Eczema and Detergents

Some believe that some eczema cases are as a result of detergent as it acts as a irritant. According to http://www.solveeczema.org/, " Detergent-reactive eczema likely accounts for 25-60% of eczema, depending on the age group and locality. Discerning detergent exposures as the underlying cause in any given case is eminently non-obvious. The underlying mechanism for this type of eczema would also amplify asthma. This solution will not cure asthma, but could substantially minimize it. I have heard recently from at least one mother who got her son's lifelong asthma under control with these measures, even though he never had eczema."

A.J. Lumsdaine talks a little more about detergents in an email.


Detergents: Environmental Compromise of Skin Barrier FunctionDetergents compromise skin barrier function. They increase antigen penetration and load. Their use has increased precisely in step with the increases in eczema and asthma worldwide, over time and geography. In modern households, they are a major component of household dust and are in contact with skin and lung tissue almost constantly. They change the permeability and quality of the skin barrier, especially in people with certain skin type. (And if one factors in this issue in the research studies used to support the so-called hygiene hypothesis, one gets a more consistent picture. )

I have said all along that skin type is a factor in susceptibility to detergent-reactive eczema. In fact, atopy seems strongly correlated with this type of eczema. I have heard from numerous families where eliminating the eczema of a child by going detergent-free in the household also eliminated a parent’s eczema or allergies. But the expression of this type of eczema isn’t limited to just some people with certain genes, it’s a continuum. If detergents were strong enough, I believe eventually the entire population would be affected.

More importantly, when people with this type of eczema live in a detergent-free environment, over time, the appearance and quality of the skin changes. Typically, the skin becomes more substantial and supple. It normalizes and becomes less dry. After two months in a detergent-free environment, the skin of affected patients would look entirely different under a microscope. Babies, with naturally more permeable skin, are most affected.

So, to make a long story short, I personally think of the eczema and asthma increases in the latter half of the last century as entirely environmental. The genetic associations are interesting, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to think of them as a “defect” just because they are more frequently associated with an unhappy reaction to a new and artificial environmental influence that didn’t exist 100 years ago. Removing the environmental cause is a more logical and more productive perspective to take for problem solving.

Naturally, I have my theories about those environmental causes, and I don’t think it’s very complicated. It seems to me from everything I have observed, that the two biggest environmental reasons for eczema in the 20th century are detergents and antibiotics/diet (yeast), in that order. My web site has a discussion of what I believe are the more common types of eczema — despite how different they may seem, I think now I can tie all of them together in a very simple and logical way.

Source: www.solveeczema.org/