Big news on the research front from England, still more work to be done

by AJ Lumsdaine | Aug 31, 2011 | About Eczema

Noted dermatology researcher Dr. Michael Cork in the UK will soon be publishing an article linking detergents with eczema, a continuation of his long-standing work. I am thrilled for this verification of what I have been saying all along.

          Unfortunately, if the popular press article I read tonight is correct, the study still does not differentiate between detergents and soaps. I have mentioned Dr. Cork’s work in the past; his recommendation has been to remove all surfactants, soaps and detergents.

          While removing all surfactants may work in time, I personally find it takes much longer than using true soaps and the results are not as satisfactory. Being able to “wash off the eczema” with soap as described on my site is important to allowing children to maintain a normal life and skin after exposures they can’t control, not to mention simply giving people a way to get clean that doesn’t cause the eczema. Knowing they can keep themselves and their homes clean by changing what they wash with, rather than eliminating all washing products, is a big deal to most people.

          I also have a very different take on what causes dry skin and eczema, and why people from atopic families are more affected.  That is a topic I need to write far more in detail, but I’ve come up with a short way to convey the basic idea (please forgive my giving it a title, it’s a way to hopefully make it memorable):

Lumsdaine’s Law:  For most people, under most conditions, eczema and dry skin are more the result of what is on the skin than what is stripped from the skin by washing.

          I include a link to the Daily Mail  article about Dr. Cork’s groundbreaking publication below.  Here also is my letter to the reporter who wrote the article:

Dear Mr. Utton,

I appreciated reading your well-crafted article “Soap linked to childhood eczema – study.”  The article does a beautiful job clarifying a difficult-to-explain topic (and make interesting as you have done).

I would like to take issue with your assertion that “…despite the recognised hazard of detergents, no one until now has made a connection between their increased use and the rising rate of eczema.”

Please see feature article about my web site in the magazine Allergy & Asthma Today, “Hidden Link Between Detergent and Eczema,” 2006.

As long ago as 2004, I was quoted in a newsletter of the Eczema Association of Australasia saying, “Finally, in researching this problem, I’ve discovered that our solution is consistent with what may be the solution to the overall problem of rising infantile eczema and asthma. … The only theories about it are that we are too clean, the so-called hygiene hypothesis. As for the studies that ostensibly support it, they typically demonstrate a more direct causal link with detergent use than lack of germs.” [emphasis mine]

I have for years been helping people around the world solve their children’s eczema when nothing else worked.  Tens of thousands of people over the years have visited my site and blogs.  I have even heard from doctors who used my web site for their own families.  Many doctors have told me they refer patients to the site, and at least one allergy clinic in Atlanta has permanently linked to it.. .  Interestingly, I mention Dr. Cork on my web site, because as far as I’m concerned, he has been the closest to right of any academic researcher for all these years.

Because I am an engineer and writer, and not a medical researcher, I am limited in what I can ethically (and legally) convey through any of the above publications, but I did discover the cause through empirical problem solving and personal research years ago, have a more nuanced view, and noticed early on that people with atopy were most likely to be helped by removing detergents (and wrote about it).

And although I have a somewhat different take on the why the eczema happens and why people who are genetically linked are susceptible — and I believe there is considerable support for my interpretation in existing medical literature — and I differentiate between soaps and detergents (the use of true soaps actually declined then leveled off as the use of detergents skyrocketed), I am also glad for academic verification of the basic premise of what I have been saying all along by such a respected and careful researcher as Dr. Cork.

Kind Regards,

A.J. Lumsdaine

Read more:

Picture Eczema

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.