[CP.AR]

wow I can't believe I haven't posted in this thread before...

both my brother and myself have eczema. Though mine has gone away with age (it only exists on the folds of my arms, legs and my neck), my brother's conditions never really got better. He has it all over his body and it took a long time and quite a few visits to a dermatologist at the Children's hospital, as well as Chinese medicine doctor to figure out a good treatment plan.
Here's the things we did that we thought were the most effective.

1. Apply lotion before sleep, and wrap the affected areas with cling wrap. This will encourage the absorption of the moisturizer rather than have it sit and evaporate... wicking even more moisture out of your skin with it.

2. When possible, avoid "poisonous" foods (as Chinese medicine calls it). This includes duck and crustaceans as the biggest offenders (it's true, the night I eat duck I find it particularly hard to bar myself from scratching the flareups)

3. **ONLY FOR EXTREME CASES** Take a bath in a bleach mixture. I shit you not, when the dermatologist suggested this to my parents for my brother, they were in shock. Take a bath in diluted bleach mixture (we used about half of a cup per tub full of water... just enough for you to be able to smell it) for 10 minutes, do NOT USE SOAP, just sit and relax. After the 10 minutes, rinse yourself off completely with water only, and then pat dry and apply moisturizer all over. This worked so incredibly well I thought it was witchcraft.