Eczema can not only be annoying and even painful, but it can also make you feel embarrassed, anxious, and self-conscious. We don’t want you feeling like that! We want you to feel confident and happy in your skin! This can also be incredibly hard for children that have eczema and it can leave parents feeling overwhelmed and helpless.

The functional medicine approach to eczema is a bit different than conventional medicine. Instead of focusing on steroids and topical creams, functional medicine providers look deeper, healing eczema internally. 

This is how you can get to the ROOT cause of eczema and other skin issues.

What is Eczema?

Eczema (also known as atopic dermatitis) is a chronic, inflammatory skin disease. While it’s common in children, even adults can struggle with it. Eczema is usually long-lasting and tends to flare up periodically. If you struggle with eczema, you pray it doesn’t flare up before a big social event or date night, right?

Symptoms of Eczema include:

• Itchiness

• Swelling

• Dryness

• Redness

• Stings/Burns

• Skin may thicken and feel scaly/ leathery over time

• Small rough bumps

When your body starts showing signs of eczema, it’s telling you that your body is inflamed. The good news is that you can get rid of your eczema naturally. To do so, you need to investigate what is causing your inflammation. Knowing what is triggering your eczema is key to ridding it for the long haul. Here are 4 reasons why healing eczema internally is key.

1. A Band-Aid Won’t Heal Eczema For Good

If you only place a band-aid on your eczema (using topical creams and ointment), you aren’t actually healing the real issue going on, and it’s just a matter of time that symptoms will appear again. Hopefully, you don’t get that red, itchy skin again right before wedding season!

Remember that when your skin isn’t happy, it’s a sign that your gut isn’t happy either! Don’t ignore these signs. While eczema may not be life-threatening…it’s hinting that imbalances are occurring within your body.

If you leave them unaddressed, those imbalances and dysfunctions can lead to more serious chronic illnesses.

So what do you do? You heal eczema internally to address the underlying issue. When you do this, not only will you naturally get rid of eczema, but it will benefit your overall health as well (helping with fatigue, brain fog, headaches, and bloating). The key to overall health is to ensure your body is in balance.

Let’s take a look at what could be contributing to your eczema so you can start making lifestyle changes to heal it naturally.

2. Inflammation is the Driving Force of Eczema

Eczema is a skin disease that is caused by inflammation in the body. With the average American lifestyle, it’s no wonder that many people are suffering from it. This is because these unhealthy lifestyles and diet choices are an inflammatory recipe just waiting to happen.

Contributors of Inflammation:

Unhealthy Diets: Processed foods, high amounts of added sugars like high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, flour, chemicals, trans fats, additives, and MSG are some of the biggest factors that influence inflammation.

Most foods consumed these days are high in preservatives, and pesticides, and low in nutrients. This is not what we want! These types of food can heighten inflammation, contributing to flare-ups.

Environmental Toxins: We are exposed to toxins on a daily basis. Environmental toxins are in the foods we eat, the water we drink, and even on the clothes we wear.

These toxins can enter your body, overload your detoxification processes, and cause damage to your cells and tissues. As a response, your body gets inflamed when trying to combat these foreign chemicals.

Stress: Yes, consistent daily stress will negatively impact your body. Even if you are eating all the right foods and using non-toxic products, stress can still be a huge driving factor.

When you’re stressed out, your cortisol levels increase. This alters the effectiveness of cortisol to regulate both the inflammatory and immune response because it decreases tissue sensitivity to cortisol. This can lead to low-grade inflammation, which can contribute to your eczema.

3. Food Sensitivities & Allergies May Contribute to Eczema

A food allergy or even a sensitivity could be a trigger of your eczema. Some of the more common foods that cause eczema outbreaks are seafood, nuts, dairy, gluten, soy, eggs, and alcohol. This is because these foods may cause an immune reaction within your body that elevates inflammatory markers, triggering your eczema to flare up.

4. Gut Health Influences Eczema

Eczema can manifest from two biological pathway disruptions: barrier dysfunction and immune response. An unhealthy gut can not only consist of an unbalanced microbiome, but your gut lining could also be damaged.

Your gut lining is made up of tight junctions to keep the larger, unwanted particles inside the gut and allow smaller necessary particles into your bloodstream to get to your cells.

However, if you have increased intestinal permeability (aka leaky gut), your tight junctions can loosen. This lets in those unwanted particles, activating your immune response, saying, “hey, foreign invader over here!” triggering inflammation.

If you don’t avoid those contributors of leaky gut and heal it once and for all, your body will continue to experience inflammation and eczema.

Dysbiosis of the gut can also contribute to inflammation and eczema. This is when there is a lack of healthy bacteria in your gut, encouraging harmful bacteria to flourish. Yeast overgrowth can cause skin issues as well. This yeast is often caused by use of chronic antibiotics or a poor diet consisting of high sugar intake and low-fiber junk foods.

Keep in mind that even medications like antibiotics and NSAIDs can do a number on your gut health! These medications can kill off your good gut bacteria, encourage harmful bacteria growth, and can even contribute to a leaky gut.

6 Tips on How to Get Rid of Eczema Naturally

If you’re ready to take action and make lifestyle changes to address your eczema at the root, here are some steps you can take.

1. Investigate if you have an underlying food allergy or sensitivity through functional lab testing

2. Clean up your diet. Try to consume as many whole organic and anti-inflammatory foods as possible and avoid processed foods that are high in sugars, additives, and chemicals. Avoiding potential inflammatory foods such as: gluten, dairy and eggs while healing eczema can do wonders for your skin and immune system.

3. Take a look at your products. Do they contain ingredients that you just know aren’t good for your health? I recommend swapping out your current products with non-toxic options.

4. Restore your gut by taking colostrum, probiotics, and digestive enzymes.

5. Try beneficial skin-supporting supplements. These can include vitamin D and Omega-3s,

6. Use non-toxic laundry detergent, cleaning products, body wash and keep your skin hydrated with a non-toxic moisturizer.

These are starting points to healing eczema. If you are tired of dealing with flare-ups time and time again, I recommend working with a functional medicine provider to help you get to the underlying cause of your inflammation.

Get Your Gut Right

If you need access to a stool test, a gut health expert, and personalized protocols, the Get Your Gut Right program might be the right fit for you. This is a comprehensive health reset program that also focuses on nutrition, detox pathways, the nervous system, clean environment, and more. Click HERE to learn more.

Stay Updated With Exciting News at Taylor Dukes Wellness!

We are always working on new ways to serve you on your health journey. Be the first to know about new offerings, health articles, and more by clicking here and filling out your information so we can be in touch.