Root Cause of Eczema

While we don't have a "cure" for eczema, we know a lot about what causes it, and it is tied to gut health.

I had eczema on and off my entire life. I’d get a little patch on my hand, or on my face, or on my arm and after a couple of weeks, it would go away. I had been on antibiotics throughout my life as well. Growing up in a house with smokers, in the Pacific Northwest, I had chronic ear infections and sinus infections, bronchitis and my favorite, strep throat. A LOT. Going on antibiotics killed a lot of my good gut bacteria, and I remember having yeast infections at five years old.

Now I understand that antibiotics were doing much more than killing off the bad bacteria. They were wreaking havoc on the delicate balance of my microbiome, which should be balanced between bacteria, viruses, yeast and even beneficial parasites. Each of these have a role to play. When some get killed off, others can proliferate more rapidly and take their place.

This is what happened to me. Candida, or yeast, had overgrown in my gut and was showing up in other parts of my body. I went to the dermatologist a few years ago, when eczema had spread all over my legs, and it hadn’t gone away for a year. She said we don’t know the cause of it, and wanted to give me a steroid cream. I said, “No thanks, I think I have a gut issue and I want to solve this naturally.” I’ll never forget, she rolled her eyes at me! That was it. I decided to get to the bottom of my eczema once and for all.

I changed what I was eating, moving and sleeping. I did an herbal gut remedy. In the first two weeks, my eczema was gone. It never came back.

Even if there is no said “cure,” once you know the root cause, you can remove a trigger and your immune system will often calm down significantly.