The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: happygolucky on February 27, 2013, 12:32:13 pm
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Not me, and nothing political :innocent: BUT, my daughter who is a scientist and consultant has a very bad problem re allergies, her skin reacts to anything and every thing, she possibly studied cosmetic science due to her problems, she has now decided to have some specialist treatment and I do hope it works, has anyone any advice, help or suggestions to help the itch scratch cycle!!
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I had terrible problems with itchy skin when I was in my thirties. I'd had exzema as a child, too.
I had tests; they put about 12 different allergens on each arm. After they scraped me off the ceiling, they assessed my swollen blistering arms and said I was 'multiply allergic'. No kidding. ::)
All kinds of things were tried - exclusion diets, different soaps, different washing powder, goats' milk - you name it, we tried it.
Eventually I was in such a state I was hospitalised. Drugged to calm the screaming nerve ends, and swathed in bandages slathered with soothing pastes - which also stopped my fingers reaching the broken abused skin.
Icthopaste bandages - ahhhhhhhhh.
They kept me in for three weeks to let the skin heal. It was explained to me that once you are sensitized, any eruption can give rise to increased sensitivity elsewhere - so if I got a sore patch and scratched it, I could end up with flare-ups elsewhere even though there'd been no external trigger there.
I am absolutely fine now, and live and work amongst all kinds of dust, dirt, hay seeds, animal hair, etc, etc. I can even wear homespun wool against my skin :)
I can't give you a 100% definite explanation but I can tell you some things that I observed and some that I believe to be true.
When very sensitive, I found it helpful to do the following
- no soap at all, use unguentum merck to wash, don't towel but let it dry on your body
- at the outset I found oilatum emollient in the bath helped; after a while I became sensitized to that too - so nothing at all in the bath water except the ungy merck
- when the skin got so itchy I couldn't stop scratching, the icthopaste bandages were wonderful. In the absence of them, or where they couldn't be applied, coal tar and calomine was the best - your chemist can make you some up
- to suppress sudden flare-ups, I'd use a prescription steroid ointment, which was presented in coal tar base - but I'd be very frugal with it and not use it widely over my body because of the longterm issues with steroidal creams
- i used non-biological baby sensitive washing powder on any clothing or bedding which would be close to my skin - Filletti was the best
- try to keep the dust and unseen house-mites down in the house; I had covers on the mattress and pillows to reduce the contact with house mite / bed bugs
- get your skin exposed to the sun (or these days, a safe sunlamp is maybe better) whenever possible - obviously without overdoing it. The specialist who hospitalised me said he would send all his patients to the South of France to swim in the sea and dry in the sun twice daily for three weeks if the NHS would pay for it. (Again, the sun wasn't thought to be dangerous itself in those days.)
- change all next-to-the-skin clothes daily; dust from dead skin builds up in them extra fast when you have these problems
I can't tell you for sure why I got better but factors I believe relevant include:
- reduced stress - changed job, much less negative stress at work
- very prompt treatment of small itchy areas to preclude a more widespread flare-up
- pay attention to which fabrics cause and which suppress irritation and be brutal with your wardrobe - and be prepared to put covers on any chairs you use, including your office chair
- I never did wear makeup anyway, but I would certainly have stopped doing so
- moved more than 2 miles away from busy (motorway class) roads
- switched to spring water supply, not mains water
- a more outdoors way of life - more gardening and long walks with the dogs when I was still working in an office, now of course I am outdoors more than inside :)
- changed diet to eat more organic and fresh meat and veg, far less processed food and avoiding additives like colourants
Oh - and somewhere in the recovery period, I gave up smoking.
The top things that improved the health of my skin, in order of their impact in my view, were:
- changing to spring water, coming off mains water - Exmoor water on your skin does more good than any ointments, and then some
- using unguentum merck instead of soap (I can use simple soap etc now, but stayed with ungy merck for years)
- moving away from traffic pollution and giving up smoking
- changing job to a less stressful environment
- changes in diet and lifestyle to eat more fresh food and get more sun on my skin
And the only other thing I can think of to mention is this. At one point, after the hospitalisation but when I would still get flare-ups if I wasn't very careful, I cleared a large area of our garden of nettles. When you have skin allergies like I did, nettle rash is nothing, and it was a lovely sunny day so I did the job in shorts and sleeveless vest. That night I couldn't sleep, my legs were raging. It didn't itch, not a bit, and I wouldn't quite call it pain, but whatever it was, it kept me awake all that night and for quite a lot of the next few nights.
After that, I was super-sensitive to nettles and had to cover my legs when out walking, wear gloves when weeding if I might come into contact, even very slight contact, with nettles.
It has occurred to me that the reaction of the body to the total overload with the nettle toxins may have paradoxically desensitized the skin to other irritants.
Please do tell your daughter to contact me directly if she would like to know more about my experiences.
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THANKS, I see that all so familiar, may I copy and paste it to my daughter? I will ask her to get in contact with you if that's OK! That all sounds spot on to what we feel, in a way I think a short stay in hospital bandaged up would help, as a child I changed washing powders like you say, put only cotton things next to her skin and used very little in the way of soaps or cleaning fluids, she got worse with stressful situations as anyone would!
I was also very itchy in my 30s, my hands were a scabby mess, so much so that my farmer father in law, sprayed them with the purple stuff you use on livestock, anyway after going for tests, somehow decided that was it and I was then OK, I do know that anything except water made mine flare up and i treated my hands by buying cotton gloves and kept the damp then went around with rubber ones on top, unless of course I went out! My irritants tend to effect my joints, like a lot of people on here, my skin is OK now!
What is unguentum merck
? I shall look it up in a moment, very similar to what my daughter thinks, she is hyper active and does millions of things at the same time, last year she was close to breakdown :(
She is in Australia and when she first arrived she sent me photos, her face looked red, itchy and very swollen indeed.
Funny that I also used to get very runny nose and eyes, often on job interviews I think people thought I was crying with stress but it was my reaction, I know it was traffic as since moving here to central Scotland, I hardly every get runny eyes unless I am with loads of people, or when there is tree pollen around. I react badly to cigarette smoke, sometimes we have a guest that tries to smoke in the house, straight away my breathing is effected and my eyes puff up, they say they are not smoking but its as plain as day sometimes, thankfully non for ages now.
Your response has been fabulous, hormones must play an important part too, in her teens she had a very very bad reaction to the pill along with paracetamol, she was on holiday and felt ill so took paracetamol and her liver stopped functioning properly, never seen someone so yellow, poor girl!
Glad you are well now, fingers crossed for my daughter! :bouquet:
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Yes, by all means send all that on to your daughter and she is very welcome to contact me.
You'll find Unguentum Merck easily on googling - they seem to call it Unguentum M these days.
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My daughter also had the same intollerances to stuff like E 45 etc, I think that spured her onto her cosmetic science that she does now, she also does not wear make up, only for photo shoots, thats very very very helpful!!!
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Well, thanks for this thread. I am now now itching all over. Can someone please scratch the bit of my back that I can't reach? ;D
TBH I was already itchy - side effect from my meds - but I am now even more itchy.
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Never had reactions as bad as yours Sally , much milder versions of them though .
Cut out all washing powder and soap etc , spring water only too now for 35 years .
Only cotton , linen or natural fibres , no processed food , adds or colourants , away from town pollution , all help and now i hardly have a problem , sometimes get prickly heat type itching and still react badly to nettles , but can grab comfrey stems and twist to crop it no probs .
I react very bad to blackberry thorn scratches though , huge welts that itch for months sometimes .
So mine is a mix of natural and man made alergies .
Lol i am now wanting to scratch everywhere !
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Nettles can be very itchy indeed, I al itchy too :innocent:
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Well my daughter has had some tests and is going to have loads more, they suspect leaky gut syndrome, she was allergic to things from being a baby, its interesting but not nice. I wondered if I had been ill durring pregnancy but I doubt I had any medication even if I was and I did not drink at all until I was around 40 (make up for it now)
THanks for helping, she appreciated that!!
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My son had eczema as a baby - when our GP's next move was going to be steroid cream (for a 10-month old!) I took him to one of the best homeopath in the country - he prescribed Sulphur and two days later my son's skin showed improvement and within a month was fine. It did flare up occasionally but we just gave him Sulphur again straight away. I know some folk say homeopathy is "all in the mind" but that doesn't work on a baby!