Eczema in Children: How did it happen in layman terms

“Eczema in children is very common”. However, why is it common and how did it happen? One of the easiest ways to explain is that it is because the baby’s immune system has yet to mature. Its maturity is where you can see kids outgrow their eczema at 2 years old, 5 years old or during their teens. That is if eczema is controlled and not escalated to a secondary infection.

Eczema can be trigger from internally (for example something your baby eats and they’re allergic to) and externally (for example something you apply on your baby). However, either internally or externally, it will result in physical inflammation on the skin on the outside.

Just for explanation purposes, assuming there are like processes when it happens, how does your child feels, why does proper treatment is important and how can you help them.

Process 1 – It starts with an allergen

It all begins with an allergen – regardless if it’s internal or external factors, your baby’s skin can begin with something really mild, for example, rash. In a perfect environment, the top layers of our skin cell is like a brick. Equal size rectangular which forms something called ‘skin barrier’. These are the protectors to ensure allergens, bacteria or any harmful items does not penetrate into our skin.

Illustration: The perfect skin condition

Now, visualise the rash – it would mean a few of these ‘bricks’ is not equal size. What would happen? It would only mean the ‘skin barrier’ are compromised and they’re unable to protect our baby from the harmful external environment.

Illustration: The compromised skin barrier by a few rash where allergens, nasty chemicals and bacteria can dive deep into the skin layers

What can you do? First step, minimise usage of baby products that has a lot of nasty chemicals. Imagine if your baby skin are already compromised, yet a baby wash that contains SLS/SDS (this is the common chemical used to sensitise skin in a HypoAllergenic or Cumulative Irritation test) used on baby – with the ‘bricks’ not placed properly, it would mean irritants can penetrate into the deeper layers of the skin easily. Try using Bare Nuhcessities’s Bare Bubbly Baby Wash as it’s formulated with 100% EWG Green ingredients and it has added shea butter to replenish the loss of moisture.
Next, lather Bare Nuhcessities’s Bare Balancing Baby Lotion, which formulated with 100% EWG ingredients such as probiotics, niacinamide and allantoin. Not only these helps with filaggrin growth, it ensure a healthy balance of microbes in your skin for a long term recovery.
Bare Balancing Baby Lotion are made to penetrate deep into the layers of the skin.

Process 2 – The compromised skin barrier

When there’s an allergy, there would be an increased of histamine. Histamine, a by products when mast cells are released as part of an immune system response. These histamine, would climb it’s way up to the top layer of the skin, binds with the proteins in the top layers, which then will cause itch.

Now, these itch, when it’s scratch, would gives a temporary relief. In the brain, it would release serotonin, which would travels to spinal cords that generates itch signals, which now, your baby would be in scratch and itch cycle.

Illustration: The never ending itch cycle

Now imagine back the ‘bricks with rash’ and as your baby scratches, what would happen to the top layer ‘bricks’? Not only they’re compromised, the skin barrier layers would be thinner as well.

What can you do? At this point, a barrier balm/cream would be really important. This is because bacterias, allergens and chemicals could easily dive into the deeper layer of the skin and could cause a secondary infection. Bare Nuhcessities’s Bare Barrier Baby Balm is formulated to calm the skin and with the 100% EWG Green ingredients, it would mean that you do not need to worry about the nasty chemicals penetrating into the skin.
These barrier balm, depending on severity of the skin infection, would need to reapply every 3-5 hours to ensure a temporary protective barrier are there so that the deeper layers of the skin can have their time to heal rather than fighting with the external environment.

It’s a long recovery process

Eczema is a long recovery process. As long as the factors (internal or external), whether the first-factor allergen or the secondary infection and so forth, it can be continuous. This is why it is important to minimise the usage of the nasty chemicals and having a strong protective barrier would be an important part of the recovery process.

It’s not an easy fight, but we are with you. If you have any questions – please feel free to email us at



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