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.
The basic two types of inflammation. They are the immediate hypersensitivity and the delayed hypersensitivity.
The immediate hypersensitivity is mediated by antibodies, especially of the IGE class. These are the antibodies involved when you take a whiff of a flower or pollen and start sneezing, and develop hay fever.
The other type of inflammation comes on a day or two later. This type is mediated by lymphocytes: white blood cells that are in your body that distinguish what belongs and what doesn’t belong. Then, they set up a reaction to it by dividing in the lymph nodes and bringing an army of cells out to destroy the targets.
They destroy especially two kinds of targets. One target is you, modified, so if you have some poison ivy on your skill cells that get recognized as “you, modified”. The other kind of “you, modified” could be if you have a tumor that’s arising and the cells look a bit different than they should. Your body uses a very sophisticated arm of the immune system to distinguish those differences and set up a reaction to destroy them.
And your body is doing that all the time – getting rid of those tumors. And that is the delayed hypersensitivity system. Both of these systems can recognize a problem and get rid of it. For instance, hypersensitivity will attack virally infected cells or chemically modified cells as well as tumors, or even the fungus-modified cells. So if you have a fungus they’re involved in that attack as well.
However in some instances, your body’s immune system does something different. Once it has recognized some target that seems to be a problem, it may start to recognize some other parts of your system modified that look like the original target. And your body will attack that and cause destruction and an inflammation there as well. This we call cross-reactive attack because of molecular mimicry.
So the body’s immune system has two different major systems and many, many variations. Information has been growing since I started studying this decades ago. But these two basic types still prevail and are good starting points for understanding react to different things.
Now, there are a lot less allergies than when PABA was being used. People did have allergic reactions to that, but there are still allergic reactions to sunscreens. Especially the combination of sunscreen and light, because there are changes chemically that happen in a sunscreen when you’re in the sun.
If you have allergies to various related compounds, other sunscreens or perhaps, sulfonamides or drugs that are related to sulfonamides like some of the anti-diabetic drugs, then you’re more likely to have an allergy to the sun screens. It would be good to look at that and discuss that with your doctor or your dermatologist to make sure that it’s not a similar compound to something that you already have an allergy to.
So, it’s possible, yes, you can have an allergy to sunscreen. Not common, but if you do, it would be best not using sunscreens at all that are related to the ones that cause trouble. Sometimes a different one will work where one isn’t allergic. You should get that figured out or test in a very small spot before you go and spread sunscreen all over your body and go out and have a generalized allergic reaction.
Today, Dr. Leo Galland releases his new book, “The Allergy Solution”.
This book gives a comprehensive explanation of allergy and all of the conditions that can be related to allergy and inflammation. It affirms many of the points described in my book, “Radiant Skin from the Inside Out”. Points that developed out my research on inflammation and immune recognition, and had their practical development through Functional Medicine. For those suffering from allergy and related symptoms, this book gives a good practical understanding of how to gain control by getting at the underlying causes.
Dr. Galland is a colleague with whom I have shared the path of Integrative Medicine, who I have known since NYU Medical school. We have become close colleagues in the past 17 years, as co-members of a seminal group of integrative medicine physicians who met several times each year with outstanding integrative speakers.
Could You Be Allergic to Your Wedding Ring? ~ Best Natural Skincare
Could you have a wedding ring allergy? I don’t mean to your spouse necessarily, but the ring itself. Your wedding ring is made out of gold usually, but even eighteen karat gold can have nickel in it. It’s possible to have what we call contact hypersensitivity, especially to jewelry with nickel and rarely to gold, and also to many other things. It’s also possible to have an irritant dermatitis to the soap that collects underneath your ring.
These are all reasons that you get a red rash under your wedding ring or any other jewelry that you wear on your body. Contact dermatitis typically is in the areas where you are contacting some kind of metal or some kind of chemical in your clothing or in your environment. Typically contact dermatitis takes about two days to come on from the start time of exposure. It lasts for about two weeks.
Often people don’t notice what caused it because already a couple of days have gone by before they see it. You need to be aware that another form of dermatitis can be from external things and what we call contact dermatitis.
Another great food for your natural skincare diet!
Asparagus is another great food to eat when you’re looking to care for your skin naturally. Those spears of asparagus help your body in many different ways. They contain an amino acid called asparagine, which you probably have noticed, has an distinctive… smell. And if you have the right genetic capability, you will also excrete that in your urine and be able to smell it! It’s a very valuable food to eat, and it should be enjoyed when it’s in season, as fresh as possible.
WHAT IS MAKING ME ITCH? ~ Scratching the Itch Naturally
You know “itch” is caused often by allergic reaction and sometimes by various chemicals that set off a reaction. For instance, various kinds of bits from insects, various kinds of plants that cause allergic contact dermatitis, like poison ivy. When you have itching, it’s a sign that something is going on that needs to be remedied or avoided. It’s really important to think back about what is going on when the itching started and what was going on a few days before the itching began in case it was something you contacted with and set it off with a delayed response.
Finding out the cause of an inch is a detective game that you are the deputy detective here and you need to start looking back at what was going on and put that information together so you can present it to your doctor or your dermatologist. Now, if this is been a complex long-term problem, it can take some real serious detective work. This is when digging in deeper to the causes can make a real difference. This is where real holistic dermatology begins.
“What can you tell me about the effective wheatgrass juice?”
“Well wheatgrass juices has a lot of anti-oxidants in it. It’s reported to have a lot of beneficial effects even in conditions such as diabetes and in cancer. I had the privilege of meeting Ann Wigmore in Cambridge in around 1970. She was still alive and there were a lot of very devoted people who were coming to her for help. I didn’t have a chance to really go through a lot of case histories in ascertain exactly what was going on but I had a very strong sense that people were getting better from the stories that were told to me.”
“Now do they apply wheat grass topically or is it mainly internal?”
“People were using it internally and it was part of a very rigorous program that was vegetarian in yet still had methods for obtaining important nutrients like B-12 with the Rejuvelac. She had a very extensive program so it wasn’t just that you took some wheat grass you were used they were eating watermelon rinds for Diuretic and watermelon. It was they had many different steps that were put together in order to be vegetarian and yet still do cleansing and yet still be healthy having the essential nutrients.”
“Tell us Dr. Dattner, what are some of the supplements that you find work well for some your patience?”
“Well I use digestive enzymes I use herbs that support the liver in a variety of different ways and let me also emphasize that I make choices according to the individual patient. Now it might be that the person wants a vegetarian enzymes so that makes me make certain kinds of other choices, but I’ve also been fortunate to have learned a method for determining which of two different products a would be ideal by using muscle response testing and I’m able to test muscles that are directly related segmentally to the organ involved to see which one strengthens up that muscle related to the organ. I use that as an additional guide for finding out which things would be best among two things which intellectually makes sense as being useful from my understanding of the disorder that I am treating.”
“Wow that is fascinating!”
“It’s very helpful, and you know it’s still a little surprising being a scientist its been a big leap of faith for me to learn this, but having study with a number of masters who do this. I have gotten a sense of doing it just like when you go to an acupuncturist and they feel your pulse he gets a sense of something and it’s very hard to communicate in words.”
“I would imagine you get patients who come to you with all kinds of different skin conditions and I would imagine if they went to a traditional dermatologists they would have one kind of treatment and yet you have different kinds of treatment difference between what a regular dermatologist would do and what you do?”
“Well there’s a whole series have different treatments the dermatologists have developed and I learned though they work very well yeah, but they have a certain cost to them because many of them are treating symptoms. For instance the cortisone steroids to calm down the information, but they don’t always get at the cause of the information. If the cause of the information is a dietary habits were is contribute too a heavily dietary habits putting the cortisone on will give you a 1-4 relief so when you stop putting it the problem comes back and unless you correct the underlying cause you still have a problem. I treat a lot of conditions they have inflammation by working my way back towards the underlying causes getting the digestive system working better. Figuring out which things are are causing getting the liver to help detoxify better using anti-inflammatory herbs. I’m able to avoid a lot of the drugs my colleagues need to use on a daily basis in acne people use a lot of antibiotics dermatologists for treating and acne treatment with antibiotics has its cost because people then sometimes get overgrowth used in the intestinal tract. Then they can get even in the worst cases chronic fatigue and they can function. I work with the processes information calming that information through changes in the digestive tract and working on the hormonal basis that the acne using a variety of supplements gently shift how the hormones working in a safer way, because some other side effects and the the supplements amusing or reducing the the the statistical chances breast cancer so I like positive side-effect.
I like it when the patient is treated for their skin and their energy is better and they have more verve during the day and get more done and enjoy life more that’s the kinda side-effect I like to see. I really enjoy working with people who have improvements in their overall health while we’re improving their skin. That’s very different than what many of my colleagues do.”
