Miscellaneous

I work in a sawmill and get eczema on my hands. This is
put down to wear and tear, but recently I got eczema on
my face, which I think is also worse at work. Could it be
something in the air?
You could have a combination of a physical contact irritant eczema
from the wear and tear, and an allergic form from natural resins in
the wood or agents used to treat the wood. If the ventilation is poor
and the atmosphere you work in is heavy with dust, you could well
get an allergic reaction on your face. Talk to your GP about a
referral for patch-testing.
My parents have always recommended massaging mustard
oil into the arms and legs of our children to help with
strong bone growth. I have a 3-year-old daughter with
eczema and am worried that this might make it worse.
What should I do?
We have come across the practice of using mustard oil on the skin
in families from Africa and the Indian subcontinent. There isn’t anyscientific evidence that this practice helps with bone growth, but
many people are strong believers in it. It is important to try to
respect cultural practices as they may be helpful, or at least not
harmful, to eczema. For example, many West Indian and Indian
parents use olive oil or aloe vera cream as a moisturiser, and these
seem to be beneficial. Some Nigerian families use hibiscus flower
water on the skin; although we are not sure that this helps, it
certainly does not seem to make things worse.
Mustard oil, however, is very irritant to the broken skin of eczema
and will nearly always make it worse. Because of this, we strongly
advise you not to use it. A balanced diet with plenty of calcium and
exercise will ensure good bone growth. You will have to explain
to your parents politely, but firmly, that mustard oil would make
their grand-daughter’s eczema worse and that she is growing into
a healthy girl without it.All my children have suffered with bad cradle cap and
nappy rash. Why is this, and why did they all get better
after a few months?
It sounds as though all your children had seborrhoeic eczema. In
a mild form, this is almost universal in babies. It is probably caused
by a transfer of hormones (androgens) from mother to baby just
before birth. These hormones act to stimulate the grease glands
(sebaceous glands) of the skin, making them overactive. They are
usually inactive in children until puberty. This hormonal stimulation
causes the greasy scaling so typical of this type of eczema. The
scalp and nappy area are commonly affected – hence the usual
presentation with cradle cap and nappy rash.
As babies do not make these hormones themselves, and because
the transferred hormones are soon broken down and inactivated,
the problem of seborrhoeic eczema resolves completely on its own
in a few months.I suffer with eczema on my hands, which I think is made
worse by work, although I work in an office and don’t
handle any chemicals. Could there be another
explanation?
Your work environment might be a problem as the low-humidity
from air-conditioning can dry out anybody’s skin, and this will be
a bigger problem for you. It will show up as redness and scaling.
Repeated friction from handling papers or other materials can also
be a problem, leading to a physical eczema that will differ in looking
less red, but dry and thickened.
I have just come back from holiday with the most awful
eczema. My doctor says it is photo-dermatitis and might
be due to a new sunscreen. Will I ever be able to go on
holiday again?
Yes, you will. A type of allergic contact eczema whose cause
involves natural or artificial ultraviolet light is quite rare but may
be on the increase. Sunscreens are the most commonly reported
culprits (photo-allergens), but they are always used in the sun!
Other common photo-allergens are fragrances, topical non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory drugs and some antibacterial creams. You might
need to be referred to hospital for a special form of patch-testing
that uses ultraviolet light to mimic the conditions in which you
reacted – this is called photo-patch-testing. This should allow the
dermatologist to tell you what sunscreens you can safely use.
I first started having eczema around my fingernails, which
might have been due to the false nails I wore. I then got it
in my hair – have I transferred it to my scalp from my
fingers when I wash my hair?
Eczema is not a contagious disease so you will not have transferred
it to your scalp. As you have developed eczema around your
fingernails from an allergy to the acrylics in false nails, you do have
a risk of developing eczema elsewhere. Once you have an allergy
to something, any part of your skin can react in the same way, soif you washed your hair with the false nails on, this might have
been enough contact to start the eczema. There may, however, have
been a different trigger for your scalp eczema, such as a different
shampoo or hair treatment.
One of the residents in the nursing home where I work
had scabies. I caught it and had treatment, but my doctor
says I now have eczema. Does scabies cause eczema?
It is very common to have a rash that looks just like eczema after
scabies (an infestation with little mites that burrow into the skin)
as you will have developed an allergy to the dead mites and their
waste matter. Standard eczema treatments should settle it down
over a few weeks, but it will leave your skin in a vulnerable state
for the next few months so soaps and other products that might
not have bothered you before could cause a problem. Take good
care of your skin and it should all settle down and not trouble you
again.
I think something in my garden makes my eczema worse.
Any clues you could give me would be welcome as I don’t
want to give up gardening.
There are many things in the garden that can cause skin problems,
some of which are quite dramatic, with acute blistering rashes from
a combination of plant juices and the sun. It sounds as though you
already have eczema that gets worse when you garden, and this
could be due to several factors. The very act of using your hands
outdoors, with rubbing, hard work and the extra washing required,
can cause problems in terms of physical irritants. Some plants are
associated with eczema; these include chrysanthemums, which
tend to give a thickened, dry eczema on exposed parts, and tulip
bulbs, which classically give rise to a fingertip eczema. The pollen
in the air near chrysanthemums can cause the reaction so you don’t
even have to be in direct contact.