing

Coming to terms with your skin condition is one thing, but changing your life sufficiently to not cause further vexation is another. Do not wash with store-bought soap ever again. Your skin is not normal, and soap does clean your skin, but it completely washes away all the oils that lubricate your skin as well. As a substitute for soap or shower gel, use an emollient that comes in ointment form. The emollient soothes your skin, and because it’s an ointment, it’s thick and sits on your skin for longer. This gives the wax-like substance, more time to absorb and spread itself across your skin in a thick, layer. In the meantime, it will replace the natural oils of your skin, but by the time you come to shower tomorrow or the day after, your skin will have began to make decent levels of oil itself.

Do not use hot water when washing your self because the oils are washed away, and your skin begins to dry up and crack. You should use lukewarm water, and don’t pour too much water on yourself. Wash carefully, but don’t stay in the humid environment for too long for the reasons stated. When you’re scrubbing, only go over a layer of skin, three times at the most and use mild pressure at most.

vacuum cleaner

Keep your surrounding clean

Dust is a major factor in causing skin irritation, regardless of whether you suffer from eczema or not. Allowing dead skin cells to pile up around your home and especially the bedroom where you sleep and breathe most of your air in, is shortsighted. Wipe surfaces with a slightly damp tissue or cloth every week. Vacuum your house, fortnightly and your bedroom every week also. You should vacuum your mattress weekly also to get rid of dust mites that hang around in the padding. You should change your pillow cover to a synthetic material and wash it separately from your main clothes. If you have a computer or laptop, dust gets caught inside the cooling fans, which in turn gets slowly wafted into the air, so make sure to clean this part of your home also.

Eczema is a skin condition that rarely gets talked about in the news and among friends. But, it’s the hidden, persistent disease that eats away at your skin, slowly but surely. Left uncontrolled, you can scratch so much that you start to bleed. And, because your skin is dry, the wounds won’t heal as fast as they would for normal skin so that it will get worse and worse. Managing eczema is about day-to-day vigilance and taking the right precautions to avoid inflammation.



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