Eczema and Your Diet – Does it Matter?

Eczema and Your Diet – Does it Matter?

Thursday, October 29, 2009

I often get asked if food makes a difference to eczema and other itchy skin conditions, and by often, I mean 20+ times per week. You know what, my answer is always the same.

Eczema and Food

YES!!

I believe that what we shove in our mouths nowadays is almost completely responsible for the massive increase in eczema occurrence over the past few years, that and stress, but I will save that for another post. But I guess the 2 of these are strongly related. I think life has become too fast..

Mum and I discuss this very thing all the time. When she was growing up there was nowhere near the cases of eczema and rashes and allergies that we see now and this is what we put it down to.

Nobody eats real food anymore. Well almost nobody.

Everything is fast this, easy that, quick junk. A quick walk down the supermarket (and I blame the major supermarkets for this as much as anything) and you will see what I mean, aisle after aisle of packet crap all supposedly to make our lives easier. Rubbish! I actually saw a lady the other day buying packet mash potato, I mean come on. How hard is it really to mash potato?

Think about back 40 years, before supermarkets were everywhere. Food shopping was done (if it wasn't grown) at fruit shop and a butcher. That is it. No aisle 9 sauce mixes and flavour bases. Real food, made from scratch. So what the heck happened?

We got busy. Or is it just lazy? Food companies and the big supermarket chains got smarter with their marketing and capitalised on this trend. They ram it home to us in the media ever single day. Busy? Save time and money with our packet this or that. And the home cook laps it up by the trolley full! Real food is no harder to make than packet junk and costs no more, in fact it is a whole lot less to eat this way. I can feed our whole house of 3 burly young men on around $180/week and they are tradesmen who eat more than you can imagine.

You see, this packet and processed food is full of preservatives, flavour enhancers, additives and things that cannot be pronounced without a science degree. Do you really think this stuff is not doing you some harm?

So what does this all have to do with eczema? Plenty. I reckon a lot of eczema can be brought well under control in 90 days by simply changing your diet. Don't believe me? Well try it. For the next 90 days:

- Cut out packaged processed junk;

- Do 90% of your shopping from outside of a supermarket, ie. Butcher, Greengrocer and Fish Monger;

- Cut out wheat, gluten and dairy from your diet;

- Try cutting down on procesed sugars;

- Prepare meals from scratch.

And that is it. Now I know this sounds simple but as we say here all the time. Managing your eczema is all about doing simple things consistently. Just try it, what do you really have to lose? Oh, and let me know how it goes for you in the comments section below!

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