Eczema - Water Softener

[iismib]

Our LO has eczema and we are considering getting a water softener. We live in a very hard water area and we are hoping it will improve his skin... Does anyone have any experiences/recommendations they could share? Thank you :)

Yes this did help our DS. He had severe eczema at the time and we were desperate to try anything that might help. It wasn't a cure but it definitely made a difference.

Thank you so much, that is really useful to know. We are lucky that his isn't terrible but it does have very bad flare ups so your experience of water softeners is good to hear! We are just waiting on a quote and hoping it's not too expensive!

I think we got a couple of quotes, I think ours is a Kinetico. We've had it a few years and still works fine. It uses block salt which we have delivered every few months. If we forget to add the salt the first sign is scum on our tea!

Brilliant, thanks Bluebell! Really hoping it will make a difference here too!

How old is your dc? Have you had steroids etc? My ds had terrible excema from 3 months to 1 year. We tried pretty much everything to no avail until we went to see a fantastic gp with a special interest in dermatology who prescribed Pro Topic ointment (I can dig out it's drug name if you're interested )and it completely cleared his excema up within a week. He's 4 now and has very occasional patches that a easily cleared up with it.

Thanks Indubious, he is 3, had eczema since 3 months. I will definitely ask the GP - if

Oops, posted too quickly... if you do have the drug name that would be really useful! Thank you :)

It's called Tacrolimus monohydrate. We went through months of struggling with his excema, different moisturisers, bath oils, changing washing powders, baths, no baths, steroids, more steroids, anti biotic cream etc. He ended up with patches on his tummy that were just open wounds- it was awful. This ace gp first prescribed an oral antibiotic alongside a strong (for a baby) steroid cream. He said that it should clear it up within a week or so and when it didn't he said to try the protopic. The excema was gone within a week. This was just before his first birthday and the pictures on his birthday were the first ones since he was 3 months old without him covered in eczema.

Wow - sounds like you had a really hard time with it but so glad that worked so well! Thank you so much, will definitely ask our GP. Our DS had one very good strong steroid cream which helped a lot, prescribed at the hospital when he had allergy tests for a food allergy but the GP was reluctant to renew it so hope they will agree for us to try this! I know what you mean about open wounds, DS has one at the moment which he keeps scratching so we have had to bandage it, it is slowly healing but lots of other nasty patches at the moment :(