Finding the Best Cream for Eczema: John's Story

John developed chronic fatigue in his late forties. He went to his GP who said, I kid you not, ‘I know what’s wrong with you - you’re knackered.’ And that was that.

To be fair, that was many years ago and chronic fatigue and ME - myalgic encephalomyelitis - were nowhere on any GP's medical radar. Talking about sensitivities and intolerance as opposed to outright allergies was a very fringe affair.

John is a family member. Cutting a very long and bumpy story short, after many years we discovered he had a leaky gut which was allowing substances to pass through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream, yeast overgrowth and various sensitivities - in particular to wheat and sugar inside, damp, cold and biological detergents outside.

Eradicating the yeast overgrowth through an elimination diet gave him an incredibly uplifted quality of life. And he felt a real and significant positive difference in just two weeks, having put up with the condition for ten years.

Although John’s health and energy remarkably revived, we still had to be on guard. We are talking about an innate tendency, probably genetic, and new problems can arise. And they did in the form of skin problems, and one of them was eczema.

John went to his GP, who prescribed steroid cream of a high dose due to the severity of the rash. The rash was in a private place (so there are no before and after photographs!) and John told no-one about it. After a while he began to feel unwell, and the rash still wouldn't go. The cream appeared to work for a few days, then the rash returned. John persevered with the cream for many weeks, but the rash just got worse, very angry, sore and red, and it spread.

Side effects aren’t side effects - they’re effects

Now here’s the thing - people with eczema have very permeable skin - very. So we don’t think it’s rocket science that whatever’s in what they put onto their skin will more easily enter their system. In the case of moisturising and restorative skin cream, that's a plus. But in the standard treatment for eczema, that means steroids.

Read the possible side effects on the leaflet with your steroid treatment, and there you have John’s experience. In his case, he could not endure the cream for very long before they kicked in. On the leaflet with John’s cream the instructions are to use it for no longer than one week, but John persevered because it had brought results at the very outset.

His GP's surgery repeated the prescription without a GP check, and he thought that was the extent of the treatment. He thought there was nothing else.

Now, switch the scene to me having a conversation with a friend who was telling me about his experience with his local GP surgery trying to help heal a repeated and chronic case of leg ulcers. The iodine treatment had been going on for a year, and it was painful. And although the ulcer was diminishing, it would never finally go. It had healed to a small patch, but no further.

The practice nurse decided she would try something they used when all else failed - honey. Honey. Immediately the healing picked up again.

I told John this, knowing nothing about his predicament, and thank heaven I did. He then told me of his problem, and we got online to find out if honey featured in any online eczema threads or discussions. That'w when we found Dr Organic Bioactive Organic Manuka Honey Rescue Cream (see photo above), and it made all the difference.

Almost immediately the itching stopped. Within three days the severe redness was receding, and within two weeks the rash was gone. The skin where it had been itched on occasion and it threatened to return, but repeated early treatments got rid of it.

To date, and that was now four months ago, it hasn’t returned to that very, very uncomfortable place and the skin is back to normal. There have been other flare-ups, but they have been calmed and are moisturised in the same way.

Why is this a good option, and the best we know of?

1. Manuka Honey on its own is very expensive and secondly in a cream it's easier to use as a skin treatment - not sticky and difficult to use.

2.The cream has no synthetic steroids! - instead, it has phytosterols, naturally occurring sterols.

"The German medical journal "Der Hautarzt" reports a study in which various topical preparations were tested on skin for 10 days. The topical treatment that showed anti-aging benefits to the skin was the one that contained phytosterols and other natural fats. It is reported that phytosterols not only stopped the slow-down of collagen production that can be caused by the sun, it actually encouraged new collagen production." Livestrong.com

3.It’s richly moisturising and restorative - And the renowned skin conditioner Aloe Vera Juice is the first ingredient. And look at all these other natural oils and butters:

Aloe leaf juice, Shea butter, Cetearyl alcohol, Borage seed oil, Beeswax, Sweet almond oil, Glycerin, Cetearyl glucoside, Rapeseed, Zinc oxide, Rosa moschata seed oil, Manuka honey (see flowers left), Cocoa butter, Sodium hyaluronate, Glycyrrhetinic acid, Glyceryl caprylate, Tocopheryl acetate (Vitamin E). (This is from the listed ingredients on the website)

4.It’s free from petroleum jelly - also known as paraffin.

Check the moisturiser that you use. Does it include this ingredient? It's often in skin and face creams, and although it can create the illusion of giving a moisturized, hydrated skin, it is suffocating your pores. It's water-repellant and not water-soluble. So while your skin feels softer, your dry skin is being dried out by keeping out air and moisture. That's never good, and eczema skin is dry enough as it is. And it traps whatever is there.

5.It’s free from parabens preservatives - The favourite of supermarket creams, shampoos and body washes, the parabens range of preservatives has come in for a lot of questions. For example, “parabens can, however, cause skin irritation and contact dermatitis and rosacea in individuals with paraben allergies, a small percentage of the general population.” (Nagel JE, Fuscaldo JT, Fireman P (1977). "Paraben allergy") For people prone to eczema, a small percentage risk is too much.

6.It’s bioactive - That means what it looks like, really: it’s not like a barrier cream that simply sits on the skin. It's biologically active - makes a nourishing difference to living cells and tissues.

How to use the cream

I mentioned all of this to a friend of mine who has eczema and she is using it with good results. She also uses it as an ultra-nourishing skin cream for her face and arms, as her skin is prone to dryness. And it looks fabulous.

In John's case, he keeps it should he need it for a treatment. We bear in mind the habituation process, where your body can get used to something and it can either cause a build-up and react that way, or its effectiveness can be reduced.

So John uses a no-petroleum and parabens free moisturiser or some baby oil for everyday moisturing.

It's all about what works for you, isn't it? While we need to treat and manage eczema from the inside, we also need a healthy, safe, non-harming and non-life-lowering treatment on the outside.

I'm not recommending the abandonment of any prescription treatment, and also you will see that for some this worked phenomenally well while for a few others it was not so effective - although they still loved it! And that's in the nature of eczema: it's individual in what works from one to another and from one moment to the next. And that's precisely why I'm writing this and putting it forward with enthusiasm should you feel the need to try something easy to use, different, natural, organic and healing.

There's a link to the cream on the Amazon store below and I have to say at this point that I will receive a commission if you do. I am proud of that. I'm a qualified skin care manufacturer: I make my own natural and organic range which I used to sell for many years named Fidelis Skincare.

If I was to have a store again, I would want to stock Dr Organic’s Bioactive Organic Manuka Honey Rescue Cream as a priority. Find it by clicking on this link:

Happy days!

Faith

Faith Tait is a qualified skincare manufacturer, kinesiologist, nutritionist, hypnotherapist and confidence coach and trainer. She loves colour and finds it intensely uplifting, so she is also a colour analyst.

#chronicfatigue #creamforeczema