Baths can have potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits and can be super helpful for managing your kiddo’s skin symptoms, like the itch.
Here are some of my favs:
👉🏻Apple cider vinegar can balance skin pH levels and manage infection and inflammation. Dilute 1/4 to 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar in warm bath water. Soak for 10-20 minutes.
👉🏻Epsom salt may help decrease itching, inflammation, and redness and assist with detoxification. Use 2 cups for a full bath, 1 cup for a half bath, and 1/8 cup for a baby bath. Dissolve in warm bath water. Soak for 10-20 minutes.
👉🏻Baking soda may help prevent eczema flare-ups, reduce symptoms, draw impurities and toxins out of the skin, and boost immunity. However, it’s also alkaline, so it may strip the skin of its protective natural oils and disrupt the skin flora, especially if overused. 1/8 to 1/4 cup of baking soda. Dissolve in warm bath water. Soak for 10-20 minutes.
👉🏻Colloidal oatmeal can have potent anti-inflammatory, anti-itch, and antioxidant benefits for the skin. Grind 1 cup gluten-free oats for a full bath and 1/3 cup for a baby bath (use a food processor, blender, or coffee grinder). When the oatmeal dissolves by putting a small amount in a glass of warm water, you’re ready to add the oats to a bath. Add oats until the water is milky in color. Soak for 10-15 minutes.
👉🏻Rice starch has antioxidant properties and may reduce skin irritation, improve and repair the skin barrier, promote healing, and balance sebum production. Add 2 heaping Tbsp of rice starch to a baby bath, 4 heaping Tbsp to a medium bath, or 7 heaping Tbsp to a normal-sized bath. The water should look milky in color. Soak for 10-15 minutes.
👉🏻Dead sea salt. Dissolve Dead Sea Salts into warm bath water: 2 cups for a full bath, 1 cup for 1/2 a bath, and 1/8 cup for a baby bath. Soak for 20 minutes.
👉🏻Plain water versus bleach baths. A safe dilution of bleach in bathwater isn’t potent enough to kill S. aureus on the skin. If bleach baths have helped your child, it might actually be due to the water and not the bleach. Do not increase a bleach bath dilution; it can damage the skin, eyes, nose, throat, and lungs and even cause permanent damage to these delicate tissues.
*Always read labels to make sure it’s safe for your child. Using food-based ingredients on the skin can increase the risk of developing food allergies. If your child is already eating the foods and tolerates them, there’s less of a concern. If your child hasn’t eaten those foods yet or has allergies to them, avoid use on the skin.
What baths help your kid get some relief? LMK👇🏼
Can food allergies be reversed or prevented?
When there are food allergies, the fear of reactions can cause major stress, tons of anxiety, even depression, and food fear leading to an ever shrinking diet and under nourishment for so many kids.
If your child has chronic skin rashes, they’re at greater risk for developing food allergies because they can more easily get sensitized to allergens through their leaky skin.
In fact, leaky skin associated with eczema is a known risk factor for developing food allergies.
Food allergies affect the entire family. The statistics are alarming. There’s been a 300% increase in food allergies in children over the past 20 years!
If your kid has food allergies, you might be wondering if they can be reversed. If you’re thinking about having more kids, you also might what to know if they can be prevented.
Here are some good places to start.
If your child already has food allergies:
👉follow your doctor’s guidance about what to keep out and what is safe to keep in
Whether or not your child has food allergies, and for you if pregnant or nursing:
👉Avoid eating processed junk food
👉Increase gut microbiome diversity by eating pre and probiotic foods, and taking a probiotic supplement (kids with food allergies have lower levels of certain healthy gut bacteria)
👉Eat the broadest diet possible including common allergens that are tolerated (the broader the diet = greater gut microbiome diversity)
👉Supplement with Omega 3s (EPA and DHA)
👉Get vitamin D levels optimal and supplement if needed
👉Minimize exposure to air pollutants
👉Support skin and gut barriers. Two primary ways food allergies develop are through leaky skin and leaky gut.
What Qs do you have about your kid’s food allergies? LMK!
https://doi.org/10.3390/ nu16060838
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anai.2024.03.010
Food is not the root cause of your child’s rashes
The problem with water-based moisturizers for eczema
Your Child's Rash Flares And Bacteria Life Cycles Go Hand-In-Hand
In my last post I answered a question I get asked A LOT!
WHY DOES MY CHILD FLARE, HAVE PERIODS OF CLEARING, THEN FLARE AGAIN?!
It's maddening, right?
A primary reason I see for this in my practice is microbe life cycles.
There are 4 phases in the bacteria life cycle.
Lag Phase: Bacteria aren't growing yet. They're getting acquainted with their new environment (i.e. your child the host), and they make nutrients so they can grow and start dividing.
Log Phase: Bacteria are growing and replicating. FAST. This continues until they run out of nutrients or toxic metabolites build up, slowing cell growth rates and causing some to start dying.
Stationary Phase: The size of a population of bacteria stays the same, even though some continue to divide and grow, and others die. Growth and death rates are about the same in this phase.
Death Phase: Just like it sounds! Now there are more bacteria dying then there are replicating.
When the microbes die, toxins are released. Those toxins can trigger flares.
More toxins = more flares, so at certain phases of bacterial life cycles, your child is more likely to flare.
This is why chasing external triggers (like food, environmental, etc.) isn't solving the problem, and why your child can have periods of clear skin, and then flare again with what seems like no rhyme or reason.
When the gut is leaky those toxins get into the bloodstream, trigger immune responses, and your child flares.
This is why in my practice I focus on rebalancing dysbiotic bacteria (and other microbes, they have life cycles too) in your child's gut, and work on decreasing gut permeability.
Think this is happening with your child? LMK!
https://www.britannica.com/science/bacteria/Growth-of-bacterial-populations
https://easyscienceforkids.com/life-cycle-of-bacteria/
Environmental factors influencing the development of eczema
A study conducted in China found that a number of environmental factors could influence the development of eczema in children. On that list are:
New furniture and furnishings
Mold or dampness in mom's home before and during pregnancy, and during baby’s first year of life
Air conditioning
Keeping windows open while sleeping
Pest exposure (cockroaches, flies, mosquitoes) in the home and during baby’s first year of life
Pets and flowering plants in the home
Passive smoking in the home currently, during baby's first year of life, and during mom's pregnancy
Frequency of cleaning
I find that while we are working on addressing internal imbalances at the root of the problem, environmental triggers continue to throw fuel on the fire.
It makes it really hard to put it out.
The good news is that we can make changes to prevent or limit exposures. What do you think? Could any of these be triggers for your child's rash flares?
Reference
https://bmcpediatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12887-021-02819-5