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👇🏼
Should Your Child's Skin Be Acidic?
Maintaining the right skin pH is critical for helping with your child’s itchy, rashy skin.
On the pH scale, 7 and higher is basic (alkaline), and 7 and lower is acidic.
Skin pH is slightly acidic and that helps keep the skin barrier functioning the way it’s supposed to.
When skin pH gets disrupted, you get leaky skin, and dry, itchy rashes.
Even an increased colonization of problematic skin bacteria, like Staph aureus!
Avoid making your child’s skin alkaline! Things that contribute to that are:
👉🏻Hard water
👉🏻Many if not most soaps, cleansers, and moisturizers (even natural products)
👉🏻Over use of baking soda baths
Other factors that play a role in skin pH:
👉🏻Lighter skin is slightly more alkaline than darker skin
👉🏻Skin pH differs from body part to body part (i.e. armpits and private regions have higher pHs, which can be why those areas are more problematic in some kids)
There are sooo many other factors, too.
To learn more, and get strategies to help your child’s skin heal from the outside in, get my Free Guide “Ditch the Itch!”
Is your child's skin itchier at night? It's not a coincidence...
If your child can’t sleep because of their itchy rashes, it’s not just because there’s nothing else to focus on while lying there.
Changes happen in the body at night that can make itch worse, including:
👉Skin gets leakier
👉Skin gets drier
👉Blood vessels dilate and constrict more, which increases histamine
👉Immune cytokines (other than histamine) are more active at night, increasing immune responses, including those that trigger itch symptoms
What you can do about it:
👉Take an antihistamine before bed. There are natural options, too, like quercetin, vitamin c, and immunoglobulins.
👉Moisturize before bed
👉Try a therapeutic massage with that moisturizer! It’s a great bonding strategy, and it’s relaxing.
Is your child itchier at night? LMK👇️
For some tips that can help, get my free guide, Ditch the Itch!
Foods that cause leaky gut
If you have a kid dealing with chronic skin rashes, you’re probably concerned about their gut health, too, because, if you’re here, you already know about the skin-gut connection.
I get asked VERY often about foods that actually cause leaky gut. If you're wondering too, here's what foods actually do contribute to the problem (and there’s research on this, my friends):
👉Gluten
👉Food additives like:
🛑 Sugar
🛑 Salt
🛑 Emulsifiers (added to processed baked goods, dairy, mayonnaise, sauces, ice cream, margarine, convenience foods)
🛑 Organic solvents (used to make edible oils like soy oil and are additives like stabilizers, preservatives, and flavorings)
🛑 Microbial transglutaminase (in baked goods and conventionally raised/produced meat, fish, and dairy for texture, appearance, hardness, preservability, and elasticity)
🛑 Nanoparticles (used to improve taste, color, uniformity, and texture of foods, used in food packaging, or to kill bacteria [silver nanoparticles])
Notice how junk in processed and conventionally prepared products is on this list. These things aren't actually food🤔?!
This doesn't mean your kid can't or shouldn't indulge. It does mean that these so called foods shouldn't be dietary staples.
A way to avoid these is to eat a whole, real-food diet rich in fresh vegetables (non-starchy and starchy) and fruits, herbs and spices, quality protein (grass-fed, free-range, pastured, organic, wild-caught), healthy fats, and whole/unprocessed gluten-free grains.
Avoid any sort of packaged foods whenever possible!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568997215000245