June 2013
19 posts
I want to do things, but I can't.
Eczema comes with pain and uncomfortable skin. There’s so many things that I want to do, or even NEED to do, but I’m experiencing too much discomfort or pain.
I want to do my daily house chores. I can’t.
I want to cook delicious food. I can’t.
I want to exercise or go for a nice walk outside. I can’t.
I want to respond to my friend’s e-mail(s). I can’t.
I want to spend “quality time” with my partner. I can’t.
Sometimes I’ll tackle these things (with significant effort), but will often get distracted with scratching myself to death or picking at my skin. Hell, even typing out this post took wayyyy longer than it should.
Hi San! I was wondering if you could tell me about your alkaline diet? Recently, I've decided that I need to take initiative and stop this eczema before it continues for too long and I'm just researching for ideas on how to treat it. Thank you for your time. :)
Hi Joyce. Hope you are well. I’m sorry to hear that you have eczema, but it’s a great thing that you’re taking initiative. I’ll do my best to answer your question. What is it that you’d like to know?
In terms of an alkaline diet, the thing that I do most is:
- Increase green leafy vegetables
- Avoid meat, but not fish
- Eliminate junk food such as soda, chips, fried foods, and desserts
It’s not easy to do, and it will take some time, but start small and work your way up. Make a goal one week and increase it every so often. How I started was that I avoided junk food first. Then I made the goal of having a raw fruit and raw vegetable serving per day. Avoiding meat was next. Now my diet is pretty vegetarian (minus having fish, which has essential fatty oils which are good for skin). It’s also important that you don’t ‘beat yourself’ if you relapse. Relapse is very normal. The important thing is resilience - don’t give up! Hope this helps. Stay strong!
Okay, so I’ve been wearing a gold ring for as long as I can remember. I think my mother gave it to me when I was 14 years old. I’ve had it on since forever and I don’t remember ever taking it off (except during one year when my eczema was really bad on my hands).
Anyway, this ring on my finger has been on my left middle-finger for years and years. Now it’s too big for it… I’ve actually had to move it to my slightly fatter middle-finger on my right hand. Why am I getting skinnier?!
Allergy Tests
Did you know that there are several ways to test for allergies? I think finding out what you’re allergic to is an important step to add to your treatment plan. Know your triggers so you can avoid them. Here are the different types of allergy tests:
- Scratch Test
- Patch Test
- Blood Test
- Food Challenge Test
I have had all tests except the Food Challenge Test (first I’ve heard of it). The results indicate that I am allergic to cats, dogs, dust mites, and grass. Avoiding dust mites is challenging, but the doctors have plenty of suggestions and will be able to direct you to great resources.
I'm Moving
It’s official! I got a job offer in Vancouver and I’ll be moving to B.C. soon. I’m so excited! It has always been my goal to move back eventually and now it’s finally becoming a reality.
I’m sure the ocean air and moderate temperature will be better for my skin too.
Try to sleep in loose shorts+shirt and with a light blanket. You might overheat and sweat a lot while you're sleeping. But by the time you wake up, its dried in so its hard to tell and makes scratching worse. Since it's summer I tend to just have my blanket only over my stomach because I don't like sleeping without one. I've had a fan running on all night before and I still got too warm with the whole blanket on me. Fragrance+alcohol free anti perspirant could help for when you're out.
Appreciate your input! I’m sure it’ll be helpful for everyone else reading this too :)
This ask was in response to this post.
So in terms of your eczema situation, what has worked for you best?
I can’t believe it’s already been a year since I created this Tumblr blog. Wow does one year go by so quickly.
One love, one heart.: Letter from Dr. Rapaport →
our-vocation-is-love.tumblr.com
In over 30 years of practice I’ve seen over 2,000 patients with topical steroid addiction. The typical profile is an individual who had eczema either in youth, teen years, or early adult life and as a result had started using cortisone creams. They started by using the creams on the bodypart affected and often needed more and more and more to stop the rash from returning. Overtime they were given more potent steroids, more usage, oral steroids, and many even received injections into the site of the muscle. Anything to quail the itching, redness, and ensuing burning of the skin. Through the years having followed these patients and evaluating them I began to ask, “Why are they getting worse the more we treat them?” I ask because the training of all disease in medical school, and in residency, is to understand the pathology of a disease.
If one were to study the classic pathology of eczema they would see that it is an entity that shows itself at three months of age, lasts a few months, comes back around age five and probably lasts a year or two; then comes back before the teen years; and then disappears just like many entities that are inherited.
Why are these patients having an ongoing, unrelenting, worsening, and widening rashes that are called eczema by their doctors? The answer came to me quite easily because I knew these patients were using more and more steroids, and we know that steroids close blood vessels down, constricts blood vessels in the skin, and then the vessels open up and dilate. As a result of dilation, the skin gets red and one can have rashes that simulate eczema. After fully examining these patients and searching for hidden allergens, which included doing biopsies to look for other diseases it finally came down to the steroids that were perpetuating the problem.
With this information I proposed stopping the steroids. I said, “lets stop this addiction.” Lo and behold, a year to three years later, these patients were all cured. But the withdrawal process was horrific. They swelled, they oozed, they would get red and burn. They couldn’t function. They would scratch like crazy and couldn’t sleep. At those points in the withdrawal the therapy and cure was to give patient support by getting them through the horrible symptoms. No steroids were allowed because it would just perpetuate the problem and set them back in their recovery. In my experience with over 2,000 patients going “cold turkey,” not one stayed sick with eczema, they were all cured. Simple enough, the cure is in one parameter, the cessation of all cortisone. Many of my patients have continued to follow up with me and I see many of them for other dermatological entities and they stay cured.
The plea is if indeed the physician recognizes that you have an ongoing worsening condition of eczema, a consideration should then strongly be given to you being addicted to the cortisone, and that ceasing it will lead to a cure.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr. Marvin Rapaport
Whenever you review images of food or a menu, do you ever play the one game of picking out the dishes you cannot eat due to certain ingredients?
It ends up being just me spewing out the “no-can-do” items.
Meat. Cheese. Artificial colour. Fried. Yeast. Caffeine.
Part of the challenges of a restricted diet.
May 2013
31 posts
One love, one heart.: Red skin syndrome. →
our-vocation-is-love.tumblr.com
Things I think are shit about suffering (after initial hell on earth stage)
- covered in a rash = ugly = no confidence
- covered in a rash= uncomfortable/ sore/ itchy/ burning
- worrying about being judged for being ugly = insecure
- hard to sleep
- hormones fuck up
- too much hair falling out in the shower
- fevers all the time
- swollen glands = no energy
- waking up freezing cold and sweating
- not being able to regulate body temperature, being cold when its hot etc
- skin falling off
- not being able to wear skinny jeans on bad leg days
- make up can hurt
- allergens up = limited food etc
- not knowing when you will flare, how long it will last
- being prone to self pity
- Random symptoms from random sicknesses with no real explanation why
- jealousy of ‘healthy’ people
- having to moisturize 1000 times a day
- too many anti histamines &too much pot
- shower = ouch
- no energy/ getting too itchy / sick = can’t be sure of when you will be able to do study etc = risk of bad performance in uni
- no control
Things I think are good about it
- learning to deal with having no control = having to live the quote ‘we can’t control our life but we control how we react to it’
- having to truly not care what people think, not just superficially say ‘i dont care what people think’
- having to dis-indentify with looks = realizing the power the ego has over you and being given a unique opportunity to break free of many qualities of the ego
- having to truly take control of the your mind (ego) because if you let it control you you wont cope + stress will equal = worse rash
- seeing the temporary highs found through satisfaction with looks, intelligence, etc etc for what they are, and finding genuine inner peace through the power of the present moment (being weakened in every other sense can force this lesson on you) THIS POINT IS ENOUGH TO MAKE IT ALL WORTH IT
- seeing how wonderful/ kind/ beautiful people truly are when they can really see you are suffering
- ITS NOT FOREVER
- new found respect for the strength of people who go out despite not looking ‘normal’ eg. people with missing limbs &eyes, people with massive scars etc…holy shit those people are amazing
- being able to go out and not worry that you are high cos people will notice the red rash on your face, not the red eyes = FUCK YEAH ;)
- having something to write long lists about when you have a psychology research assignment to do and just don’t want to start it yet
<3
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about”
((CHECK OUT ITSAN.ORG IF YOU HAVE WORSENING ‘ECZEMA’ AND USE TOPICAL STEROID CREAMS))
