Eczema and food

[fee77]

My DD first came up with eczema last summer - it was treated and luckily "disappeared". Before christmas she developed a nasty rash on the back of her neck, we carried on with oilatum in the bath and dermol, but it never completely clears up. It goes down and then suddenly flares up red and nasty again. Should i ask for a hc cream to clear it up, or should i start a food diary to try and pin point her reactions and see if it is linked to her diet.
Please help - she always looks like i have tried to strangle her! She is 17mths btw. Thanks

oh fee, i didn't know you had the same problem! ds1 has it too and it has cleared up a lot but we had some really BAD times with it, even had to wet bandage him at one point.

what moisturiser do you use? we use epaderm (vaseline like texture) as a soap with oilatum and then moisturise as much as possible throughout the day. aveeno cream works a treat.

i was quite anti steroid at the beginning with a bias towards natural products but in the end we had to use steroid cream and have come to a happy compromise between the two. thankfully he rarely needs the hc now. he had some blood tests v. early on for allergies which was useful to know but it's a good idea to keep a diary of what foods aggravate her...

let me know if you need more advice as we're old hands at this now! xxx

Thanks mink - we just use oilatum in the bath and dermol - i did buy some oilatum cream as well. I am going to take her back to the doctors i think and try to get some aveeno as reading on hear a lot of people think it is really good. I have always been anti steroids but just wondered if she need something extra to clear this bout up.
Thanks for the advice!

hi, what do you use on scalp? went to doc and they prescribed polytar shampoo, but this is too harsh...

what is dermol?

DD suffered really badly on her scalp and was prescribed Capasal shampoo which just seemed to irritate her - the thing I found cleared it up was Simple shampoo.

Get rid of the rash by whatever means necessary. A food diary will be useless until it's gone, as a change in temperature can be enough to make an existing rash worse.

It's important to wean off the steroid cream gradually once it's worked, or else there is a flare up again a couple of days later.

I agree with minkmama, don't be totally anti - steroid/HC as it does work and can balance nicely with non steroid emollients, which is the compromise we now use for our 3 yr old ( her eczema at 5 months was awful, head to toe weeping cracked skin....ghastly days...).It's been under good control for a while now with 1% HC cream, occasionally a bit stronger, for flare ups ( wrists usually) and aveeno cream for emollients which we get on prescription as it's quite pricey.