Eczema on the rise - 40% increase in 5 years!

This article totally threw me for a loop. According to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, incidences of eczema has risen a whopping 40% in five years (I am assuming this is for the UK only). Wow. Can that be true? If so, then why isn't there more being done about it? Does this mean that there are just more and more people with this genetic mutation? I wonder what the numbers are for the US and for the rest of the world. I do remember reading somewhere that incidences were higher in industrialized countries (perhaps eczema is linked to the rise in all the crap we've been eating over the years, like trans fats, etc.)

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The Link Between Diabetes and Eczema

Scientists have reported in Nature (March 26, 2009 issue) that a protein called caspase 8 plays a critical role in the healing of wounds in laboratory mice. Caspase 8 is deficient in humans with eczema, but produced in excess amounts by diabetics.

The researchers say their discovery may explain why many diabetics lack a normal wound response and suffer severe complications from minor cuts and scrapes, and why those with eczema exhibit a chronic inflammation of the skin that compromises its protective function.

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Target Market

I was just thinking this morning, as I slathered on more CeraVe cream, that eczema sufferers are such easy targets for marketers. Whether you sell the latest cream, lotion, potion or snake oil -- an eczema sufferer will most likely try it, because they(correction: WE) will try anything for relief. There must be a study out there that measures this market - the how many millions or billions of dollars spent worldwide OTC eczema products. What's your guess?

MHRA Warning Against Unlicensed Eczema Creams

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued a warning against unlicensed eczema creams which actually contain strong steroids. Apparently, a parent thought he/she was buying a "natural" cream from India but became concerned when it cleared up his kid's skin in three days.

Here's the part that kills me:

The unlicensed product was supplied in an unlabelled plastic tub and was found to contain the corticosteroid betamethasone dipropionate.

Unlabelled plastic tub? This parent bought something in an unlabelled plastic tub and stuck it on his child's skin? Yikes! Please people. I know we're all desperate to find a cure for this, but hopefully we can all verify the ingredients of the lotions that come in contact with our precious skin.

On the To Do list: Chinese Medicine

I haven't gone the route of Chinese Medicine yet to treat my eczema, but the latest study from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI)looks promising. Scores for severity and impairment of life quality went down for the 14 patients studied who received traditional Chinese medicine.

Patients also reported a reduction in the use of steroids, antibiotics and antihistamines within 3 months of being treated. Always a plus!

Yet Another Moisturizer - This Time With Ceramides

I am finally getting a better understanding of how skin works, or rather, doesn't work, when it comes to eczema. In a nutshell, the outer layer of the epidermis called the stratum corneum, is your main skin barrier and it is made up of three types of lipids -- cholesterol, free fatty acids and ceramides. Since about half of the lipids in this outermost layer is made up of ceramides - these are pretty important to the functioning of healthy skin.

Apparently, people with eczema don't have as many of these ceramides as people without eczema. This means that the outermost layer of your skin, or your main skin barrier, breaks down and ends up unable to lock water in and unable to keep the bad stuff like allergens, pollutants, chemicals, bacteria, viruses, etc - out. Enter Dry Skin and Skin Infections = Eczema.

So that means, we need to replace those ceramides. Moisturizing is key but if you're like me, all the different moisturizers I've purchased over the years hasn't done much. I now realize that maybe I haven't been using the right moisturizer. What is needed is a moisturizer that contains ceramides, so that it actually repairs the skin barrier. All this time I've been trying my luck with any old moisturizer, but in actuality what I needed was a barrier-repair moisturizer.

I haven't seen the studies yet that actually prove whether ceramide-enriched moisturizers actually do repair the skin. But it's worthy a try and it makes sense to me. I looked at this list of ceramide moisturizers and went out to buy a jar of CeraVe because it was the cheapest and most readily available. The stuff stings when I put it on my face, but goes away after a little bit and man, my face is soft. I'll have to see how I progress over the next few days. Just have to think positive and visualize all those little lipids repairing the skin barrier so that my skin stays soft and doesn't get infected anymore.