Confused. Eczema better after chickenpox

[moonwalk]

My daughter (17 months) has moderate eczema since birth, mostly in the creases of elbows and knees.

We had to change her skincare routine due to the chickenpox and the eczema seem to have gotten much better. It would be great if someone could help me understand what might have made the difference?

• we used Poxclin mousse on her skin (Our boots didn't have calamine lotion, so I just chose a random cream from the shelf)
• we bathed her in shredded oats 2x per day
• we omitted the super greasy liquid paraffin (prescribed by GP)

Basically her eczema got better even without an emollient.. I didn't think that was possible. Well, I guess there is no harm in continuing the oat baths.

Am going to buy Oilatum Junior Cream tomorrow, in my opinion it was the nicest emulsion... have tossed the liquid paraffin jars.

What emollient do you use?

My DS's (admittedly quite mild) eczema cleared up completely when I stopped using petroleum / mineral oil-based products on him. I used vegetable oil in his bath and moisturised the really bad bits with Lansinoh (lanolin nipple cream!) Also used the oats in a pop sock in the bath.

He suffered from eczema on and off from when he was tiny to when he was about four and I finally twigged that seeing as I don't get on with mineral oils very well it might be the same for him. That was about three years ago and while he does have dry skin, the eczema hasn't been back and he seems to be able to use pretty much any moisturiser on his skin now.

It could be the change in weather.

My ds's eczema gets better and worse at different times of the year.

I bet it is the super greasy paraffin that isn't being used though. That stuff is yucky. It makes it better briefly then it makes it go soooooooo much worse in my experience.

Could it be that her diet was different while she was ill and avoided an allergen?

I always found oats very soothing on my eczema, when it was very itchy. I used soaked porridge oats in an old pair of tights and used the creamy stuff that oozed through the mesh. It doesn't help with the dryness though.

I have a book on childhood eczema and it says that the skin of a lot of children with eczema does improve while they have chickenpox although usually this improvement usually only lasts for a couple of weeks.

Something to so with the cells that fight infection being busy with the chickenpox rather than doing their usual evil work with the child's skin.

If your DD's skin is still better after a couple of weeks then hopefully the improvement is also down to the changes you have made.

We use Epaderm, which does contain paraffin but isn't too revolting.

Go back to your doctor and tell him you don't think what you have is working and ask for something else.

I would agree with ElBandito, immune system doing what it's supposed to do for a change (i.e. fight disease).

I found that petroleum based products didn't help my dd's eczema at all in fact they made it worse

Thanks for the answers all!

Yep, that makes sense to me... "the cells that fight infection are busy with the chickenpox rather than doing their usual evil work with the child's skin."

Let's hope the eczema comes back a bit weaker!

thanks again

We also love Oilatum Junior. It worked wonders on my DS1 when we started using it.

I used to be told that eczema got a bit worse if they were ill because it flares up when you feel stressed and being ill (particularly with chickenpox, I'd say) was stressful.