Eczema- My Journey Update

It has been a few months since my last post on my daughters eczema and I am happy to report that her eczema is now gone! She still has food sensitivities but her body is healing. Lots has happened since my last post so I wanted to share the last few months with you.
I discovered that there were A LOT of things that I needed to avoid. Here is a list:
-Gluten
-Dairy
-Eggs
-Night Shades
-Fruit except for apples and blueberries
-Sugar
-Processed and refined foods

My diet has been EXTREMELY limited but it has all been worth it.

Cosette Feb 28, 2012

So the first thing I did was avoid foods that caused a reaction. I was also giving Cosette probiotics, Udo's oil and vitamin D. Now to anybody else this didn't seem to be making a difference but to me I could see slight improvements but nothing that made it worth it.

So I contacted a Naturopath (Dr.DeBavelaere) in Calgary that my family has been going to for years and that helped me with a patch of eczema that Kayla had on her stomach when she was 2. He said that the location of the eczema suggested food sensitivities. He told me what to do in Cosette's case and after one month of doing that there wasn't much improvement so I did it for another couple months and am actually still giving her some of the remedies today.

Then I went to another chiropractor (Dr.Neilson) that did muscle testing that my sister in law Charity recommended because I wasn't convinced that I still wasn't eating foods that Cosette was reacting to. At this point I was avoiding gluten, dairy, fruit and sugar. But this muscle testing was much more accurate and this is where I discovered that she reacted to processed foods such as crackers or rice cakes, and that she reacted to night shades and eggs. Finally I felt like I had the diet portion of her treatment down and could focus on other treatments. This chiropractor also suggested I take probiotics and borage oil. I knew that imbalanced intestinal flora was a major reason why Cosette was having issues so I was giving her the probiotics but never thought about taking them myself.

I was seeing improvements which was encouraging. One day my cousin Heidi called me and told me that she had been to a fermentation class and couldn't stop thinking about me so she gave me a call to tell me about the success she had with probiotics and her psoriasis and her babys eczema. I was ecstatic after I got off the phone with her and after that focused more on probiotics and fermented foods. This was what accelerated her healing, within a couple weeks she had made considerable improvement! Today you would never know she suffered from such a severe case of eczema. Her skin is baby soft again and I am grateful for all of the guidance I received to figure this out.

I don't feel like there was just one specific thing I did that cured her eczema, it was all of them. Without the change of diet her body wouldn't have been able to begin the healing process. For Cosette I believe that for whatever reason she had an imbalance of good flora in her gut when she was born and because of that her intestines were irritated which led to food sensitivities. This is essentially what IBS is. In order for the intestines to heal you need to remove the offending foods. Figuring out those foods was the toughest part for me, but I think for a lot of people it is usually just dairy or gluten. I did notice in my studies that children with eczema often have trouble with a combination of gluten, dairy, eggs, and "extended" citrus (oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, lemons, strawberries and pineapple). These items are what I will continue to avoid and will not give to Cosette until she is much older. I also believe that the homeopathic remedies made a big difference to her as well, they worked wonders for Kayla's patch on her abdomen as well.

There may be other contributing factors to eczema such as stress or skin sensitivity as well and that is what makes eczema such a complicated issue. I wanted to share what worked for Cosette and I and hope that I am able to help others in the process.

Cosette Today!