Flaky rashes, blisters, and itchy skin are trademarks of living with eczema. Every day is a struggle to avoid all possible triggers of your condition. Depending on the severity of your eczema, you may even have weekly appointments at skin care treatment facilities in your locality.
What is Eczema?
Eczema is a chronic skin disease with no cure. Your symptoms reoccur when triggered. It can worsen when left untreated. As eczema refers to a group of different medical conditions that cause your rashes, it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly what prompted the condition. What you can do is determine all possible triggers and lessen your exposure to these irritants.
Many factors can cause your eczema to flare up. Triggers could make previously-treated eczema reappear or it could worsen your existing skin condition. Some common triggers for eczema are: dry air, sweat, stress, and allergies. Food and environmental allergies can worsen your eczema. So to avoid this, it’s best to keep your diet eczema-friendly.
Eczema-Friendly Diet
A study on food triggers and eczema revealed that allergens in food affect the severity of eczema. Some patients who avoided food with these allergens resulted in improvement of their symptoms of chronic dermatitis.
Before making your eczema-friendly diet plan, you should first know what type of food to avoid. Certain food items can cause flare ups that worsen your skin condition. Cow’s milk, eggs, soy products, gluten, nuts, fish, and shellfish are all irritants that intensify the inflammation on your skin.
Compounds found in food, like dairy products, can trigger a response from your hypersensitive immune system, causing the symptoms of your eczema to worsen. With this skin condition, your immune system works differently. Since inflammation is the body’s response to wounds and injuries, eating food that increases this lengthens the inflammation process and aggravates the rashes on your skin. On the other hand, eating anti-inflammatory food helps lessen eczema symptoms.
As you plan your anti-inflammatory diet, make sure to avoid sugary and carbohydrate-rich meals. Omega-3 fatty acids found in salmon, sardines, mackerel, and tuna all have anti-inflammatory effects. Green leafy vegetables, flaxseed, and walnuts are other food sources for fatty acids.
Olive and canola oil, which contain monounsaturated fats, can also be anti-inflammatory. The fatty acids found in these food products help maintain the structural integrity of the cell. Other food items which may exert anti-inflammatory effects include: colorful fruits and vegetables, whole grains, coffee, green tea, turmeric, and ginger.
You could also try an elimination type of diet if you aren’t certain which food triggers your eczema. Remove food with known allergens from your diet one at a time to determine if it has any profound effect on your skin condition. You could also try a rotation diet, in which you eat a certain type of food once every four days. Doing this helps improve symptoms. Your body may develop resistance to these allergens after thorough exposure.
And consult with your doctor to make sure you aren’t missing out on important nutrients.
Manage your symptoms of eczema by eating inflammation-inducing meals sparingly. Introducing healthy, anti-inflammatory meals in your diet reduces your reaction to food allergens and strengthens your immune system. In watching what you eat, you help regulate the symptoms of eczema, improving your quality of life.
