by solveeczema | Oct 23, 2008 | Uncategorized
With summer weather waning, and dry autumn air posing the usual seasonal problem for people with eczema, hits on solveeczema.org and this blog are up. It’s time once again for me to pull out the winter clothing, the Aquaphor, and my post on this issue from last year, Autumn Eczema.
An excerpt:
Summertime humidity can be such a help to those who are in the problem-solving stages, or who have a baby whose exposures are very difficult to control. Unfortunately, when autumn rolls around, and the heat comes on indoors – drying the air – people with detergent-reactive eczema become more susceptible to breakouts from lower levels of detergent.
I have in the past told friends to write a note about this in their calendars and not to panic if they see new breakouts at this time – they just have to be a little more vigilant to bring detergent exposure down to a lower level for awhile. (Usually they forget and panic anyway, but soon sort it out with just a little more vigilance.)
As I point out on my site, absent detergents that increase skin permeability, even dry air will not result in eczema in susceptible individuals. If you’ve gotten lax like we always did over the summer, now might be a good time to increase vigilance about exposures to prevent those autumn breakouts. (Or, wait until the heat comes on and just remember not to panic…)
by solveeczema | Sep 28, 2008 | Uncategorized
So, for the second time in a year, both of my Miele washing machines failed within a few weeks of each other.
Yep, you got it. I have two front-loading, high-efficiency washing machines. For a long time, they were the most expensive things we owned, including the cars. I thought they were worth it – energy efficient, clean well, can wash anything from wool sweaters to dirty gym socks, so little wear and tear on clothing, and so worth it because of the eczema. But the repair problems…
The last time they failed, it was the water valves in both machines. This time both failed catastrophically. One somehow got a nickel stuck on edge between the drum and the drum enclosure. It squashed the nickel down and punched in the drum all the way around. (You’ve got to see this – I’ll try to upload a photo of the nickel later this weekend.)
We called for repair, but it wasn’t the company’s fault (though I am bothered by the fact that this machine design allows coins to get in there if they could do this kind of damage). My husband spent a day fixing the drum, only to find that there are other broken parts. The other machine had a catastrophic failure – the bearings were replaced within the last two years, but somehow, it’s all gone bad again. The belt behind the drum has practically vaporized all over the place.
Now I have no working washing machine. This was a bad time for this to happen.
One of the machines is a stacking machine, and the dryer works just fine. But we can’t afford another Miele washer, and we don’t have space NOT to have the stacking unit.
Miele has the most incredible repair department and really stands behind their products, but we can’t afford to repair or replace these machines. If anyone has recommendations for a good value in washing machine that doesn’t cost so much, I would love to hear them! Please send email through the solveeczema.org site. Thanks!
UPDATE: 8/19/2020 It appears I wrote this post in 2008, at least 12 years ago! Someone accessed the page recently, and I realized that when I changed WordPress themes, the new one no longer shows the post dates. I’ll rectify that when I can. In the meantime, I wanted to make an update:
I did look carefully at other washing machines, and ultimately have stuck with Miele since then. If this post is 2008, then I’ve also worn out another round of machines since then. But I still have to do a lot of laundry, so we ended up getting a professional Miele unit, meaning, the kind of machine people will put in coin-operated laundries. The capacity is large, it’s been very reliable, and washes everything from delicate wool sweaters to large blankets and comforters. It has a hygiene cycle that heats almost to boiling to disinfect towels and sheets without chemicals. The professional units can handle a lot more laundry without problems. I don’t have problems with unbalanced loads the way I have had in the past with consumer machines.
Probably the greatest feature of Miele machines is that they are so good at getting things clean while also being extremely gentle on clothing. When other machines will have long worn out clothing, Miele washing machines leave things looking practically new, and yet clean well. Their washing machines also handle such a range of laundry conditions, I think they are unparalled in their utility. I am saying this out of my experience, I have no sponsorship or any kind of incentive to say this. I had some unhappy times that prompted my previous post, but a lot of good experience in the last 5 years especially. I think Miele washing machines are probably the best you can buy if you have to do a lot of laundry. They save so much water and soap usage, too, and especially preserve fabrics, I think in the long run they are much more cost-effective than on first glance.
by solveeczema | Sep 15, 2008 | About Products
When our son was a baby, we used a great diaper wipe from a company called Tushies. It had no detergent in it whatsoever, and the major cleansing ingredients were aloe and glycerine, which are also good for the skin. We loved that we could understand every ingredient – no ten-syllable words you can only find in a chemical industry manual.
The wipe worked well. But then the company changed the formula – it became just another one of those supposedly “natural” detergent wipes. When we ran out of the old formula, we switched to a spray bottle with filtered water and Bounty paper towels for diaper changes. If we tore the paper towels into individual pieces and stacked them next to the changing table, this turned out to be no more trouble than wipes. It also worked extremely well. After cleaning up with the water and paper towels, we patted the skin with a little cornstarch, and that was it. We never had any diaper rash, not once. So we stopped using the wipes and never looked back.
But wipes come in handy for more than just diaper changes. They are great for on-the-go clean ups. Teachers at school even ask parents for donations of wipes along with other school supplies.
I recently went to the store expecting to find nothing but detergent-soaked diaper wipes. I was pleasantly surprised. Tushies seems to once again be making a simple no-detergent diaper wipe under the Tushies name. I tried TenderCare wipes (which I believe are also made by the Tushies company) – the product works well, is flushable, and best of all, has a short, simple, truly natural and safe ingredients list. No detergents. Not even any ingredients I had to scratch my head about and look up on the Internet to be sure.
by solveeczema | Aug 28, 2008 | About Eczema
(I’m still stretched and stressed by medical paperwork and still not able to spend much time with the site. So, here is a post from my draft archive…)
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I receive many wonderful words of thanks, but relatively few pictures. Or I should say, I receive a lot of offers to send pictures – only to hear later almost as many epiphanies of how eczema changed parents’ lives without their realizing it. It happened to me, too, in the same way.
A friend – whose baby’s eczema is entirely related to detergent exposure – recently gave me a “before” photo of her son with terrible baby eczema. I have some beautiful “after” photos that I took myself. I am wondering whether to post them on my blog – the “before” photos are so fuzzy. And my friend says they were only taken after they had already started removing detergents and the eczema was 90% better. Typical story.
In the past, when people wrote to tell me their stories of dramatic transformations, I often asked if they were willing to share photos. People were very generous, offering to go through their photos to find good “before” and “after” comparisons.
In my own case, looking for those photos was an eye opening experience. Until I needed photos for the newsletter articles, I hadn’t realized how much our picture taking habits had changed: after the eczema became severe, we took far fewer pictures. We took photos from a distance, or of a “good” side when the eczema waned. We don’t have any photos showing the eczema at its worst, not one.
That story played out over and over again when parents contacted me and offered to look for photos. Like me, these parents did not realize how their picture taking had been affected by trying to work around the eczema. So many times parents got back to me – often with sheepish apologies – only to report in wonder that in fact they didn’t have any good “before” close ups of the eczema at its worst.
So, if people have photos and offer them, that’s great and it helps for other parents to see them. There are a few on the “Letters” page of Solveeczema.org, and a few more in my files that I’ll get around to posting someday. But I almost never ask for them anymore.
If you are just starting the process described on the Solveeczema website, it’s a good idea to take a few photos of the eczema at its worst. If detergents are the problem, when the eczema is cleared up, old photos help explain the choices you continue to make to protect your child.
As much as parents may forget altering way they take photographs of their child with eczema, they also seem to frequently forget how bad things were once everything is cleared up. There is nothing like old photos to remind yourself of what you did for your child, and just how much better things are when the eczema is cleared up. This comparison, too, seems a perennial, wonderful surprise – like a cosmic pat on the back.
by solveeczema | Jul 1, 2008 | About Products
Here’s cause for celebration: Tom’s of Maine has launched a new line of SLS-free toothpastes. They are made of simple, straightforward ingredients. No detergents. www.tomsofmaine.com
More cause for celebration: some have fluoride. These may very well be the only non-detergent (and no-sorbitol) toothpastes with fluoride out there. (For people who don’t want fluoride, there are no-fluoride options, too.)
I have only one reservation – and only because I don’t know enough yet, not because there is a problem. The pastes in this line all contain a foaming agent called glycerrhizin, which I have not been able to adequately check out. It appears to have an impact on membrane permeability, but I cannot figure out whether it might have a positive effect here, a negative effect, or perhaps may not be of concern. From the things I’ve read so far, there may be no straightforward answer for us short of just trying it out.
Bottom line – spot test it first before using, and talk to your doctor if you have any concerns. We did a spot test, and so far so good. Yay!
I am thrilled to see a prominent natural product company like Tom’s of Maine offer such an extensive line of detergent-free toothpastes!
