August 19, 2015

3 Foods That Cure Eczema Naturally.

0 Boost Score Hayden Smith (1,510,185)

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fermented milk hayden smith

Inflamed, bumpy skin.

Incessant itching. Constant bloody scabs.

Prescription steroid creams that didn’t do anything but leave my skin raw and a few layers thinner. Interminable searching on the Internet for “soothing oatmeal soap” and “natural supplements.”

After six years, the painful and embarrassing eczema on my face just felt normal.

Endless searching for the cure was exhausting. I felt hopeless and was resigned to living life with an oozing red face.

Who was I to question my doctor’s medical degree that insisted there was no cure for eczema?

Turns out you can beat eczema, just like I did. No expensive medications or fancy lotions necessary, just good old-fashioned food. I haven’t had a relapse in the 10 years that I’ve added these foods to my diet.

It’s all in the gut.

The role of the trillions of microbes living in our intestines is becoming increasingly clear as science reveals how they directly communicate to the brain and skin. Referred to as the Gut-Brain-Skin Axis [1-3], this complex communication network between these organs and microbes involves different hormonal and neural pathways that certain beneficial microbes use and subsequently influence our health [4-7].

The gut serves as a delicate barrier between our internal organs and anything we eat or drink, so when our gut becomes “leaky,” it initiates a whole cascade of events eventually causing chronic inflammation. If toxins, large food particles, or harmful microbes pass through a leaky gut into our bloodstream, the immune system activates and attacks anything it doesn’t recognize [8].

For some people, this inflammation caused by leaky gut means Irritable Bowel Disease. For others, it’s allergies or asthma. But for me, a leaky gut caused my terrible eczema.

Overuse of antibiotics, high stress lifestyles, and poor quality food all contribute to leaky gut.

Our gut is home to trillions of microscopic organisms, including bacteria, yeast, Archaea and viruses, and this ‘microbiome’ is extremely sensitive to stressors. The microbes are responsible for maintaining a healthy line of communication with other organs like the brain and skin but they also keep intestinal walls strong in order to keep any inflammatory particles out of our bloodstream [9-11].

Our microbiome has both ‘bad’ microbes and ‘good’ ones. They exist together, the good guys keeping the bad ones in check. While there’s no question that antibiotics have saved thousands of lives, today they are often overused and prescribed when not needed, unnecessarily killing gut microbes that are essential to intestinal health. Killing off beneficial microbes lets any bad guys that survived the antibiotics overgrow and take over [12]. Additionally, if you eat sugary, processed foods that feed the bad guys, or kill off the good guys with stress and antibiotics, the bad microbes can take over, contributing to a leaky gut [13,14].

We have the power to manipulate our microbiome to heal a leaky gut and beat eczema.

You may have a leaky gut without even realizing it. A leaky gut is implicated in allergies, depression, anxiety, autoimmunity, digestive disorders and so many more illnesses [15-18]. You may have lived for so long with nagging health issues that feeling horrible is normal.

The good news is you don’t have to live this way—you can rejuvenate your health by using healing foods to restore your damaged digestive system.

I added three powerful foods to my diet and after several weeks, the eczema I’d had for years disappeared and never came back. Since then, I’ve taught many people how to easily make these foods and watch their skin inflammation vanish. Giving hope to mothers desperate to heal their children, replacing expensive medications and throwing out the useless lotions is such an amazing experience.

Taking control of your health and mastering your skin problems by healing your gut is possible once you start eating these three foods everyday.

Bone Broth

The age-old adage to eat chicken soup when you’re sick is actually great advice. But skip the store bought; it’s full of additives and artificial flavorings, not to mention it’s so much cheaper to make your own from chicken, beef, lamb and fish bones, etc.. Pick one day a week to make a big batch of broth and drink a few cups a day. The restorative broth nourishes the cells of your intestines, allowing them to grow and repair themselves.

Fermented Vegetables

Fermentation is a process in which beneficial microbes, called probiotics, eat carbohydrates to produce acids that preserve the vegetables. This is why things like fermented pickles or sauerkraut taste sour. Fermented vegetables are teeming with live organisms that can live in your intestines and directly play a role in the gut-brain-skin axis.

Kefir

This fermented milk drink is a probiotic powerhouse. It’s beyond easy to make and is packed with different bacteria and yeasts that produce hundreds of unique peptides that have specific anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and immune regulating effects [19]. Drinking a glass of kefir a day will strengthen your gut, thus directly improving skin health.

These lifestyle changes will revolutionize your health.

These foods have been an important part of my diet for 10 years. Eating them everyday keeps my gut strong and my microbiome thriving. While some may think it’s easier to just pop a pill or smear on some steroid cream, I know my eczema-free body is healthier because the foods I eat address the root cause of the problem: a leaky gut.

References:

1. Arck, Petra, Bori Handjiski, Evelin Hagen, Maike Pincus, Christian Bruenahl, John Bienenstock, and Ralf Paus. “Is There a ‘gut-brain-skin Axis’?” Experimental Dermatology (2010): 401-05.
2. Bowe, Whitney P, and Alan C Logan. “Acne Vulgaris, Probiotics and the Gut-brain-skin Axis – Back to the Future?” Gut Pathog Gut Pathogens (2011): 1.
3. Shanahan, Fergus. “The Brain-Gut Axis and the Mucosal Immunoinflammatory Response.” Neuroendocrinology of Gastrointestinal Ulceration (1999): 103-08.
4. Mayer, Emeran A., Kirsten Tillisch, and Arpana Gupta. “Gut/brain Axis and the Microbiota.” Journal of Clinical Investigation J. Clin. Invest. (2015): 926-38.
5. Mayer, E. A., R. Knight, S. K. Mazmanian, J. F. Cryan, and K. Tillisch. “Gut Microbes and the Brain: Paradigm Shift in Neuroscience.” Journal of Neuroscience (2014): 15490-5496.
6. Cryan, J. F., and S. M. O’Mahony. “The Microbiome-gut-brain Axis: From Bowel to Behavior.” Neurogastroenterology & Motility (2011): 187-92.
7. Sudo, Nobuyuki. “Microbiome, HPA Axis and Production of Endocrine Hormones in the Gut.” Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology Microbial Endocrinology: The Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis in Health and Disease (2014): 177-94.
8. Visser, Jeroen, Jan Rozing, Anna Sapone, Karen Lammers, and Alessio Fasano. “Tight Junctions, Intestinal Permeability, and Autoimmunity.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2009): 195-205.
9. Fasano, Alessio, and Terez Shea-Donohue. “Mechanisms of Disease: The Role of Intestinal Barrier Function in the Pathogenesis of Gastrointestinal Autoimmune Diseases.” Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology Nat Clin Pract Gastroenterol Hepatol (2005): 416-22.
10. Gecse, Krisztina, Richárd Róka, Teréz Séra, András Rosztóczy, Anita Annaházi, Ferenc Izbéki, Ferenc Nagy, Tamás Molnár, Zoltán Szepes, László Pávics, Lionel Bueno, and Tibor Wittmann. “Leaky Gut in Patients with Diarrhea-Predominant Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Inactive Ulcerative Colitis.” Digestion (2012): 40-46.
11. Gárate, Iciar, Borja Garcia-Bueno, Jose Luis Muñoz Madrigal, Javier Rubén Caso, Luis Alou, Marisa L. Gomez-Lus, Juan Antonio Micó, and Juan Carlos Leza. “Stress-Induced Neuroinflammation: Role of the Toll-Like Receptor-4 Pathway.” Biological Psychiatry (2013): 32-43.
12. Nobel, Yael R., Laura M. Cox, Francis F. Kirigin, Nicholas A. Bokulich, Shingo Yamanishi, Isabel Teitler, Jennifer Chung, Jiho Sohn, Cecily M. Barber, David S. Goldfarb, Kartik Raju, Sahar Abubucker, Yanjiao Zhou, Victoria E. Ruiz, Huilin Li, Makedonka Mitreva, Alexander V. Alekseyenko, George M. Weinstock, Erica Sodergren, and Martin J. Blaser. “Metabolic and metagenomic outcomes from early-life pulsed antibiotic treatment.” Nature Communications. (2015).
13. Stecher, Bärbel. “The Roles of Inflammation, Nutrient Availability and the Commensal Microbiota in Enteric Pathogen Infection.” Microbiology Spectrum (2015).
14. Bercik, Premysl, and Stephen M. Collins. “The Effects of Inflammation, Infection and Antibiotics on the Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis.” Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology Microbial Endocrinology: The Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis in Health and Disease (2014): 279-89.
15. Ait-Belgnaoui, Afifa, Henri Durand, Christel Cartier, Gilles Chaumaz, Hélène Eutamene, Laurent Ferrier, Eric Houdeau, Jean Fioramonti, Lionel Bueno, and Vassilia Theodorou. “Prevention of Gut Leakiness by a Probiotic Treatment Leads to Attenuated HPA Response to an Acute Psychological Stress in Rats.” Psychoneuroendocrinology (2012): 1885-895.
16. Barbara, Giovanni, Lisa Zecchi, Raffaella Barbaro, Cesare Cremon, Lara Bellacosa, Marco Marcellini, Roberto De Giorgio, Roberto Corinaldesi, and Vincenzo Stanghellini. “Mucosal Permeability and Immune Activation as Potential Therapeutic Targets of Probiotics in Irritable Bowel Syndrome.” Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology (2012).
17. Karper, William B. “Intestinal Permeability, Moderate Exercise, and Older Adult Health.” Holistic Nursing Practice (2011): 45-48.
18. Maes, Michael, Ivana Mihaylova, and Jean-Claude Leunis. “Increased Serum IgA and IgM against LPS of Enterobacteria in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS): Indication for the Involvement of Gram-negative Enterobacteria in the Etiology of CFS and for the Presence of an Increased Gut–intestinal Permeability.” Journal of Affective Disorders (2008): 237-40.
19. Ebner, Jennifer, Ayşe Aşçı Arslan, Maria Fedorova, Ralf Hoffmann, Ahmet Küçükçetin, and Monika Pischetsrieder. “Peptide Profiling of Bovine Kefir Reveals 236 Unique Peptides Released from Caseins during Its Production by Starter Culture or Kefir Grains.” Journal of Proteomics (2015): 41-57.