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Comment by gattilorenz | Hacker News Reader

Did your eczema improve due to age, or improved practices and/or medicine?

(I'm quite far away from considering suicide, but I wouldn't mind a better quality of life)

I only have to deal with localized eczema flareups - when they happen they always start with small blisters forming on my middle or ring fingers, and was more frequent on my right hand. Probably very small compared to what you have to deal with, but when it first started happening over 20 years ago, it took some heavy steroid creams or ointments to control.

Over the years outbreaks have become less frequent, and now when I start to feel the tightness that would signal an upcoming outbreak can be alleviated with normal moisturizers and if it does get worse, it just requires frequent moisturizing rather than steroids.

As far as I can tell, over time the immune system continues to evolve. I can't promise the same will happen to you, but it is possible. Other allergies can be similar - especially generalized allergies - they seem to sometimes get worse or better without any real change in exposure to allergens.

I had severely dry skin and eczema to the point where my bedsheets were often covered with bloody spots because I was constantly scratching while asleep...

What worked for me eventually was not bathing/showering regularly. I started showering at most 1-3 times a week but only with water, no soap, except on the pubic areas for hygienic reasons. Might sound disgusting, but it turns out that daily showering, especially with detergents, can harm your skin by upsetting its microbiome.

I still have drier skin than other people, especially in winter, but my eczema have pretty much disappeared.

However, if my eczema would return, I would definitely try out bleach washes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hypochlorite_washes

The studies endorsing dilute bleach baths came out well after my eczema resolved, so I have no first-hand experience with it, but it sounds cheaper and safer than corticosteroids.

I agree, skipping soap helps a lot. And when I do use it, I use liquid soap rather than bar soap. No idea why that is better.

N=1, very mild symptoms etc, but I rinse with diluted apple cider vinegar after shampoo and sometimes soap since the skin is naturally acidic. The slight scalp itch goes away.

Not the OP, but I had eczema that required regular steroid cream treatment. It did get somewhat better in my twenties, but it wasn't until I started experimenting with different lotions and moisturizers that things got a lot better.

In general, light lotions with glycerine seem to work best for me (they even taste slightly sweet). Finding Palmer's cocoa butter lotion was literally a life changer though - I apply a thin layer after ever shower, and I finally know what it's like to have normal-people skin in my thirties.

I know exactly what you mean about quality of life. It sucks when your skin is bad; _everything_ feels continuously uncomfortable. I'm not sure the same thing will work for you, but I really would encourage you to experiment with different moisturizers. Work out what's different about the better ones, and iteratively improve from there. I thought they were basically all the same, but they're really not!

Being heavily subject to eczema in my first two decades I have experimented with various changes to the point of having it stop 98% of the time now:

- increasing the skin natural barrier through limited soap (only if there is a stinky area) - reducing overall inflammation (better sleep, more sport, better nutrition through vegetables fruits and limited meat proteins) - bathing in the ocean - minutes of direct sun exposure

The last two will do wonders. A highly stressing episode or accumulated sleep debt however and the skin will start itching as a warning.

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