Diet taboos for people with eczema

The core dietary taboos for eczema patients are not at all "abstain from seafood, milk, eggs, and mangoes for life" as spread across the Internet. Instead, they prioritize avoiding "foods they are clearly allergic to" and only temporarily reduce the intake of high histamine, highly irritating, and high-allergenic foods during acute attacks. Blindly large-scale taboos will slow down the skin repair pace due to malnutrition, and even induce other health problems.

Speaking of this, many people really misunderstood. I met a parent who brought his two-year-old son for consultation a while ago. The child had eczema for more than half a year. The elder in the family said that he should stop "eating". Finally, he stopped eating eggs, milk, and river fish, and gave the child white porridge and vegetables every day. In the end, the rash did not go away much. The child was first diagnosed with iron-deficiency anemia, and his height and weight were lower than those of his peers. The reason why many people make this mistake is because they assume that the triggers of all eczema are the same. If others touch something that makes it itchy, they must not touch it. However, eczema itself is a disease with strong individual differences. The triggers are related to the physical constitution, immune status, and current skin barrier condition. How can there be any universally applicable taboo list?

From the perspective of modern evidence-based medicine, the only foods that need to be avoided in the long term are foods that are clearly aggravated by your own consumption of eczema. For example, every time you eat mangoes, you get red rashes and itches at the corners of your mouth. Then mangoes are taboo for you. But if you don’t have any reaction after eating mangoes, even if nine out of ten eczema patients around you say that eating mangoes will make you sick, you should still eat them. If you can't figure out what you are allergic to, instead of spending hundreds of dollars to check allergens (not to mention that conventional allergen testing can only detect IgE-mediated immediate allergies, many slow-type food triggers cannot be detected at all), it is better to keep a two-week food diary: what you ate that day, whether you ate anything you haven't touched before, whether the eczema worsened that night or the next day, whether the degree of itching increased. Go through it after two weeks, and you can see the minefields at a glance. As for the high-histamine foods mentioned by many people, such as fermented meat products, stale sea fish, pickles, and tuna, they are actually just a temporary stop during the acute attack period. During the attack period, the level of histamine in the skin is high, and eating it will only aggravate the itching. After the rash is almost gone, you can still try a small amount if you want to eat it.

But don’t think that the traditional theory of “hair growth” is unfounded nonsense. I’ve talked to many TCM dermatologists. Clinically, there are indeed many patients who will suddenly experience an acute attack of eczema after eating warm and dry foods such as mutton, lychee, and durian. This is especially true for patients with hot and humid constitutions who are prone to dry mouth and tongue and sticky stools. This kind of somatosensory feedback cannot be deceived. There is no need to argue and say, "Western medicine didn't say I couldn't eat, so I just insisted on eating." It's you who suffers from itchiness after eating and can't sleep for half the night. Just adjust according to your own body's reaction, and there is no need to impose any standard.

Oh, by the way, there is another question that has been asked eight hundred times: Should I give up seasonings such as soy sauce, vinegar, and chili? First of all, let’s talk about soy sauce. There is absolutely no evidence-based evidence that it will aggravate eczema or leave pigmentation. Unless you really feel uncomfortable eating it, just leave it in. There has to be a taste in your food, right? As for chili peppers, it all depends on the individual. Many eczema patients in Sichuan and Chongqing are fine with eating spicy food all the time. If you feel itchy and red rashes all over your body when you eat spicy food, then just tolerate it during the attack period. It's okay to eat a small amount during the stable period.

The most exaggerated patient I have ever seen ate white porridge with boiled vegetables for three months to cure eczema. In the end, his face became sallow and skinny. His immune system was so weak that he caught a cold when he blew a little wind, and his eczema was even worse than before. Originally, sufficient protein and vitamins are needed to repair eczema. If you give up eggs, milk, and meat, how can your skin grow a new barrier?

In the final analysis, the dietary taboos for eczema vary from person to person. Don’t just apply it to yourself when you see the list online, and don’t put down your chopsticks when your relatives and friends say, “This is a hairy food and you can’t eat it.” Your own body is always the most accurate yardstick.