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I would have loved to have been able to connect with other dishydrotic eczema sufferers when I was first trying to figure it out! Feel free to leave a comment below with your story, your own success strategies and any links to helpful sources.
Remember: absolutely none of this is a substitute for medical advice.
All information on this website is intended for informational purposes only and not intended to substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and/or medical treatment of a qualified physician or healthcare provider. If you do not have a doctor or other healthcare provider, please consider one of these low-cost online telemedicine options for consultation with board certified physicians.
I hope my experiences will lead others to discover possible triggers for this tricky condition, and potential pathways for improvement. I have found that patient knowledge in partnership with a good physician (a dermatologist if possible) can bring success in managing this condition.
Starting Simple...
For now, this is a simple comment section Message Board. I will monitor and respond to comments. If there is a need or enthusiastic interest, I will put up a more complex forum. You can also reach out to me directly here.
Let me know your story! It's nice to reach out to those who understand first hand. (Or first hands then feet, as is the case with my DE flares...)
I'm Laurie, your blog hostess and fellow DE veteran. Please leave a message and tell me your story! If you want to share a page from another site, you can cut and paste links like this: https://bubblesandblisters.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteFeel free to reply, too!
DeleteI was searching on Twitter for dyshidrotic eczema posts and saw this blog. Thank you for all of the research you did putting this together! I have had this recurring problem for many years without any real resolution and I don't want to destroy my skin with steroids any more. I am looking forward to exploring this blog because you seem to have gathered a lot of information. I will bookmark and revisit.
ReplyDeleteBetsy
Welcome Betsy! Thank you so much for your kind words. I hope this blog points you in the right direction to figure out the solution to your DE! I can relate to feeling concerned about long-term steroid use. (To be honest, I've never found any steroid to actually help with my dyshidrotic eczema flares. Hydrocortisone works great for contact dermatitis but it never really did anything for my DE. Some of the other prescription creams actually irritated my skin, which seemed to make it MORE prone to a flare.) Please check back and let me know how you are doing and if you found the key to your particular case!
DeleteThis is the best site on dyshidrotic eczema I have found yet. Thank you so much for all of this research! I have been dealing with this awful affliction for the last three years. No doctor has been able to offer anything other than steroids and I was misdiagnosed early with having simple contact dermatitis. Luckily I found a great dermatologist but he has not really given me any hope of fixing this. I am wondering if fungus is playing a part, after reading your experiences. I am also intrigued by the idea of dramatically changing my diet. Anyway thank you for all of this and I will check back in here if I find my own solution.
ReplyDeleteBeth
I meant to add this that I wonder if there is something about inflammation in the foods we eat that triggers this, which might mean why some people do better with vegan and others with paleo? Maybe we need to figure out what is making the inflammation for our own individual selfs.
ReplyDeleteBeth
Hi Beth!
DeleteThank you so much for the kind words. I hope you find the root cause of your DE, and when you do please come back and let me know about it. I agree that inflammatory aspects of foods and even supplements can definitely impact our condition, and other inflammatory skin conditions. I have a friend who can't take turmeric or curcumin without getting a regular eczema flare, for example. (The book _The Eczema Diet_ is a great resource for this subject.)
Good luck with your healing journey, and thank you again for stopping by! I really hope my blog offers some help in finding solutions.
Hello. I have had dishydrotic eczema for years and recently had a big recurrance. I had not googled this in quite a while and was not looking forward to trying to figure out all of the search results and go through all of the things that might help. Thank you for doing all the work here. I have found that dairy products are a big problem for me but I never want to totally give them up lol. I did not know that vitamin B12 could be an issue and I wonder if it is in the new supplement I am now taking. Anyways thanks for all of this.
ReplyDeleteRandi
Welcome, Randi! I hope you have found your triggers and are well on your way to a solution. I recently had the burning feeling in my hands after over a year without any signs. I realized that I had been getting too much B12 in a new multivitamin! Best of luck to you, and feel free to reach out here!
DeleteI just wanted to thank you for this resource. I have been dealing with dishidrosis for several months and neigher my regular doctor nor my dermatopogist explained it anywhere close to this website. I wanted you to know that I immediately took this to my dermotolagist and asked if a hidden fungal infection might be the cause. He was surprised and said he had forgotten that aspect of this disease. I didn't feel too good about him saying that. Anyway, I am hopeful that my athlete's foot problem might be why I am now having the eczema and he said it is definitely possible. I am going to do a round of fungal treatment and see if it also helps my hands. Thank you for sharing your story with others.
ReplyDeleteHi ANonymous! I am so glad that you found a possible cause for your dyshidrotic eczema! Also, now your dermatologist has had his memory jogged, so he will be better able to advise you and others on potential treatments. I am so surprised that most of my doctors had never heard of this either. It's well documented in the literature! Best of luck you you and please reach out again if you want to connect.
DeleteI am also very glad to have found your blog site and I cannot thank you enough for the resources you have accumulated here. I am most interested in the occult fungal link because I have never found this information anywyere else; my doctors have never mentioned this and I have been battling this disease for many a year. I have concurrent yeast and atheletes foot fungus infections which I am now certain is contributing to my condition. I want to thank you for putting me toward a possible path to management.
ReplyDeleteHarold Cooke
Hello Harold,
DeleteI certainly hope that you have found your solution! As you can see from the comment above, it seems that many of us have perplexed our doctors when presenting them with the information about fungal infections being a potential trigger for dyshidrotic eczema. The good news is that if this is your particular trigger, it is fairly easy to treat! I certainly hope you have found your solution. Please write back if you want to connect.
I wanted to thank you for reaching out to me on Twitter with a link to this website. I have learned more hear then I did from anything else I have read. I showed this site to my dermotologist and he agreed with what you wrote about possible triggers. I don't like the idea of modifying my diet because I kind of love to eat junk food but if that might solve this problem I am willing to try.
ReplyDeleteThank you again for finding a fellow sufferer in the internet and telling me where to look.
Anonymous, I'm so glad that my blog is offering you some clues to your condition! May you solve your DE problem sooner rather than later. I know it's hard to modify a diet -- trust me, I have a very restricted diet by most standards -- but the benefits are huge and once you get used to it, it becomes a no-brainer. Feeling better with clear skin for me beats any food I used to eat!
DeleteBest of luck and feel free to reach out at any time.
Thank you for this website! I have been going crazy with dishydrosis for the last few months and nobody ever mentioned anything about it being a reaction to an allergy. My doctor just said they didn't know what caused it. I wanted you to know that my flare calmed down when I took the antihistimine I asked my doctor about and it has not yet come back! I am going to watch for signs whenever I get hayfever! I feel like this is a miracle!
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Anonymous! I am so happy you and your doctor figured out what, for me at least, has been the key to managing any overt flares. Good luck with discovering your triggers! And welcome!
DeleteI wanted to tell you that your website saved my skin! I finally was able to see a dermatologist online, and I didn't even know that could be done until I saw it here. I have been properly diagnosed and I started using the regimin of creams you recomend as well as using benadril at the okay of my derm. I can not tell yuou what a difference this has made after almost two years of this awful stuff. It has been really bad to deal with both covid pandemic stuff washing hands all the time when my hands were literally bleeding with this condition. Now things are getting better and I wanted you to know your website helped a lot. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThis makes me so happy!!! If you discover even more body hacks that have worked, by all means let me know. I'm really happy I could help.
Deletehello! :) i just wanted to say thank you so much for making me feel as if i’m not alone. i want to give a brief introduction of my story. i’m currently 14 years old and my DE first entered my life during april of 2020. i’ve dealt with eczema ALL of life (mainly on my arms and knees) but when i saw tiny deep seated blisters appear on my fingers for the first time?? it was horrible. i didn’t think too much of it but it was insanely itchy. all throughout the remainder of 2020 it was just a big inconvenience, but nothing i couldn’t handle.
ReplyDeletefast-foward to late january of 2021 i was at my breaking point. i woke up one morning and my hands were throbbing and felt like balloons. i had HUGE and gross blisters popping out from the surface of my skin and my family had to tend to me that day because there was literally nothing i could do. i hated that, i love being independent and i felt like a burden to them for that day. i had flu-like symptoms and assumed my DE had turned into a fungal infection. my mom didn’t want to leave me untreated so we went to the doctor. i felt so embarrassed and wrapped my hands up before leaving. i didn’t even want to show them to the doctor, i felt like a zombie. he prescribed me prednisone, hydroxyzine, and an antibiotic. and oh my gosh...after the 7 days my hands were back to normal. i felt as if a weight was taken off of my back. finally!!! but then, on the 8th day they purged just like they never did before. they were huge and blistery and i woke up sobbing. i thought i was done dealing with this burden and here it goes. popping back into my life. i was overwhelmed, stressed, and just tired. so tired.
this cycle has repeated about one more time after the ordeal. they purged last monday and i’m currently typing this with pink, half cracked, wrinkly skin. this purge was my hardest one. it was spring break for me and i was mentally exhausted of staying inside of the house living my freshman year virtually. i do spend time with friends occasionally, (with masks!) but i really wanted to go somewhere for spring break. thankfully i did and went to the beach, but the day after i swelled back up again and my mom had to tend to me for the entire week because my hands were so swollen and flared. i’ve never cried over my DE this much. i’m tired, i feel lonely, and i just want it to be done and over with. i’m glad to have friends and family who understand what i’m going through, but i’m the one who has to wake up and live with barely functional hands each day. sometimes i watch commercials and see these hand models and just get jealous. i look back at old photos of me and miss my old, normal hands. you truly don’t miss what you have until it’s gone haha!! but the thing i miss the most is art. i can barely pick up a pencil just to write a few notes for my online classes without a blister accidentally bursting or a fissure cracking into my skin. it’s so painful, art and journaling used to be an outlet for me to express my emotions and deepest thoughts but now i can’t even do that. so now forums like these and my notes app are my saviors to have my voice heard.
however i’m still optimistic! i know that i can overcome this (with a few ibuprofen tablets along the way). i just have to have a positive mindset and keep my head up high. i need to find my triggers and change my diet to see what works out for me. but i won’t let this monster stop me. it has already been a huge inconvenience to me, but i won’t let it stop me from moving forward. thank you for listening to my story.
Hi Sha,
DeleteI am not the author of this blog, but a fellow reader like you. I wanted to reply to your comment and say that I completely understand where you come from.
You being so young is heart wrecking for me to see, but you are absolutely right about having a positive mindset knowing that we will heal from this once we figure out our triggers. I am a late 20's something that developed DE in August of 2019. I think I know what caused my DE and I am in the process of hopefully healing. I was suppressing my DE for a year and three months with steroid cream, which I do not recommend to anyone as they only suppresses it and not get to the root cause. Especially if it is a fungal thing, steroid only feeds the fungus even more. So people need to be cautious when they are given steroid creams. Some people go through a steroid cream withdrawal as well, depending on how long they used it for and the amount they used.
Even though we both have been struggling with this, but we both know a positive mindset will get us far in life. You got this! I'm rooting for you and all the others who are dealing with this debilitating condition.
Sha,
DeleteMy heart goes out to you!!!
As you can see by my awful photos of my own hands, I know your pain and suffering. There IS HOPE. I have had so many people tell me that once they hacked the underlying causes of their DE, they were able to break the cycle like I was. Don't give up hope. Don't feel like this is going to be a forever thing. It wasn't for me, and many others.
I was close to your age when I first started battling this monster. Learn as much as you can about it, try lifestyle and dietary changes, pay attention to ANY fungal infections you might not realize you have -- from mild yeast infections to athletes foot or ringworm. That is a super easy fix if it is triggering your outbreaks. (The DE isn't fungal -- but it can oddly happen because of fungus elsewhere on your body. I'd seen countless doctors before a dermatologist told me that!)
Keep in touch and let me know how you are doing. You can reach out on the side bar email box to reach me directly, or email bubblesandblisters@post.com. We've all got to support one another!
Hang in there and big hugs...
Laurie
Also, hello again Farrah! I'm so happy to see you here, after receiving your wonderful email. I cosign EVERYTHING you said, for Sha and everyone else suffering under gloves and icepacks and thick socks. This is a weirdly debilitating condition, and I want everyone who has it to know they are not alone.
DeleteXO
Laurie