Eczema and Wheat Products

Let me start off by saying that this post is not any type of medical treatise; I am simply going to share with you my own experiences regarding eczema and wheat products. I am of the very humble opinion that the phrase “You are what you eat” is more than just a cool saying that reminds us to watch what we’re putting in our mouths; I believe that you can take it quite literally and be reasonably on track in terms of how you should conduct your eating habits.

I used to eat a gaggle of wheat products—I’m talking all kinds of stuff, from sliced bread, to bagels, to muffins, to focaccia bread, to various “hot pocket” type meals with heavy bread exterior, on and on. During this same time, my thighs would constantly break out in eczema, along with my waist (right around the belt line), and my rear end. It would be like fire on my skin, very uncomfortable. I sometimes felt like my diet may have too much bread, and I often wondered what would happen if I simply left off from eating all of those wheat products, but I simply loved them too much to actually do it. Meanwhile, the eczema stayed.

After a while, I started noticing that every time I would eat this certain kind of bagel—cinnamon raisin bagel from Lenders—not only would the eczema situation seem to flare up, but I would have what I called “lightning headaches”—it would be this extremely sharp, shooting pain going through my head. Sometimes it would be so intense that I would physically respond by grimacing or gritting my teeth. It was then that I started putting things together.

I decided to cut the bagels loose, along with the majority of the other wheat bread products I used to eat. Interestingly enough, my lightning headaches stopped, lo and behold, my eczema flare-ups became fewer and farther between. 

Image Source: Talk Health Partnership

Nowadays, I have almost completely cut wheat out of my diet, and I have very little (if any) eczema whatsoever. It has completely disappeared from my thighs, and I have one very small patch on my waist, on the back side, not even an inch in length. Now, I’m no expert, and I know that correlation may not equal causation, but hey, the bottom line is that once I cut out the majority of the wheat products, my eczema flare-ups greatly diminished.

If you think this might help you, I encourage you to try it. This is NOT medical advice, but it is just something to consider. That’s all. :)

Eczema Skin Condition

This blog was created to basically be a place for me to post my findings on the eczema skin condition. For those of you who have read any of my previous posts, you know that I have been attempting to collect and post information regarding eczema, including the different types of symptoms, treatment options, and a description of my personal experience as well, since I have also dealt with this skin problem. One of the things that has been a reoccurring theme through the different posts I’ve done (although I can’t say it was fully an intentional thing) is the part that stress plays in the development of eczema, and how stress can literally exacerbate the eczema skin condition, although I’m basing this information more on my personal experience; I haven’t been able to find a whole lot of detailed, concrete, scientific data to back this position. I don’t feel too bad about it, though, because most of the info that I have read online pretty much says (in one way or another) that the causes of eczema are enigmatic at best. There seems to be several possible causes on the roster; one of them being adverse reactions to certain allergens. Eczema has often been mentioned in the same family with hay fever and asthma, primarily because these are inflammatory-type conditions that are triggered by an autoimmune response. I have noticed in my own life that when I would eat certain foods, such as nuts or soy products, it would seem to aggravate the eczema. I was trying to go the vegetarian route for a long time, and so I started buying all of the veggie burgers and soy burgers, which, by the way, I think are probably worse for you than just regular old red meat. Just look at the ingredient list for the average soy-based or veggie-based burger…a whole lot of artificial ingredients and preservatives with 20-syllable names…I doubt that’s any better for you than just eating a good old-fashioned steak. I know that there are probably some people that disagree with that statement, but hey, I’m just calling it how I see it. I know personally that while I was eating those products, I never felt fully “healthy”, but once I got back on regular beef and turkey, my energy level was boosted and I just felt more “solid” as a person. With all the veggie products I was losing weight rapidly to the point of being unhealthy, and it was just simply hard to keep weight on (for my body type anyway) without getting some real meat up in the mix. But anyway, back to the point…when I would eat those soy-based products especially, it would really begin to aggravate the eczema; I feel to this day that there were some type of ingredients in those foods that may have triggered an adverse response in my skin. One thing I believe I’ve learned over time is that when it comes to foods that benefit your skin and all otherwise, the more natural they are the better. The closer they are to how they exist in nature, the better. That’s why if you do eat beef, it’s important to eat Angus meat, or the other types of meat where the cows are not pumped with growth hormones and other chemicals to help in mass slaughter and mass-production. Whenever you can eat free-range chicken and other things like that, it helps tremendously, because the closer it is to how God originally created it, the better. (For the atheists out there, hope that doesn’t offend.)

So anyway, as far as the eczema skin condition goes (sorry for the long tangent), the primary classification of eczema is atopic dermatitis, which is a type of allergic disease, and as I mentioned earlier it falls loosely in the same category with other conditions that have inflammatory-type symptoms such as asthma and hay fever. The skin rashes produced by this type of eczema are reddish in color, and normally appear in “flexural” areas of the body such as the inside of the knees and elbows, and also on the buttocks near where the buttocks meets the upper leg (it’s really hard to tell where one ends and the other begins—LOL). Since I started studying these things, I realized that my type of condition was probably the most similar to atopic eczema, which is somewhat of the “plain vanilla” or “garden variety” eczema. There are other types of eczema that vary in their scope and severity, such as xerotic eczema, contact dermatitis, and dyshidrotic eczema, which we covered in a previous post. Although I initially created this post to be a general explanation of the eczema skin condition, I am excited about delving into some of the finer details of these different skin problems, now that I’m on my research kick. More to come soon.

Eczema Products

All this talk about eczema I’ve been doing this month has led me to look into some eczema products, or basically any kind of creams, lotions, medications, injections, alcoholic beverages (just kidding), whatever I can find that can possibly bring relief to this condition, or even at least seem to have potential of bringing relief for this troubling skin problem. One thing that has in the past made me hesitant to try and seek out any information on products that could cure or treat eczema is the common issue of side effects from synthetic chemicals and so forth, but the truth of the matter is when you’re seeking relief from such a harassing problem, you just want the solution as fast as possible. I can see why it can be frustrating; I myself experienced eczema skin problems, but was hesitant to get any kind of medication for it, because honestly, maybe it’s the conspiracy theorist in me or something, but I didn’t really trust the whole medicine market; it just seems like all they ever do is put a “band-aid” on problems, and basically treat symptoms without ever getting to the core or root cause of the issue. I guess they would go out of business if they completely cured people’s skin problems, so maybe there is a slight ulterior motive for them not being able to come up with enough “research” to find an absolute cure for eczema, psoriasis, and other skin problems like that. Anyway, as you can tell, I have those conspiracy theorist leanings that I really have to overcome (LOL). But as far as my personal experience with eczema goes and potential eczema treatments, I just tried to stay VERY hydrated, and focused on things that would produce skin health such as drinking lots of water every day and eating foods that are known for their contributions to skin health such as oatmeal. Also, I would make sure to take vitamins that promote overall skin healthiness such as Vitamin E and so forth. One of the main things I would do is to simply put a regular lotion on the affected areas, just to relieve some of the dryness. It didn’t really help at all as far as the itching goes, but it did at least keep the skin from getting too flaky. It would burn like crap when the sores were open, but the skin around them was so dry that I had to sacrifice and endure some pain for the greater good, so to speak.

Some of you may be wondering why I keep speaking about my own struggle with eczema in the past tense, as if I no longer deal with it. I can honestly say that I hardly deal with it at all nowadays, and it’s nowhere near the degree of severity it used to be. I want to talk about that in a future post, as far as my own journey with overcoming eczema and learning a little bit (and I do mean a LITTLE bit) about the things that were triggering it in my own life. I have a theory, and I don’t fully know if it’s true or not, but I have a theory or a sneaking suspicion that sleep deprivation can play a role in these types of skin disorders. Please don’t ask me to substantiate that with any kind of medical information, because truth be told, “I gots nothin’”, but one thing I can attest to is that the more sleep I got, the less I had to deal with eczema. Go figure…again, please don’t ask me for the full science behind this…it’s just something that I know, if you know what I mean. But anyway, back to the issue of finding eczema products, or any kind of cream or lotion or what have you that can possibly alleviate some of the major symptoms of eczema, especially the itching…which, by the way, is why I feel so sorry for babies and toddlers with eczema…they will simply scratch until they scratch the skin off. Okay, before I drift off again, let me say that there are several manufacturers of skin creams for eczema and so forth, and while I don’t have any personal experience with using any of the products, I can say that they are some of the foremost players and advertisers in the market right now. Products such as the Theraplex Emollient, the FreeDerm cream, Cetaphil, or the skin products offered by Dr. Li are all worth looking into. I don’t claim to be any kind of “consumer advocate” so I’m not going to be reviewing the products per se, but did want to expose everyone out there to some of the eczema products that are available on the market. Okay, over and out until next time.