Dr Benabio (DermDoc) is board certified in dermatology and is a fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology. He is also the author of numerous scientific articles, a book and quoted in notable publications such as O, The Oprah Magazine, Dermatology News, Dermatology World, CNN and WebMD. He is the chief of dermatology at Kaiser Permanente, San Diego.
This is a combination of two previous posts – the first one was an explanation of Dr Benabio’s ‘Great hack to help your kid with eczema’ video that he tweeted me and the second a short Q&A with him. The videos are no longer available which is why I’ve combined the two posts into one to be more informative.
The simple message is to moisturize your child enough.
How much is enough? It’s about half ounce a day, equivalent to about 12 pumps. Dr Jeff Benabio has an insanely simple way to hold your kid responsible for moisturizing enough, i.e. by marking the bottle. Also, parents tend to underestimate the amount of moisturizer to put on our child.
I’ve blogged about this before, as I also have wondered how much is enough. Here’s the link to my post How Much Moisturizing is Enough? I mentioned 400-500ml/week!
Causes of Childhood Eczema
Marcie Mom: In the video, Dr Jeff explained that eczema is mainly due to an overactive immune system and damaged skin, where the damaged skin allows bacteria to penetrate, resulting in a vicious cycle of inflammation, itching, scratching and more damage to skin (more on causes of eczema here).
Here’s a question – For parents whose children are more likely to have eczema due to family history of eczema in parents or siblings, what would you recommend the parents to do before pregnancy, during pregnancy, after birth to reduce the likelihood of eczemaand/or the severity of eczema in the child?
Dr Jeff: Great questions here. Unfortunately, there’s little that parents can do to prevent it. There is some evidence that taking probiotics during pregnancy and up to 6 months post pregnancy if breast-feeding can reduce the risk of eczema in the child. There is some evidence that some foods can make atopic dermatitis more severe if the child is allergic to that food. Common suspects include: cow’s milk, soy, nuts, eggs, and wheat. There’s some evidence that living on a farm can help — I’m not kidding. Here are a couple of links to studies:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12463312
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15125698
