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. :)

Is Eczema Contagious?

One of the most common questions asked by people who have concerns about the eczema skin condition is “Is eczema contagious?” The short answer is “No”. I think I had mentioned this issue in one of my earlier posts about skin eczema because I had the same thoughts in my mind…since eczema is officially classified as a “skin disease”, when most people hear the word “disease”, they’re immediately thinking about whether or not it’s contagious, but I’m happy to report to all non-eczema-sufferers that you have nothing to worry about; you can’t “catch” eczema from someone who has it. Eczema is definitely a troublesome thing to the person who suffers with it, however; for the uninitiated, I’ll just break it down a little as far as what eczema is, and what it’s not: Basically, eczema (also called atopic dermatitis) is an inflammation of the skin that shows itself in the form of rash outbreaks or itchy, dry, or even cracked and crusty skin. It normally shows up in “patches” on different areas of the body, but is primarily found near the “flexural” areas of the body, which is basically a fancy way to say any area where something flexes or bends, such as the knees, elbows, upper thighs near the groin, etc. Many people have dealt with patches of eczema on the back area, and other places like that as well. It is most commonly believed to be linked to some type of autoimmune dysfunction that causes the skin to overreact to perceived environmental or internal threats. I hope I’m right about that last statement…it’s basically a conglomeration of the different research I’ve done so far, but I do believe it to be accurate. Again, eczema is related to other inflammatory conditions such as hay fever or athsma. One of the treatments for eczema is actually very similar to what is given for asthma sufferers, which is a type of steroid to reduce inflammation. You know, for a long time I never understood why athletes wanted to use steroids because I didn’t understand the physiology behind it, but now that I’ve been studying these things, it makes a whole lot more sense. Basically, when a muscle is being overworked, it begins to get inflamed, and the inflammation reduces the performance potential of that muscle, because it can end up being fatigued. When you take steroids, it reduces the inflammation, thereby giving your muscles an almost “superhuman” endurance, allowing them to perform for sustained amounts of time without falling victim to inflammation as easily. Well, this translates over into treatments for other skin conditions or any type of inflammatory problem; many people take steroid-based drugs to prevent inflammation for such conditions as golfer’s elbow, or asthma, or any other thing where basically swelling and inflammation need to be reduced. It’s all making a whole lot more sense to me now, since I’ve started doing these studies on eczema and so forth. As far as causes go, nobody is fully aware of what the root cause is, although one major speculative suspect is stress and anxiety. I can personally attest to this (and if you read any of my past posts I talk even more about this in detail), because I had no issues whatsoever with eczema, and never even had it until I was about 25 years old and working for a boss that stressed me out to the absolute max. Only then did all of the skin rashes and outbreaks start appearing that eventually became eczema. I have since gotten WAY better, and I’m still going to talk more about that once I “assemble my case” a little better. But anyway, as for the question “Is eczema contagious?”, based on all the research I’ve done (which has been quite a bit), no medical evidence points in that direction.

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.