Eczema, or atopic dermatitis, is an inflammatory skin condition — red, itchy, and often severely irritated. It usually starts in infancy or early childhood and tends to run alongside a personal or family history of asthma, hay fever, or food allergy. I often call this combination the allergic triad, because many infants and children with eczema go on to develop allergies and asthma as they get older, if we don’t identify and correct what’s driving the hyper-reactive immune response in the first place.
What Eczema Looks Like
In infants, eczema often shows up on the cheeks, forehead, or scalp, sometimes within the first few months of life. In older children, it tends to settle into the folds — the bend of the elbow, the wrists, behind the knees, behind the ears. You’ll typically see itching, redness, weeping, scaling, thickening, and cracking in these areas.
What’s Really Driving It
We don’t fully understand the physiology of eczema, but a few factors show up again and again: food sensitivities, imbalanced gut flora, low levels of anti-inflammatory essential fatty acids, and an overall elevated level of inflammation in the body. Identifying and avoiding the specific foods and substances aggravating your child’s symptoms is always the first step toward healing. The most common food triggers linked to eczema are dairy, soy, citrus, peanuts, wheat, fish, eggs, corn, and tomatoes.
It Often Starts in the Gut
The initial weakness behind these food and substance sensitivities is usually rooted in the digestive tract. Your gut lining is home to a balance of bacteria — your gut flora — that forms your body’s first line of immune defense against everything passing through. Restoring that balance is critical to treating eczema. Probiotics are well known for reestablishing healthy bacteria after a course of antibiotics, and alongside certain herbs and nutrients, they play a key role in improving digestive function for kids struggling with eczema.
Calming the Inflammation
The redness and irritation you see with eczema are, at their core, inflammation. Addressing that inflammation directly matters just as much as anything else — by reducing inflammatory foods, adding in anti-inflammatory ones, and supporting your child’s body with the vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids they’re often missing.
Every case of eczema looks a little different, both in how it shows up and what’s causing it. As a naturopathic physician, I’m trained to identify the specific factors at play for your child, so we can restore their skin health and help prevent eczema from progressing into allergies or asthma down the road. I’d love to work with your family on this.
— Dr. Faith Christensen