Anyone Have Eczema or have Children with Eczema?

[snowdogged]

I have had Eczema my entire life and it usually gets worse when the winter weather starts coming. This year it has been unbearable! For the past two months, I have been going to work on two to four hours of sleep because I was scratching most of the night. It can also be very painful and uncomfortable at all times. I Googled home remedies for it the other day and found that there was a study done with children who had Eczema. They added bleach to their bath water and the study found that it was very helpful with getting eczema under control. It made lot of sense to me because I remembered that when I was a kid, my Eczema would almost entirely clear up when when I went swimming in swimming pools everyday during the summer. I took my first bath with it yesterday and it really works well to take away the itching. I'd say the itching went away a good 80%. It is a huge difference, better than any of the creams out there, at least for me. I have tried so many that they no longer work very well for me. It really is the difference between suffering and just being a bit uncomfortable with it for me. A half a cup of bleach in your bath water really does the trick. Make sure to use moisturizer after the bath, because the bleach will make your skin dry, just like a chlorinated swimming pool will. I am going to be taking them everyday now until my Eczema starts to clear up, then I will try every second day.

 

Here is a link to an article about the study. If you Google it you can find a lot more info.

I hope this can help someone else, like it has helped me!

 

Bleach bath Study

[summer_sky]

Eczema developed on my hands about 10 years ago. My hands now look 100 years old and are often red and raw and cracked and they hurt from the cuts when my skin splits. I was asked one time if I was in a fist fight because the eczema had recently flared up badly.

I just may try your bleach water wash on my hands and see what happens.

 

[snowdogged]

QUOTE (summer_sky @ Dec 1 2010, 06:28 PM)

Eczema developed on my hands about 10 years ago. My hands now look 100 years old and are often red and raw and cracked and they hurt from the cuts when my skin splits. I was asked one time if I was in a fist fight because the eczema had recently flared up badly. I just may try your bleach water wash on my hands and see what happens.

Just be sure that you do not use too much bleach. Half a cup for a bath full is enough.

[Janie]

BLEACH! Are you serious!? Bleach dries out skin. I am surprised that bleach is a remedy. My oldest son has horrible eczema. For the first two years of his life, it was so bad, he was constantly greased up head to toe in Vaseline, Eucerin cream and desonide ointment (prescription). All of his clothing and sheets are washed in "free and clear" detergent (no dyes, perfumes, etc). His skin has improved but it's still bad in certain spots. After a bath, he gets Eucerin cream and I put the desonide on the bad areas (his upper arms and sides are his problem spots.)

[snowdogged]

QUOTE (Janie @ Dec 1 2010, 07:53 PM)

BLEACH! Are you serious!? Bleach dries out skin. I am surprised that bleach is a remedy. My oldest son has horrible eczema. For the first two years of his life, it was so bad, he was constantly greased up head to toe in Vaseline, Eucerin cream and desonide ointment (prescription). All of his clothing and sheets are washed in "free and clear" detergent (no dyes, perfumes, etc). His skin has improved but it's still bad in certain spots. After a bath, he gets Eucerin cream and I put the desonide on the bad areas (his upper arms and sides are his problem spots.)

Bleach will dry out the skin, so you have to make sure that you use a good moisturizer right after the bath. The logic is that bleach kills the bacteria that makes the Eczema flare up. I'm telling you that I feel great compared to what I did before. I had a hard time concentrating on anything lately because I was so itchy all of the time for the past two months and now I hardly feel itchy at all! It's no worse than going swimming in a chlorinated swimming pool.

[snowdogged]

Update: I had a little bit of a flare up last night with my eczema for about an hour or so, but it was still not as bad as it was before I started using the bleach. No major damage was done to my skin and I am back to being much less itchy than I was before I started using the bleach in my bath water. So, this is not a cure but it does seem to make living with Eczema much more tolerable. Like I said before, when I use to go swimming in pools everyday when I was a kid, my Eczema would pretty much totally clear up, but that was during the summer when my skin would not dry out so much as in the winter. If anyone is concerned about doing this then talk to your doctor first and tell him or her about the study if he/she is not aware of it.