Let’s talk a little bit about eczema. This is something that a lot of people have and worst there are more and more people having it. And there are some parts of the world, especially industrial cities like Liverpool where the population having eczema is approaching 20% of the children. Now what is going on here, why is there so much eczema?
Well let me talk a little bit about what causes eczema. Eczema is caused by a number of things, but one of them is a defective barrier of the skin. Now that defective barrier can be caused by excessive washing. But it can also be caused by a genetic tendency not to make the right peptides that cause the barrier to be in tact. And those products are manufactured, and they evolve as they move through the skin. They have a number of different roles as they move through the skin. And the first one is barrier, but as they move through the skin, they also become part of the anti-microbial peptides that cause the skin to kill bacteria that might otherwise be creating trouble.
So the people who have that defect not only have a barrier, but they have less ability to break down the bacteria that are attacking the skin. So people with eczema has the tendency to develop staff and strept infections. And those staff and strept infections have a vicious cycle effect. Because they cause more cells to get turned on; more immune cells to get turned on to be reactive and create more inflammation which creates more itching, which creates more scratching, and more and more eczema. And so it’s really important for those people to use proper anti bacterials to do whatever they can to keep from scratching and destroying their skin. And to use various kinds of things that enhance the barrier of the skin.
Recently there has been a lot of work on using of using various kinds of waxes that contribute to the skin barrier. And that was based on work done by dermatologists in San Francisco, and now is the basis of a lot of really popular products that are used to protect the skin in eczema patients. And of course any kind of lipid is going to be beneficial, any kind of fat or oils can add some benefits.
But if you have eczema, the paradox is that it’s likely that if you use something over and over, you are going to become allergic to it. So people who have eczema soon become allergic to everything that they start putting on, and partly because of the nature of the original barrier itself. Whether it be land lend or coconut oil and also because these things are in creams. Bow creams are much more elegant to put on than Vaseline or grease or coconut oil. But they contain many different components like detergents to mix the oil and the water.
And then if they have oil and water together, it gets infected easily so you have to have a preservative system. And they are only handful of different preservative systems that are used to protect these different creams. So if you switch from one cream to t he next, you are likely to wind up with the same preservative system one out of four times. So you still have trouble.
And then if you look at most of these creams you’ll find that there are a number of substances whose names you can’t pronounce that are various chemicals. And some of those chemicals can be problems and can be potential allergies as well. So one of the issues with using creams on your skin is, it’s necessary and the other one is, it’s not unlikely that after a while you are going to become allergic to either the components or the fragrances in those creams. So you got to be real careful with what you’re putting on your skin if you have eczema.
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