Eczema Treatment Care

Hi. So, to start with the basics: I’m 20 years old, African by birth, and I was diagnosed with atopic dermatitis at a very young age (around 3). The dermatologist I visited as a child prescribed a hydrocortisone cream (Mildison Lipid 1%) which I’ve been using on a pretty much daily basis ever since, especially on my hands, which have never been eczema-free (although some flare-ups are worse than others). I’ve been to three or four other dermatologists since my first doctor retired, and none of them advised me to stop using the hydrocortisone, although one of them prescribed Protopic as an alternative treatment. However, I’ve been afraid to use it due to the skin cancer risk (I live in a place that gets 340 sunny days per year, so staying out of the sun, or even just keeping my hands out of the sun, is pretty much impossible).
It’s obviously too late for me to worry about hydrocortisone thinning my skin and/or stunting my growth (the first is possible, although I wouldn’t know how to tell, but the second is unlikely), but lately I’ve been looking for alternative treatments. So basically, I’m asking for advice from anyone who has atopic dermatitis or any experience in treating it. At this point I’m done listening to people who say things like “Oh use some Vaseline on it and it’ll clear up next week.” After 20 years of waiting for it to “clear up”, I’d be happy to see it just improve.
Although I’d appreciate any well-meant advice, please note that I’ll never be desperate enough to fall for some hokey eczema “cure”, and although I’m willing to try herbal treatments, I have very little faith in them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Atopic Eczema. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.