What causes "diaper rash"?
Diaper rash is usually caused by a wet or dirty diaper touching the skin. It causes irritation of the skin so the skin usually gets really red and inflamed. That's your most common cause. It's called a "contact diaper rash" or "diaper dermatitis." Those types of diaper rash are the ones we usually treat with barrier creams by putting a cream like a thick white paste, like a Desitin or a Balmex or a Boudreaux's Butt Paste on there to create a barrier so that the skin can heal and the poop and the wet diapers don't keep re-irritating the skin. Another very common diaper rash is a Candidal, or yeast diaper rash. We often hear about these; parents will say, "Oh, my child has a diaper rash and I've been using all these creams and nothing is working." Well, any moist environment on the body, and this for is boys or girls, is a set-up for the growth of yeast. So, when you have a yeast infection, you need to use special creams that are best for yeast, like Lotrimin cream or Nystatin. One of the differentiating characteristics of what a yeast infection looks like on the skin is that often there are these little red bumps (called satellite lesions, or little papules) around the red areas and also into the creases of skin. So, you have to think, if the red areas are in places where the diaper doesn't touch, like inside creases, then something must have crawled in there. The thing that usually crawls and grows in there is the yeast, and then we treat that diaper rash with different types of creams.
