For those that don’t know, I’ve been battling with eczema my whole life, but intensely and naturally since April 2019.
Diet is a major part of treating eczema naturally. There are a lot of foods I had to cut out initially since my eczema was so bad, but for a while now, I’ve only been paying attention to gluten and eggs and keeping my histamine intake low. Those seem to be my trigger foods. When I eat them, within 3 hours my skin looks like it’s eating itself, and it stays that way for nearly a week. Over the past year, I’ve incorporated most other foods into my diet, and they haven’t seemed to bother me… until this Spring.
I live in the Piney Woods of Texas, so when Spring arrives, there’s A LOT of pollen floating around. Everything blooms, and a layer of green settles on everything.
Let me throw some science at you. When any foreign particles enter the body (usually germs), the body’s immune system releases histamines to deal with the invaders. With so much pollen floating around, a flood of histamines are being released (it doesn’t help that I’ve been spending much of my time outside).
As I mentioned before, I’ve been keeping high-histamine foods out of my diet, because I’m really sensitive to histamines. During the winter, I could enjoy more of these foods because there wasn’t any pollen for my body to deal with.
But now there is. A lot of pollen. Specifically, I’ve cut all dairy from my diet. I’ve been eating cheese and using powdered milk as a coffee creamer. This wasn’t a problem until things began blooming, but the last few weeks, my skin’s been having problems (nothing like before, but enough to notice and be uncomfortable). Lactose is something that works against the body to give skin problems. For me, this isn’t nearly as big a deal as gluten or eggs, but I don’t need anything working against me while my body’s dealing with this onslaught of plant sperm (the pollen).
Beginning now, I’m going to begin wearing some sort of face covering when I’m outside during Spring. I didn’t think about it before, but I use air filters in the house, so I may as well use them outside. There’s no way this will keep all the pollen at bay, but maybe it’ll help combat the worst of it. Plus, it looks like I need to really watch my diet in Spring. I’ve only been treating my eczema naturally for a year, which means this is my first Spring since fully healing myself. I spent this past year dealing with the worst of my eczema (I stopped using steroid creams cold turkey, and it took over 7 months to clear my skin), so now I get to refine my healing processes.
By the way, if you have eczema, even if you’re fine with staying on some prescription meds, I highly recommend changing your diet. It’ll likely help more than the meds. You know what I mean – you clear up one patch of eczema and it pops up somewhere else, so you slather some more creams on. Michelle Mills and Sasan Valkai were instrumental in helping me treat my eczema.
There are 5 foods that you should cut out ASAP if you have eczema: fried foods, refined sugar, eggs, dairy, and gluten. Once you cut these out and let your body have a month or so to recover (because it may freak out from the change), your skin will most likely look and feel better. Now, if you cut out meds or have severe eczema, you’re going to need to let your body heal for longer. If you do this, things *may* get worse before they get better. Think of it like deep cleaning your body. If you deep clean your house, you have to move your furniture to clean the floors – there’s chaos for a while, but it’s the process of removing the crud that’s been building up.
Of course, I’m not a doctor, blah blah, disclaimer.
But seriously, research and consider changing your diet. It helped me immensely.
Frugal Treehugger 