Notes About the Information:
Eczema Has Many Causes
Eczema has many causes. This site details my family's experience with only one of those causes, and the process by which we discovered it. In addition, the site includes a brief section on other types of eczema which I believe also have solutions.
The Parent’s Perspective
I have written this information to parents of children with eczema because they made the majority of inquiries. Many adults with eczema have asked for instructions for themselves and may find this information useful as well. For the sake of simplicity, I have written all descriptions and instructions as if to the parents of a child with eczema, but all the information translates to adults with eczema who wish to try this.
Potential Pitfalls/Complete Answers
This solution will not help everyone with eczema. The path to this solution is fraught with pitfalls, and at the very least will involve a lot of work. But if the detergent sensitivity described here is the cause of your child's eczema, this solution could allow you to eliminate the eczema completely.
I Am Still Learning About This
I have written this web site to share what we learned in the course of our experience in hopes that it may help others. I can promise that I am a meticulous and thorough detective, but I do not pretend to have all the answers. I am not a doctor or a health care professional, I am just another parent wishing to help other parents. I offer this site purely for informational purposes; it is not intended to take the place of medical advice. Please read my disclaimer, use your judgment and make decisions about your child's care with your doctor.
Make Changes Carefully
Always remember that anyone can be
allergic to anything, and that any change you make can impact your
child's eczema, for better or for worse. I provide a lot of information
to help avoid potential pitfalls, but I cannot anticipate every
potential problem for every person. Even if detergents prove to be the
only cause of your child's eczema, they are so ubiquitous in home
environments today and are not eliminated by rinsing with water, so
implementing this solution will require ongoing thought and care. I have
promised this site now to a few hundred people, many of whom read my
letter in the Eczema Association of Australasia newsletter or the
National Eczema Association for Science and Education newsletter. Most
of the people who wrote to me asked where they could find soap products.
Some of the same people described products they were using, mistakenly
believing some of their "hypoallergenic" or fragrance-free products were
soap-based; virtually all of them were detergents.
I could not
in good conscience simply share a list of products. In my limited
experience of helping other people whose children potentially suffered
from this allergy, I have found the switch from detergents to soaps to
be fraught with many not-so-obvious pitfalls. I could not simply provide
a list of soap products we use and hope to help as many people as
possible, because some of the pitfalls make it seem that the eczema is
not caused by detergents even when detergents are the only cause. Some
of the pitfalls can make things worse - people need to be aware of how
to avoid those pitfalls, even as they are aware that my experience
almost certainly doesn't encompass everything that can go wrong. The
solution I have discovered and am sharing should be approached with
great caution and care. Eczema caused by this detergent sensitivity can
easily seem like food allergies and dust-mite allergies, even when
detergents are the only cause.
I have provided a list of
products for informational purposes. The most common question asked was
where to find products, so I have done my best to list as many as I
could. I have not used all of the products listed, nor am I endorsing
any of the products listed.
Please Read Everything First Before Making Up Your Mind
I think it is important to read through all the information I have provided to see how well this situation fits your own, to understand whether making this switch is worth the effort, and to be aware of any possible pitfalls before you begin. I spent months trying to compose the information for this site — to some extent, years — yet it is not in as complete a form as I would like. I wanted to get the information to people as soon as I reasonably could. I appreciate knowledgeable feedback on the content, especially if you are a specialist in surfactant or lipid chemistry! This web site is a work in progress - if it is helpful to you, please check back every few months for changes and new additions.
Nothing Against Detergents Per Se
Although I clearly believe that a major fraction of eczema is caused by
a sensitivity to trace detergents of all types and that these people would
benefit from using soaps instead, I want to be very clear that I have no axe
to grind when it comes to detergents. I do not want this information to be
misinterpreted as saying all detergent products are “bad” or that
all soap products are “good.” Surfactant chemistry has advanced
to the point of blurring the lines between traditional plant- and animal-based
soaps and petroleum-based detergents anyway. The relevant concerns in this
case are the properties of the chemical end-products, not the starting ingredients.
Detergents are useful chemicals that do a lot of good beyond household cleaning.
Like most chemicals which are new on the landscape of humankind, we always
have to consider how they impact the health of the planet and its inhabitants
and make intelligent adjustments if they do. I believe it is eminently possible
that detergents or detergent products can be developed or modified to solve
this problem. Since surfactants are so important and widely used on earth,
taking stock of their impact and making adjustments should come with the territory.
Your Child is Not Defective
The global problem of eczema has not been understood or solved by a long
shot. In my opinion, taking the common perspective that eczema is the result
of a defect inherent in the child is destructive, unwarranted, unscientific,
and premature. This defect-perspective has led to virtually every treatment
and approach: adding lotion to make up for the defect of dryness, suppressing
the immune system to address a supposed malfunction, recommending random experimentation
with different personal care products with the underlying assumption that
the child's system has gone haywire and can't handle "normal" products.
None of these approaches has resulted in a lasting, global solution. Perhaps
the perspective is right; I personally don't see it that way. I think the
perspective that the problem is a defect in the children leads naturally to
these less-than-satisfactory approaches. At the least, until there are more
definitive answers, we owe it to the children to keep an open mind.
My son would not have had eczema had we lived 80 years ago, because detergents
didn't exist on the planet. When his skin is not exposed to detergents, it
is normal and not unusually dry. For whatever reason, his system chooses to
tell me that exposure to detergents is a problem, the same way my body chooses
to tell me that banging my knee against the corner of the desk is a problem.
From that perspective, the response is a normal warning mechanism, a smart
way for the immune system to communicate with the conscious brain, the way
the nervous system communicates through pain. I don't see that as a defect.
I have seen at least one major research study describing my son's type of eczema in fine detail, yet the researchers have no solutions — it is clear they interpret what they observe as only something ABOUT the skin rather than from something they do not realize is ON the skin of these patients.
I solved my son's eczema because I believed - for good and logical reasons
- that his system was trying to tell me something very important. I could
not have solved his eczema had I taken the defect-perspective.
I think it makes a difference to children to know they are not frail or defective
or fundamentally at fault for this sometimes frightening condition. As with
many medical problems, even when biological differences are illuminated, judging
problems to result from "defects" is usually subjective. Is the
problem of eczema from a complicated defect in our children, or is it a problem
that comes from outside them which grown-ups may have caused and failed to
understand properly to solve? Until we know that answer with absolute certainty,
we owe it to the children to see them as strong and whole, and not overlay
their suffering with any more guilt or pain than they may already feel.
I will be writing more about this topic in the last section of this site,
still under construction. It will explain my perspective on allergy, and why
I believed my child's eczema was not the result of an inherent defect, as
I believe all eczema, even from foods, is not caused by inherent defects.
Feedback
Lastly, I could not have begun to share this without the help of the wonderful people at the EAA (Eczema Association of Australasia) and NEASE (National Eczema Association for Science and Education). The EAA and NEASE are fantastic organizations dedicated to helping people who suffer from eczema and related problems. If this solution helps you to clear your child's eczema, please do not forget to let me know and to separately thank the EAA or the NEASE for letting me share this experience through their newsletters. I have been in contact with other wonderful eczema associations in the UK and Canada, and if you reached this information through them and it benefits you, please thank them as well. I am equally interested to know if the perspective or detective work described in these pages helps you find the cause of your child's eczema even if it is from a different cause.
Best Wishes for finding a solution that works for you.Kind Regards,
A.J. Lumsdaine