allergy/hand eczema and why it's not OT ;-)

wading through the muck wrote:

I'm very interested in your presumed alergy/hand eczema link. If you are able to further confirm that I would love to know what you find out.

Good luck and continued sucess.

Hand eczema is one symptom of my allergies, I believe specifically my food allergies. It is an indicator of my general health. It is basically an inflammatory problem, which is probably related to what my ENT, as I recall, called allergic inflammation of the "dura" membrane between my lungs and my chest wall, as well as the inflammation in my sinus tissues. The more I keep all this inflammation down, the better I think the CPAP is going to be able to work.

I started having hand eczema with my first pregnancy. I think I triggered my food allergies back then, by overdoing milk to compensate for a meat aversion. At one point, a dermatologist put me on prednisone, but the eczema came back with a vengeance when I stopped the prednisone. I believe it is food allergy driven because at one point I religiously quit all dairy and wheat, and my hands behaved as if I were on the prednisone again. Whenever it flares up, I quit wheat and dairy. At least I try to.

Steroid creams are not helpful. They heal the top layer of skin, but underneath it's still trying to blister and swell, and it becomes very painful, to the point where I just want to peel my skin off.

My *excellent* ENT/allergist, a Johns Hopkins med school grad, who did my sinus surgery, concurs with the food/hand eczema link. I think he's seen it before, more than once. He confirmed food allergies (dairy, wheat, egg yolk, egg white, soy, and corn) through skin testing - about 40 little skin pricks on my upper arm that looked like a matrix of mosquito bites by the end of the testing. I am now taking sublingual drops for food allergies, and it is hoped that they will be less of a problem as my health is improved via immunotherapy (shots and drops) for environmental allergies, and via the CPAP, post-septum-surgery.

I'm supposed to be doing a rotation diet, but I can't manage to.

Do you by chance have Asthma also? There is a connection between the two.

Thanks for the follow up info. My wife has hand eczema flair-ups. I had never thought of it being food alergy related.

There is a good article with the causes of AD (Atopic Dermatitis) Here

Research has shown that a person is more likely to have AD if parents or other family members have ever had AD, hay fever, asthma, or food allergies.

Anonymous wrote:Do you by chance have Asthma also? There is a connection between the two.

I don't have asthma, not diagnosable anyways, but I do take Singulair which is more known as an asthma med. Something about allergy meds (allegra, zyrtec) work on IgG antibodies and asthma meds like Singulair work on IgE antibodies. I think it's the IgEs which cause the dura (between the lungs and chest wall) to become inflamed, and then it can hurt to breathe, or in a flareup, really hurt to take a deep breath.

Any medical doctors feel free to correct me