A lot of people notice that they had dry scaly skin and assume that’s all it is. They put creams and various things on to try to make it better. However, a number of people with skin that’s dry actually have what’s known as eczema or atopic dermatitis and that’s an allergic condition, as well as a conditioner for barrier function.
There are also people who come in with dry skin, who have seborrheic dermatitis, which is really commonly known as dandruff and those are conditions that need different kinds of treatment in dry skin. So in addition, there are more unusual and rare conditions that present as skin that’s dry, such as ichthyosis. And that usually is seen in patients with fish-like scales on the fronts of their legs. So it’s important if you have dry skin and it’s not clearing up, to have somebody who is more expert in skin diseases, such as dermatologist.
Take a look and see what’s going on. If you want to find the underlying causes, you may also want to have someone with a holistic view point. Someone like this doesn’t just try to suppress it, but also tries to correct the underlying causes.
How do you treat dandruff naturally? Let’s talk about it. Dandruff in its aggravated form is technically know as subarea dermatitis. It involves scaling of the scalp with redness, and when it gets bad, scaling of the eyebrows, of the forehead, and sometimes even of the chest. It’s caused by a reaction to a yeast that lives normally in the skin known as malassezia, previously called pityrosporum.
And it is know that that yeast is a problem many of the shampoo cure that yeast. It’s just not the yeast that is there, but the attack of that yeast by the immune system and that is caused by overgrowth and overexposure to yeast in the body. So it’s important to make changes to what’s in your diet that is contributing to the overgrowth of that yeast and to the yeast that are leading to the attack on your hair follicles that is causing the dandruff. See my blog for more videos on what specifically to do for altering your diet, to lower the yeast in the body, and treat dandruff naturally.
What’s the best natural dry skin care? Next one of the things that’s going on with eczema, inflammation, and to some extent an allergic reactivity to either internal or external things that are causing your immune system to get excited. But eczema also known as atopic dermatitis involve another serious of factors. And for some people that includes a defective barrier of the skin so that water can evaporate much easier that it would have out of normal skin. And part of that is caused by a sub-group of patients. A defective protein called philogram, that philogram protein normally has several different functions as it migrates through the skin. A first function being a barrier and as it breaks down to the outer part of the skin being an anti-crobio peptide that prevents over growth of staff and other kinds of harmful bacteria.
It’s important to figure out which kind of problems going on with your eczema and treat it appropriately. And it’s also important to avoid things that are aggravating it as they work for a short period of time until you become allergic to the crème that you are using and then you have to go on to another. So the better you get at the underlying problems, the better you will get the eczema under control.
I’d like to talk a little bit about breastfeeding and eczema and what it has to do with Integrative Dermatology. The whole idea of eczema is to try to reduce the allergies that are coming to the infant that would be coming if you fed all different kinds of foods that come from the table. And the idea being that the infant is adapted to having breast milk as a much gentler much healthier, much less allergy containing food than saying giving cow’s milk or soy milk or something like that.
So what you really want to do is have a less allergenic product to feed the baby with. Now here is the problem, if you have allergies coming out into your breast milk, then that could aggravate the baby. And how would that happen? That could happen if you have a problem known as “leaky gut”, which means there is a defective barrier between your intestines and your bloodstream. So that food substances that aren’t completely broken down get out into the blood and get into the breast milk and cause allergies in the baby.
And this problem, this leaky gut seems to be more and more common. Why is it more common? Because lots of people are eating huge amounts of sugar. The American public eats 150 pounds of sugar per person per year. So that’s a lot, it creeps into all of our different foods, and of course it’s tasty. And the problem is we have a lot of yeasty food, bread, wine, beer and fungal related foods are cheese and mushrooms.
All of those convince the immune system in the gut to allow more yeast to grow, more yeast causes more inflammation, more inflammation causes more leakage across the membrane disruption of the barrier. And all of these substances get in that shouldn’t get in. Now if they were completely broken down to amino acids, that wouldn’t be a problem.
But also we have problems with digestion, so the combination of digestive problems, inflammation from overgrowth of the wrong organisms like yeast And the foods that may also be allergens; potent allergens like milk and gluten, all these things together can lead to leakage across the gut. And by the way gluten itself can cause leakage. So all that combined allows things to leak across and get into the blood stream. And into the milk, and therefore a lot of the babies breastfeeding are getting the allergens you are trying to avoid in the first place.
So it’s really important to fix leaky gut before you get pregnant. Because you don’t want to correct your digestive system when you got a baby growing in there. So we have a big problem in the world today of too many pregnant women with leaky gut leading to too many allergens getting across to the babies even in breast milk, and too many allergies, so that babies are born with eczema in higher and higher numbers.
Let’s talk a little bit about natural eczema healing. Eczema is something that a lot of people experience, and I see more and more people with it in my practice every year.
There are some parts of the world, especially industrial cities like Liverpool, where the population with eczema is approaching 20% of children. Now what is going on here? Why is there so much eczema?
What causes eczema and how do you heal eczema naturally? It’s caused by a number of things. One of those causes is a defective barrier of the skin. That defective barrier can be caused by excessive washing.
GENETICS
But it can also be caused by a genetic tendency not to make the right peptides that keep the barrier to be intact. Those peptides are manufactured, and they evolve and have a number of different roles as they move through the skin. The first role is as a barrier, but as they move through the skin, they also become part of the anti-microbial peptides that cause the skin to kill trouble-causing bacteria. People who have have this genetic tendency not only have a less strong barrier, but they have less ability to break down the bacteria that are always attacking the skin.
People with eczema have the tendency to develop staph and streptococcus infections. And those staph and strept infections have a vicious cycle effect. Because they cause more cells to get alerted; more immune cells get turned on to be reactive and create more inflammation, which creates more itching, which creates more scratching, and more and more eczema.
So it’s really important for those people to use proper anti-bacterials and 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.
BARRIERS
Recently there has been a lot of work on using various kinds of waxes that contribute to the skin barrier for natural eczema healing. Pioneering dermatologists in San Francisco explored these waxes, which are now the basis of a lot of really popular products used to protect the skin for those with eczema.
Of course, any kind of lipid or fat or oil can add some benefit. 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, partly because of the nature of the original barrier itself. Creams are much more elegant to put on than Vaseline or coconut oil. But they contain many different components, like detergents, to keep the oil and the water mixed.
Any cream with oil and water mixed together, can get infected easily so you have to have a preservative system. And there are only a handful of different preservatives that are used to protect these different creams from germs. So if you switch from one cream to the next, you are likely to wind up with the same preservative system one out of four times. So you still have trouble because you can have an allergic reaction to the preservatives.
On top of this, if you look at most of these creams you’ll find that there are a number of chemical substances whose names you can’t pronounce. Some of those chemicals can be potential allergens as well.
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’ve got to be very careful with what you’re putting on your skin if you have eczema.
I do help people who have these chronic issues to finally break the cycle, but I share all this to say that if you’re having a hard time controlling your eczema, you’re not alone, and the treatments don’t make it easy. That’s my holistic dermatology perspective for natural eczema healing.
Simply put, Dr. Dattner has done more for me in three months than any other doctor has done in 30 years. Until now, my skin has been more than a daily annoyance, infringing upon my ability to work, maintain a social life, and merely live freely. If you are someone like me, who has had a lifetime of skin ailments, or just recently begun experiencing problematic skin, Dr. Dattner will assuredly discover the culprit and provide a clear and natural route to health.
I arrived at Dr. Dattner’s door with a history of eczema that had been mismanaged for most of my life. Previous doctors had over-prescribed corticosteroid creams and pills for nearly 20 years, to the point that my body had become dependent upon them, not even responding at certain doses. When I chose to stop all forms of steroids (and never touch them again) nearly five years ago, I experienced the worst redness, swelling, flaking, itching, oozing, insomnia, and pain I have ever endured. This lasted, at its height for four months, but continued to haunt me in the intervening years. During this time, doctors had tried treating me with a variety of immunosuppressants and long-term antibiotics, with limited success, ultimately telling me that “this is just the way you are.” Sadly, a part of me believed them.
On my own, I was constantly researching and quickly becoming aware of leaky gut syndrome, and did what I could on my own through diet to attempt to heal myself, but found that this could only go so far. Thankfully, after moving to the New York area and relapsing into yet another extended skin flare, I discovered Dr. Dattner’s practice online. After my very first appointment, I felt that I was on the right track. Not only is he a thorough practitioner with a confidence that instills trust in his patients, Dr. Dattner is one of the first medical professionals who has truly listened to me and worked with body’s quirks rather than against them. Through diet and natural supplements, I have seen remarkable progress leaps and bounds beyond anything achieved by western medicines.
I cannot recommend Dr. Dattner or his holistic approach to healing more highly. He has given me back my skin, and thus my life.
What’s the best holistic skincare treatment for eczema? Eczema is related to other kinds of allergic diseases like asthma and hay fever. Usually there’s a family history of one of these conditions, and people who have it truly actually end up with dermatitis. There is an increasing incidence of eczema in the past decade, suggesting that some kind of environmental changes are a factor. It is aggravated by not only allergies in some people but also by various foods in some others.
Eczema is also aggravated by secondary infection, which people get from scratching, opening up wounds, and having oozing cerium. This can gets a culture of staph and other kinds of germs growing on it. Those kick the immune system up into high gear, and more and more of the skin problem appear.
It’s important to break the itch and scratch cycle. Keep the skin lubricated to calm down the inflammation. In functional medicine, we seek out the various causes that are contributing to the eczema and deal with each one. Doing all of that can make a dramatic difference.
Let’s talk a little bit about a condition known as Psoriasis or sometimes the Heartbreak of Psoriasis. Psoriasis involves thick red patches of skin often in the pressure areas or elsewhere throughout the body on the skin. It can be very mild and barely visible or it can be extremely widespread and for some people very disturbing.
Now, eczema is a much milder condition. But Psoriasis tends to be thick it can be itchy or painful and it is caused by the type of inflammation that enlarges the blood vessels in the skin. This causes the skin cells to reproduce and turn over much faster, that is like 4 to 6 days instead of 28 days before they get to the top.
And that over production of the skin cells causes the thickening and the scaling that occurs. So we need to cut down the inflammation that causes that. That is a lymphocytic delayed hypersensitivity celli or immune response causing it. And we know that partly by the new drugs that poison that response and we know that if we can take away what is setting off that inflammation, we can also calm it down. And we can do that through diet as well as through the modern drugs. If you need help with the heartbreak of psoriasis, contact my office for an appointment.
What to Do if Your Eczema Cream Stops Working ~ Holistic Skincare
It’s possible that you became allergic to one of the components of your eczema cream. It’s important to realize that there are certain kinds of things like preservatives in the creams that are very limited in the types that can exist.
So even if you go to another cream you might find that you’re still going to break out. If that’s the case, you really need to go to somebody who has a great background in chemistry or in dermatology who understands what these things are and can help you figure out what things you need to avoid. It could be either the preserve system or it could be the actual emollient, the oil part of the cream.
Remember that many components of creams are required as opposed to an ointment or an oil which doesn’t need any kind of emulsifier or preservative, but certainly is not as elegant, as it stains your clothing. It’s important to vary what you’re using, but to do it in a way that avoids the things that have cause problems before. This is the beginning of holistic skincare.
“So this skin is really an indicate of what’s going on in the world Dr. Dattner? “
“The wonderful thing about the skin is that it reflects what’s going on in the skin of the earth. There’s something that’s really prevalent in the environment that wasn’t there before, that our system can deal with. We react to it .now when we pushing to some area of the woods where we weren’t before may break out with poison ivy from contacting their plant. They’re all kinds a contact allergies going on. incidentally the incidence of eczema which used to be you know there was always a certain percentage of people with eczema. In some countries like in parts of England is pushing 20 percent the population well in the children so something is going on that a in our environment that he is pushing up the incidences skin diseases as well.”