Do you struggle with painful itching — red, flaming hot rashes that irritate?  If so, you may have eczema, an inflammatory condition often associated with allergens, sensitivities, or even the body attacking itself (autoimmune-related).  You may be surprised to learn that eczema is not just a skin condition.   It involves nutritional deficiencies and a build-up of toxins in your body that affect its severity.

Here’s why traditional treatments often fail miserably in treating eczema.  They merely address the symptoms of the disease with prednisone (steroids), petroleum-based ointments, and synthetic anti-histamines.  These only add to the already existing toxic load in your body.

But here’s the good news.  Despite what you may have heard to the contrary, it’s possible to treat eczema in healthy ways, without potentially toxic drugs and chemicals.  Let’s address what we can do from a prevention and alternative medicine standpoint to help heal eczema.

Understand Your Skin’s Basic Needs
First and foremost, you must identify the basic needs of your skin tissue.  Your skin needs:

• Pure, clean water (not tap water with toxic chlorine and fluoride) for hydration of skin.  A good general rule is to drink 6-8 cups per day or 1 cup per 25 pounds body weight.
• Oils — especially the essential fatty acids (EFA).  The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 oils in the skin is 1000 to 1, so your need for omega-6 oils is tremendous.  Contrary to prevailing opinion, most people are deficient in omega-6 oils.  Evening primrose oil or the less expensive borage oils are an excellent source of these omega oils.  Also try flaxseed oil, which is also excellent, with a 3:1 ratio of omega-3 over the quantity of omega-6.
• Vitamins and minerals.  Zinc is very important for the skin, and vitamins C, E and A are needed and often found deficient in people with eczema.

Eliminate Inflammatory Triggers
Let’s turn our attention to probable causes of eczema.  Because it is an inflammatory condition, all inflammatory triggers need to be avoided.   Common dietary triggers include:

• Sugar
• Caffeine
• Trans-fatty acids (or hydrogenated oils)
• Aspartame

In other words, the ingestion of real food and avoidance of all processed food (which has unknown inflammatory chemicals added) is important.

Allergies may also be a trigger for symptoms to emerge.  The offending triggers often include:

• Wheat or milk
• Vaccination
• Dust
• Mold
• Animal dander
• Exposure to various chemicals

Take the Right Supplements
Avoiding these triggers may be helpful for you, but there is also a safe effective way for desensitizing called NAET (Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique) which uses energy principles for treatment.  You can learn more about NAET by visiting their website.  There are also immune modulators like beta-glucan, colostrums and mushroom extracts that may lessen the immune stimulation.

Here is something else that many people are not aware of.  The older we are or the more medications we have been on, the more likely we are to experience toxic skin reactions. That’s why the nutrients like milk thistle and alpha-lipoic acid are so important.  They support liver detoxification pathways.

Some people also find tremendous benefit from colon cleanses or liver cleanses.  While you are detoxing your body with the nutrients mentioned above, there are safe products that may provide symptom relief while the causes are being addressed and corrected.

Quercetin stabilizes the mast cells that release histamine, thus acting as a natural antihistaminic.  MSM is a safe anti-inflammatory, as is its parent compound, DMSO.  You can also find topical relief with Shea butter or aloe vera.

Glyconutrients may also be helpful for you.  They attach to proteins to facilitate proper communication between cells.  The absence of proper cell-to-cell communication results in disease, so your eczema may resolve once you have established a more healthy communication system throughout your body.

The potential list of safe alternatives for treatment of eczema is lengthy and too long for this article, but it’s important to mention a few additional treatments.  Homeopathic frequencies can impart a continuous healing effect on all tissue, including skin.  Sun exposure is important for all of us, but especially when we have skin problems.  Finally, if you have underlying emotional issues that are not addressed, it may be impossible for long-term complete healing to take place until they are addressed.

[Ed. Note: Stan Gardner, MD, has practiced energy and alternative medicine for over 10 years.  He believes that many diseases could be prevented entirely, healed more quickly, and cause less damaging results through the application of proper nutrition.  To visit his website and sign up for his free daily health secrets, click here.]

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