The Home Pages of John Barber
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From the age of nine months my daughter suffered from chronic eczema.
She is now a normal eighteen year old with no more symptoms of eczema, asthma or hay fever and has been free of irritation of the skin, inflammation and unbearable itching for over fourteen years.
This is the story of how my wife and I cured her. This article contains personal views, offers an alternative and natural way of dealing with childhood eczema but may give fellow sufferers some hope. There are links throughout to products on Amazon which may help. Hover mouse over the link (works in most browsers
The first signs were redness which our GP ascribed to nappy rash. Various creams and emollients had no effect and eventually the diagnosis was eczema. We saw many dermatologists who although honest and professional prescribed very much more of the same.
I started researching eczema and in particular alternative therapies. Finally we threw the conventional medical books ‘out of the window’ and embarked upon the following course of action which can be split into four categories; diet, environment, clothing, medication.
Diet follows below and other sections are on Page 2.
It is a widely held belief that eczema is an allergic reaction so that in the first instance children are tested against various substances to see if certain foods produce the well known red patches that cause dry skin and scratching.
I do not hold to this. What I believe is that childhood eczema is a deficiency in
the body’s natural immune system. The immune system like everything else in childhood
needs to grow and develop. What happens in eczema is that the immature immune system
produces anti-
Now with the benefit of my hindsight you can do this in reverse but the first thing I discovered that research conducted at Great Ormond Street Hospital uncovered the fact that no one had ever had an allergic reaction to either lamb or pears. So we put the family on a diet of lamb much to the disgust of the elder children!
One of the common causes of dermatitis, infantile skin complaints and intestinal
problems is an allergy to milk based products and the prevalence of gluten in the
diet.
So we stopped giving her the normal baby milk and substituted soya milk which has fewer if no allergens at all. You can also try goat’s milk but continuing research back in the early 1990’s seemed to suggest that soya milk could lead to early tooth decay. We have not found this.
The next thing we noticed was that certain foods did bring on a worsening of the skin irritation caused by allergens. The classic example was bananas. They contain a similar substance to histamine and therefore caused an imbalance in the immune system.
I started keeping a diary of everything she ate and drank and found that one thing held true. Certain ingredients put into normal
foodstuffs such as colouring or preservatives had a huge damaging effect on her health. You can now access all ‘E’ numbers
quite easily but manufacturers now use the proper chemical terms so you can’t be too sure of what is in the food your buy.
Healthy Urban Kitchen Cookbook A simple, step-
I kept the e-
To this day we shop daily and everything is fresh.
There has been a lot of research lately about the effect of fizzy drinks filled with preservatives and colourings on the moods and tempers of infants and even older children. This was quite evident to us over sixteen years ago and there is now much on hyperactivity in children.
Some e-
Keep a diary as detailed as possible and note every reaction. For instance I found that pigeon feathers caused a severe rash if she brushed them against her skin.
